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The Wombourne branch (also known as the Wolverhampton and Kingswinford Railway) was a railway situated in the English West Midlands. It branched from the Great Western Railway's Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton line at Kingswinford Junction to the north of Brettell Lane railway station and joined the same company's Shrewsbury to Wolverhampton line at the triangular Oxley Junction on the north-western approach to Wolverhampton Low Level.
Contents
Traffic
Construction of the line began in 1912 with the intention of operating goods trains. Construction work halted within three years following the outbreak of World War I. After the war ended in 1918, construction resumed and the line was opened in 1925.
A number of halts and stations were built at locations on the line including Wombourne and Tettenhall. Passenger services were short lived and were discontinued in 1932 after just seven years.
Closure
The line between Kingswinford and Tettenhall remained open to goods trains until 24 June 1965, though the branch which served Baggeridge Colliery survived until the closure of that facility on 2 March 1968. This meant that the line had been open for just over half a century when it closed. Its viability was not helped by the fact that it served a predominantly rural area.
The final remaining section of the line continued to serve the Pensnett Trading Estate, developed since around 1970, until that section of railway closed in 1994. The line is now singled and heavily overgrown with vegetation and even mature trees, but most it is still in place and there have been many recent suggestions that this final stub of the line will re-open to serve the Pensnett Trading Estate once again.
The line today
The section north of Pensnett closed is now utilised as -