Although not a railway modeller myself, though I suspect a good percentage of the Backtrack readership may well be, there are several railway locations in my native Black Country region of the West Midlands that I have often thought would not only make for interesting articles in themselves, but would perhaps also appeal to the railway modelling fraternity and serve as a source of inspiration for potential modelling projects. One such location is Langley Green for reasons I hope will become apparent from this twopart feature, which roughly spans a 30-year timeline from 1970. Although the main subject matter will be freight operations, passenger and other services will also be touched upon as well (in Part Two).
Langley Green itself lies on what is generally referred to as the Stourbridge Extension Line, which was opened in three stages by the Stourbridge Railway Company between April 1863 and April 1867. It started from a junction with the Oxford, Worcester & Wolverhampton Railway (OWWR) at Stourbridge and initially ran to Cradley Heath. It was later extended to Old Hill (January 1866) and then onwards from there to Handsworth Junction on the Great Western Railway (GWR) main line from Birmingham Snow to Wolverhampton Low Level, becoming part of the GWR in 1870.
At Smethwick West a short spur gave access to and from the Birmingham New Street to Wolverhampton High Level – Stour Valley – main line at Galton Junction. The ‘Stour’ was later energized in the mid-1960s as part of the 25kV ac overhead electrification work that was then going on in the West Midlands, thus elevating it in importance above that of the GWR main line between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. As a consequence, the GWR lost its main line status through the region in March 1967, thus demoting it to that of a secondary passenger route. It later became a fragmented freight-only byway when its remaining peak-houronly passenger shuttles to and from Birmingham Snow Hill, Langley Green and Wolverhampton Low Level were finally withdrawn in March 1972.
The surviving section of line from Smethwick West to Handsworth continued to give freight-only access to a cement terminal and scrap yard, as detailed later, but this had been singled by the mid-1980s, thus necessitating trains from these two railheads having to run ‘bang road’ (wrong line) for about half-a-mile or so to reach Langley Green Yard.
The said section from Smethwick West to Handsworth was later reinstated as double track in 1995 when passenger services were re-introduced in September of that year as part of the’ Jewellery Quarter Line’ to Birmingham Snow Hill (this station had already reopened to passenger services from the Moor Street direction in October 1987). Smethwick West station closed in September 1996, having been replaced by the nearby double-level Smethwick Galton Bridge station (opened in 1995), which enabled a useful interchange between ‘Jewellery Line’ services and those operating on the Stour Valley
