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London North Western
Railway:
Midland
Railway:
Stratford
Midland Junction Railway
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Bromford Bridge Racecourse Station
There had been two stations at this location. The first
being known as Bromford Forge which was opened by the Birmingham & Derby
Junction Railway (B&DJR) on 16th May 1842, a short while after the Tame
Valley line, a double-track route between Lawley Street and Water Orton opened
on 10th February 1842. This new route gave the B&DJR their own and much
shorter and quicker route into Birmingham Lawley Street instead of using their
line from Water Orton to a junction with the London & Birmingham Railway
(L&BR) at Hampton and then
over L&BR metals to Lawley Street. However, the poor levels of traffic
being generated by this then rural location resulted in the station closing in
May 1842. The second station, named Bromford Bridge Racecourse, was opened on
the same site by the Midland Railway (MR) on 9th March 1896 in order to take
advantage of the thousands of racegoers attending new racecourse built nearby.
This station was only open on race days and consequently the facilities being
made available to passengers was very limited with no platform shelter being
proved on either platform. The lack of passenger facilities was common to other
racecourse specific stations throughout the country.
There were at least three signal boxes at this location each
reflecting the expansion of Washwood Heath Sidings as they in turn controlled
the eastern approaches. Reference to the two Ordnance Survey maps (surveyed in
1902 and 1904) show what is thought to be the first
signal box. In Midland Record No 26 on Page 12, Bob Essery relates that the
photograph seen in 'mrbb624' shows the only
image of the 1917 MR built signal box, the second signal box, albeit hidden
behind a train. The third and relatively large signal box, which was a dominant
feature of photographs of the station in its later days, was thought to have
been built by the LMS. The three signal boxes were all built on the down
platform and were installed to control the down approaches to Washwood Heath
Sidings. As can be seen on both OS maps a much smaller signal box was located
on the other side just past the end of the up platform.
Access to the station was via timber steps from the up and
down platforms directly to Bromford Lane which crossed the railway at the
western end of the station. A booking office of wooden construction was
provided at street level on the down side with steps to reach the platform
directly from the office. The rear of the booking office can be seen in image
'mrbb1696'. The primary access to both the up
and down platforms was via sets of open wooden steps leading to Bromford Lane
(see 'mrbb1287a'). In addition to these very
limited passenger facilities was a horse dock located to the east of the
station on the down side. In an
accident
report dated 27th January 1913 (courtesy www.railwaysarchive.co.uk) the
investigating officer, Major JW Pringle states that the 'station is closed
all year, except for seven or eight occasions when it is opened for two or
three days at a time'. During these meetings staff were brought in from
various other local stations to work at Bromford Bridge. As the station was
used only in conjunction with race meetings it therefore never appeared in the
public timetables. The station officially closed on 28th June 1965 although it
is suggested that the station might have closed earlier as excursion leaflets
issued during April and May 1965, show Birmingham New Street and Snow Hill as
terminating points. The final race meeting was held on 21st June 1965.
Bromford Signal Box was closed when coloured aspect
signalling was introduced controlled by Saltley Power Box in late August 1969.
A Special
Notice was issued advertising the dates of closure or down grades of
the signal boxes across a wide area of the sub-region. Bromford Bridge was
closed as part of Stage II. This stated, 'Between Bromford Bridge, Kings
Heath and Bordesley South. Saturday 23rd August until Monday 25th August 1969
... the existing running line signals controlled by Bromford Bridge, Washwood
Heath Junction, Washwood Heath Siding No 2, Washwood Heath Siding No 1, Saltley
Sidings, Saltley Junction, Duddeston Road, Landor Street Junction, Bordesley
Junction, Camp Hill and Exchange Sidings will be taken away and the signalboxes
abolished. Multiple aspect signalling controlled from Saltley box will be
extended throughout the area. Washwood Heath Nos 3, 4 and 5 signal boxes will
become shunting frames'.
Views of the Station
Locomotives seen at or near Bromford Bridge station
Diesel Dawn
Ordnance Survey Maps and Accident Report
Paul Smith wrote, I came across your site today as I was
looking for any Bromford Tubes information and spotted the pictures of Bromford
Lane station and the captions beneath. In 1966 I was an apprentice at
Fort Dunlop just down the road
from Bromford Lane, and spent many a happy evening at the tube factory. The
attached article was written by me a few years ago for the society magazine to
which I belong, the West Lancashire Light Railway, as a matter of general
railway interest. You also may find it of interest.
This is a Standard Gauge story, but so what! Back in the
heady days of September 1966, just after the last time England's footie team
had won anything, I found myself in lodgings in the Erdington district of
Birmingham. I had recently left school, and had just started a four year
sandwich degree course in Mechanical Engineering. I was employed by Dunlop UK
Tyres Ltd, and my first session was to be five months in the Engineering
Apprentice training school at Fort Dunlop, which still exists, and can be seen
from the M6 on the left hand side about a mile south of spaghetti junction. At
that time, Dunlop's had an internal standard gauge railway system, and had at
least one Peckett 0-4-0ST and a similar loco of unknown origin operating the
system. One of the first things I spotted when wandering round the works, was a
short siding containing two derelict locomotives, another Peckett, and a
Barclay, both 0-4-0STs. A quiet word with the Plant Engineer and I was the
proud owner of the works plates off these two, which I still have, (Peckett
2046 of 1943 and Barclay 1604 of 1918), for the scrap price of brass. Yes, I
obtained them legally! The Peckett also had a smaller cast iron plate, the type
that I had never seen before, denoting that it was registered to run on the
GWR, No. 260. I was lucky, as these two were reduced to small chunks within a
couple of months, and carted off to be made into razor blades or some such.
