SENTRY AT THE GATE: How the North Warwickshire Line avoided closure
THREE years after the publication of the controversial Reshaping of British Railways report in 1963, the British Railways Board announced its intention to close the railway line south from Tyseley through Yardley Wood, Shirley, Wythall, Henleyin-Arden to Bearley Junction, where it joined a branch line from Hatton that provided services between Leamington Spa and Stratford-upon-Avon.
The proposal came as a shock to the communities along what was known as the ‘North Warwickshire Line’ (NWL) not least because the line had not been earmarked for closure like so many others. The only mention the ‘Reshaping’ report’s author Dr Richard Beeching had made about any rail services in the area referred to the Stratford to Worcester passenger services that ran south from Stratfordupon-Avon via Long Marston and Honeybourne. The report categorised these services as requiring modification. The devil was in the detail.
The NWL owed its origin to pressure and demand from local businesses north-west of Stratford-upon-Avon towards Birmingham. Henley-in-Arden and Shirley were both growing communities, and a railway line would enable connection with the rail network northwards at Birmingham and southwards at Stratford-upon-Avon, and ultimately beyond to Cheltenham.
In 1899 the Great Western Railway took on a scheme to provide a railway, with Henley-in-Arden contractor C J Mills being awarded the work, and who began construction in 1905.
“The halcyon days of train travel to and from the South West and South Wales through the Forest of Arden, Shakespeare’s country and Cotswolds were numbered.”
On December 9, 1907, the line opened for goods traffic, with the first passenger service operating on July 1, 1908, a Wolverhampton-Birmingham Snow Hill-Stratford-Penzance express. The NWL was to be part of one of the last mainline railway lines to be built.
At last, the GWR had its own route between Bristol and Birmingham, shorter than its 140- mile Bristol, Didcot, Oxford, Birmingham route. The NWL enabled a railway via Cheltenham and Stratford-upon-Avon that was only 98 miles and 80 chains, but also avoiding the infamous Lickey Incline between Bromsgrove and Barnt Green
