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Brettell Lane Railway Station
Brettell Lane railway station was a station on the Oxford-Worcester-Wolverhampton Line which served the town of Brierley Hill in England. History It was opened in 1852 by the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway. Local coal mining and steel mills led to rapid industrialisation of the area and heavy usage of the station in the early 20th century, but numbers had declined badly by the 1960s. In 1858, a coupling broke on an excursion train at the station and the rear portion rolled back down the gradient from Round Oak railway station towards Brettell Lane where it collided with another train (which was actually part of the same excursion, the train already having been safely divided once due to its extreme length) 14 passengers were killed and 50 more injured. The line had reasonable passenger usage until about the early 1880s, when it began to slump at several stations, leading to the line becoming a largely freight only operation in 1887. It would remain open for go ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brierley Hill
Brierley Hill is a town and electoral ward in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, West Midlands, England, 2.5 miles south of Dudley and 2 miles north of Stourbridge. Part of the Black Country and in a heavily industrialised area, it has a population of 13,935 at the 2011 census. It is best known for glass and steel manufacturing, although industry has declined considerably since the 1970s. One of the largest factories in the area was the Round Oak Steelworks, which closed down and was redeveloped in the 1980s to become the Merry Hill Shopping Centre. Brierley Hill was originally in Staffordshire. Since 2008, Brierley Hill has been designated as the Strategic Town Centre of the Dudley Borough. History The name Brierley Hill derives from the Old English words 'brer', meaning the place where the Briar Rose grew; 'leah', meaning a woodland clearing; and 'hill'. Largely a product of the Industrial Revolution, Brierley Hill has a relatively recent history, with the first written ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lever Frame
Mechanical railway signalling installations rely on lever frames for their operation to interlock the signals, track locks and points to allow the safe operation of trains in the area the signals control. Usually located in the signal box, the levers are operated either by the signalman or the pointsman. The world's largest lever frame is believed to have been in the Spencer Street No.1 signal box in Melbourne, Australia, which had 191 levers, but was decommissioned in 2008. The largest, currently operational, lever frame is located at Severn Bridge Junction in Shrewsbury, England, and has 180 levers; although most of them have now been taken out of use. Overview The lever frame is located in the signal box, which can be a building at ground level or a tower, separated from or connected to an existing station building. Early lever frames were also built as ''ground frames'' next to the track, without any form of shelter and were usually operated by traincrew and not per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carriage Sidings
A carriage is a private four-wheeled vehicle for people and is most commonly horse-drawn. Second-hand private carriages were common public transport, the equivalent of modern cars used as taxis. Carriage suspensions are by leather strapping and, on those made in recent centuries, steel springs. Two-wheeled carriages are informal and usually owner-driven. Coaches are a special category within carriages. They are carriages with four corner posts and a fixed roof. Two-wheeled war chariots and transport vehicles such as four-wheeled wagons and two-wheeled carts were forerunners of carriages. In the twenty-first century, horse-drawn carriages are occasionally used for public parades by royalty and for traditional formal ceremonies. Simplified modern versions are made for tourist transport in warm countries and for those cities where tourists expect open horse-drawn carriages to be provided. Simple metal sporting versions are still made for the sport known as competitive drivi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Network Rail
Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. Network Rail is an "arm's length" public body of the Department for Transport with no shareholders, which reinvests its income in the railways. Network Rail's main customers are the private train operating companies (TOCs), responsible for passenger transport, and freight operating companies (FOCs), who provide train services on the infrastructure that the company owns and maintains. Since 1 September 2014, Network Rail has been classified as a "public sector body". To cope with fast-increasing passenger numbers, () Network Rail has been undertaking a £38 billion programme of upgrades to the network, including Crossrail, electrification of lines and upgrading Thameslink. In May 2021, the Government announced its intent to replace Network Rail in 2023 with a ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pensnett Trading Estate
Pensnett is an area of the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, West Midlands, England, south-west of central Dudley. Pensnett has been a part of Dudley since 1966, when the Brierley Hill Urban District, of which it was a part, was absorbed into the County Borough of Dudley, later the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley from 1974. Pensnett Chase The present Pensnett covers a small portion of what was a large common called Pensnett Chase in Kingswinford parish, but contiguous with Dudley Wood in Dudley. As such, it belonged to the lords of the manor, descending as part of the Dudley estate from medieval times. With Dudley Wood, it is probably the woodland mentioned in the Domesday Book as belonging to those manors. There is a rifle range on the chase at barrow bank which was being used for practice firing by volunteer regiments from at least 1860 through till 1920 with many Martini–Henry bullets being found by local metal detectorists. The name Pensnett is from the Celtic 'pen', f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wombourne Branc
Wombourne is a large village and civil parish located in the district of South Staffordshire, in the county of Staffordshire, England. It is 4 miles (6 km) south-west of Wolverhampton and just outside the county and conurbation of the West Midlands. Local services are run by a parish council. At the 2001 census it had a population of 13,691, increasing to 14,157 at the 2011 Census. Etymology and usage The Old English word ''burna'' signifies a stream, and a stream is a notable feature of the village. Formerly the village name was thought to mean "Womb Stream", or stream in a hollow, because this is a reasonable description of the situation. However, more recent scholarship explains the name as meaning a Crooked Stream, which is at least as good a description. ''Burna'' was one of the terms for a stream used in the earliest Anglo-Saxon place names, and the stream was presumably itself called the Wom Bourn. However, today it is always distinguished from the village by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beeching Axe
