Railways

39.1. Maps 1 & 12

The Grand Junction Railway from Liverpool, surveyed by George Stephenson, and his son Robert's London to Birmingham Railway, came to a common terminus at Curzon Street in the Rea valley in 1838. Plans for other lines proliferated in the following decade, and by the fruition of two of these our district was to be considerably affected. These were for the Stour Valley and Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and Dudley lines. Railways were recognised as deadly rivals by canal companies, but hereabout the story is not the usual one of ruinous competition followed by railway purchase and deliberate neglect of canals. The B.C.N. Com-pany decided on collaboration to everyone's profit.

Amalgamating with the Dudley Canal Co. in 1846, B.C.N. then shared with the London to Birmingham Railway Co, (later the L.N.W.R.) the cost of building a line called the Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and Stour Valley Railway. This was to have a terminus near New Street (originally called Navigation Street Station), to tun-nel beneath the ridge and emerge beside the canal at Fazeley Junction, thence to parallel closely the Telford Cut. From West Smethwick the main line went to Dudley and Wolverhampton, and a branch to Stourbridge Junction.

The line was opened in 1852. The lines from Liverpool and London were completed to New Street in '54, when Monument Lane Station was opened. Suburban development on the Heath was sufficient to justify the opening of Winson Green Station in '76. From the start railway and canal worked together. Trains were ideal for fast bulk freight carri-age : narrow boats serving the mines and factories throughout the region along a hundred-mile network of cuts both fed and were fed by goods trains at lineside wharves, as at Monument Lane and beyond Winson Green. In '86 a loop line linked the Grand Junction and Stour Valley lines, and the bed of Hockley Great Pool was used for sidings.

The other local line, the B.W.& D., had its terminus on Snow Hill. It cross-ed Newhall Brook valley on a long viaduct then went north-west, parallel to and about half a mile from the rival Stour Valley line, leaving Birmingham north of Winson Green. Hockley, Soho & Winson Green, and Handsworth & Smethwick Stations opened in two years after the terminus in '54. The Streets Commissioners showed wisdom and foresight in refusing to permit level-crossings, so that the railways are entirely banked or cut, and the only low or narrow bridges are those in dis-tricts outside the Commission's control. Thus the S.V. line is below street le-vel from New Street to the boundary, while the B.W.& D. tunnels under Consti-tution Hill, bridges Icknield Street, and three brooks, maintaining level elsewhere in deep cuttings. Later lines from Hockley Station led to Hockley Port on the Soho Branch Canal.

The westward spread of suburban building, on the Calthorpe Estate and in Har-borne, had brought construction of the first railway intended from the start to serve commuters. This was the Harborne Line of '74, which left the S.V. just south of Dudley Road and went south-west and south in a l½-mile cutting before paralleling and then crossing Chad Brook. The 2-mile single track had three stations before the Harborne terminus - at Icknield Port, Rotton Park, and Hag-ley Roads. Two years later the Birmingham & South-West Suburban Line was opened.

The successors to the bankrupt Worcester Canal Co. were pleased to accept £1400 p.a. for the lease of a strip of land on the west bank of the canal between the Birmingham Wharf and the Gloucester Line (Midland Railway) at Lifford. The new commuter line had a temporary terminus at Granville Street, and Edgbaston stations at Five Ways, Church, and Somerset Roads. In '85 the line was extended to a goods yard off Suffolk Street and by tunnel to a new terminus, the Midland Station, separated from New Street by Queens Drive. This was the last main line built in west Birmingham, and the Harborne line was never extended as planned to Halesowen : but there were to be some short branches, like those into Soho Foundry and Cape Hill Brewery. The latter left the Harborne cutting at Rotton Park Road, went under City Road, turned beneath the canal feeder, and ran be-side Shireland Brook. The lines are long since taken up and the cutting infill-ed, but the City Road bridge remains.

The Harborne line stopped carrying passen-gers in 1934 but goods traffic continued for three decades. The lines were then taken up and the cutting became an overgrown depository for rubbish. Only the brick piers in the Telford Cut and the bridges survive to remind us of the rail-way north of Rotton Park Road, because the trench has been infilled and planted, so that Summerfield Park now extends to the gardens of Gillott Road. From Port-land Road south the line is landscaped as a Walkway, with access ramps from the road bridges, but it is not completed beyond Woodbourne Road. After years of disuse during which nearly all the stations were closed the S.-W.S. line is back in business as the Rapid Transit rail route from Longbridge to Four Oaks : new stations have been built, including those at the University / Queen Eliza-beth Hospital and Five Ways, and the service begun in 1978 is successful.