Type Heavy rail Status Operational Stations 0/6 Owner Network Rail | System National Rail Locale West Midlands Opened 1840-41 | |
Terminis Birmingham New Street station, Kings Norton railway station | ||
Dcr 31601 camp hill line 0v31
The Camp Hill line is a railway line in the West Midlands which lies between Kings Norton on the Cross-City Line and Birmingham New Street via Grand Junction on the main lines from Derby and Coventry.
Contents
It originated in a link between the first terminus at Camp Hill of the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway and the London and Birmingham Railway's Curzon Street. The B&GR had opened as far as Camp Hill in 1840, with the link to Curzon St being completed the following year; the joint MR & LNWR station at New Street was subsequently reached in 1854. As both of the MR lines approached New Street from the east, this meant that through trains between Derby and Bristol had to undertake an inconvenient reversal if calling there and so many services were instead routed directly to/from Camp Hill, calling there to allow New Street-bound passengers to catch a connecting local train. This practice continued until the Birmingham West Suburban Railway was extended through to New Street in 1885 - thereafter long distance trains were able to run through New Street and directly on towards Kings Norton & Cheltenham via this route without having to reverse.
Stopping passenger services were withdrawn in 1941 as a "Wartime Economy Measure", but the line remains open for freight traffic and for longer distance passenger train services. Seven railway stations along the line have been demolished; they are:
Future plans
The reinstatement of local rail services to the former Camp Hill Line has been a long term aspiration of the City, and during 2007, Birmingham City Council announced that they were looking into the possibility of reopening the line between Kings Norton and Birmingham Moor Street via the construction of a railway viaduct from Sparkbrook to Bordesley, where trains would be taken into the "old" Birmingham Moor Street station. In October 2007, a 1500-name petition was handed in to the council asking for the line to be re-opened. In 2013 the proposal was shelved indefinitely.
In 2016, the newly created West Midlands Combined Authority, revived the plans to restore local passenger services to the line, and declared it one of their priority transport schemes to be delivered by 2025.
Proposed station sites are:
Proposals for the reopening were estimated at a cost of around £170 million. This would have included a 3 train per hour service between Birmingham Moor Street and Kings Norton, as well as the restoration of the island platform at Kings Norton for passenger use.