The Beeching cuts (also Beeching Axe) was a plan to increase the efficiency of the nationalised railway system in Great Britain. The plan was outlined in two reports: ''The Reshaping of British Railways'' (1963) and ''The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes'' (1965), written by Richard Beeching and published by the British Railways Board. The first report identified 2,363 stations and of railway line for closure, amounting to 55% of stations, 30% of route miles, and 67,700 British Rail positions, with an objective of stemming the large losses being incurred during a period of increasing competition from road transport and reducing the rail subsidies necessary to keep the network running. The second report identified a small number of major routes for significant investment. The 1963 report also recommended some less well-publicised changes, including a switch to the now-standard practice of containerisation for rail freight, and the replacement of some services wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kingswinford Junction
Brettell Lane railway station was a station on the Oxford-Worcester-Wolverhampton Line which served the town of Brierley Hill in England. History It was opened in 1852 by the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway. Local coal mining and steel mills led to rapid industrialisation of the area and heavy usage of the station in the early 20th century, but numbers had declined badly by the 1960s. In 1858, a coupling broke on an excursion train at the station and the rear portion rolled back down the gradient from Round Oak railway station towards Brettell Lane where it collided with another train (which was actually part of the same excursion, the train already having been safely divided once due to its extreme length) 14 passengers were killed and 50 more injured. The line had reasonable passenger usage until about the early 1880s, when it began to slump at several stations, leading to the line becoming a largely freight only operation in 1887. It would remain open for go ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Midlands Conurbation
The West Midlands conurbation is the large conurbation that includes the cities of Birmingham and Wolverhampton and the towns of Sutton Coldfield, Dudley, Walsall, West Bromwich, Solihull, Stourbridge and Halesowen in the English West Midlands. It is also referred to as the Birmingham urban area and is one of the most populated and densely populated built-up areas in the United Kingdom. Not to be confused with the region or metropolitan county of the same name, the conurbation does not include parts of the metropolitan county such as Coventry, but does include parts of the surrounding counties of Staffordshire (e.g. Little Aston, Perton and Essington) and Worcestershire (such as Hagley and Hollywood). According to the 2011 Census the area had a population of 2,440,986, making it the third most populated in the United Kingdom behind the Greater London and the Urban areas of Greater Manchester. The conurbation sits within the UK's (and therefore England's) largest metropoli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolverhampton Low Level Railway Station
Wolverhampton Low Level was a railway station on Sun Street, in Springfield, Wolverhampton, England. It was built by the Great Western Railway (GWR), on their route from London Paddington to Birkenhead, via Birmingham Snow Hill. It was the most northerly broad-gauge station on the GWR network. Design The OWWR's engineer, John Fowler, designed the frontage, while the GWR's Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed the layout. The station building is two storeys high and constructed of Staffordshire blue brick in Italianate style, which is an unusual combination but the blue brick was abundant in the area in the 19th century. The design of the station was similar to that of the earlier High Level station. The main building has a large pediment; tall, round-headed, pedimented windows with ashlar brackets on the first floor which the main entrance on the ground floor. Plainer wings extend to either side of the main building which protrude to the front. The interior of the former booki ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stourbridge Junction Railway Station
Stourbridge Junction is one of two railway stations serving the town of Stourbridge, in the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley in the West Midlands, England. It lies on the Birmingham to Worcester via Kidderminster Line and is the junction for the Stourbridge Town Branch Line, said to be the shortest operational branch line in Europe. The other station serving Stourbridge is at the end of the branch line. History The station was opened in 1852 on the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway line, at a slightly different location from the present station, under the name of Stourbridge. The junction came about when the Stourbridge Railway built their line to Lye and beyond. Stourbridge became a double junction on 1 October 1879 when the branch to Stourbridge Town and goods was opened. It was at this time that the station changed its name from ''Stourbridge'' to ''Stourbridge Junction''. The new station to the south of the original costing £100,000 () was opened on 1 Octobe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moor Lane Goods Yard
Brettell Lane railway station was a station on the Oxford-Worcester-Wolverhampton Line which served the town of Brierley Hill in England. History It was opened in 1852 by the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway. Local coal mining and steel mills led to rapid industrialisation of the area and heavy usage of the station in the early 20th century, but numbers had declined badly by the 1960s. In 1858, a coupling broke on an excursion train at the station and the rear portion rolled back down the gradient from Round Oak railway station towards Brettell Lane where it collided with another train (which was actually part of the same excursion, the train already having been safely divided once due to its extreme length) 14 passengers were killed and 50 more injured. The line had reasonable passenger usage until about the early 1880s, when it began to slump at several stations, leading to the line becoming a largely freight only operation in 1887. It would remain open for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