My other railway interest at Dunlop's was the building of a
crude two cylinder Walschaerts valve gear mechanism (forward gear only) as a
joint project with two other apprentices. The drawings were scaled off a
drawing in an old driver’s handbook which my dad had, but it seemed to
work. We ran it on air and calculated the brake horsepower by using a brake
band and a spring balance on the flywheel; it came to just under 1HP, if I
remember right. I tried to build a gas fired boiler for it out of a piece of
four inch diameter copper tube, but this failed miserably. The mechanism,
however, lived on, and I saw it several years later inside a Perspex cover (to
avoid trapped fingers), and an on/off air control valve. (If any readers of
this article work at Fort Dunlop, I would be interested to hear if the model
survives).
Another railway job at Dunlop was making some small parts
for Tony Hills’ ex-Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry Hunslet ‘Sybil’, towards
the end of the session when supervision slackened off. Yes, I was doing
‘foreigners’ in my first year of employment! I had met Tony in
October 1966, at his then home at Woodbine Cottage on the Coventry road, near
to where the NEC is now. All he had then was Sybil and the De Winton. Anyway,
back to the story.
I had brought my bike down to Birmingham to get to work on,
and so after tea on fine evenings I used to cycle round the area to see what
was what in the way of gricing opportunities, although we didn't call it that
then. I ended up one day at Bromford Bridge, where Bromford Lane (the A4040
ring road) goes over the Birmingham-Derby main line. I was still
‘spotting’ at this time, but interest was waning as steam declined.
Several evenings were spent at Bromford Bridge, where there was a derelict
station platform, and after locking up my bike, I would wander along the main
line track side towards Birmingham, and climb over the fence into
Metro-Cammell's Washwood Heath works and have a look round. I was not stopped
once. Imagine trying to do that today.
Anyway, one evening I was stood on the platform back at the
bridge, and suddenly heard a commotion behind me. I had seen the interchange
sidings behind the platform fence, with bolster wagons sitting there full of
steel tubes, but thought nothing more of it. But now was evident the motive
power that shunted the sidings, in the shape of another ubiquitous Peckett
0-4-0ST, which had crept out from under the road bridge and promptly derailed
itself on a set of points. A quick reversal with full regulator and much
graunching and dust flying saw it back on the rails. The crew noticed my
interest, and it wasn't long before we were chatting, and then the inevitable
invitation to the footplate. For the next two or three months, you can guess
what I was doing after tea, in all weathers! The works was owned by Stewarts
and Lloyds, known locally as ‘Bromford Tubes’ and was their main tube
manufacturing plant in the midlands, producing, amongst other things, lampposts
of all shapes and sizes. The interchange sidings consisted of four or five
loops, fully floodlit for night working, as the steelworks was a 24-hour
operation. They and the works were shunted by the above mentioned Peckett, and
an elderly Avonside, both of which, sadly, I made no note of the
identification. The night shift crew of three made me most welcome, inviting me
into the weighbridge hut for the strongest mugs of tea I have ever had, and
lengthy discussions between shunts on the chances of Aston Villa beating
ManchesterSaturday's United. or Liverpool in next Saturday's match, while we
waited for the phone to ring advising us of the next shunt. The only name I
recall was one Bill Picket, an elderly Brummie with a grizzled face, not far
off retirement, and I used to gently take the Mickey about ‘Picket’s
Peckett’.
It wasn't long, however, before I was driving, firing,
coaling up from an ancient wooden wagon, learning to use the injectors, (Bill
called them ‘jiggers’), and keeping out of sight of Authority in the
shape of the night foreman. To be in control (sort of) of a few hundred tons of
bogie wagons with a small 0-4-0 and only a steam brake, is something else, I
can tell you. I would whistle cheekily at the main line locomotives thundering
past next to the sidings, getting waves (and other hand signals!) back from the
‘real’ drivers. We went into the various mills and heat treatment
departments, sorting the wagons as required, and then propelling them over the
weighbridge (controlled by colour light signals to enable each wagon to be
stopped and weighed), and out onto the interchange yard. They taught me how to
use a shunter's pole, for coupling and uncoupling three link couplings, but the
pear shaped centre link variety were the worst.
I was also introduced to Pole shunting. For the
uninitiated, this is a dodge to try and save time when the stock you want to
shunt is on an adjacent track, and you can't be bothered setting back and
coming up the right road, especially if it's a long way to the points. A stout
pole, more usually a straight log, (but definitely not a shunter's pole!), is
wedged between the corners of the buffer beams of the loco and wagon to be
shunted, at an angle dependant on the length of the pole, and the distance
between the tracks. The wagon is propelled forward in this fashion, but you
have to make sure the pole is always in compression, otherwise it will fall
down. I always stayed well clear when these antics were attempted, and it
inevitably ended in a pile of splinters, as the planks they used were totally
unsuitable for the job. Anyway, we had a few laughs.
The regular night shift loco was the Peckett, with the
Avonside day engine bedded down for the night in an adjacent siding. As it was
early evening whenever I went down to the works, there were always a few pounds
‘on the clock’ on the Avonside, as it were. One evening, the crew
decided that a particular shunt would be performed more quickly with a second
loco on the job. “You take the Avonside, Paul, and follow us down, buffer
up when we are clear, etc..etc..” I can't remember the rest of the
instruction, but any way it was quite dark when I got the whistle, and yours
truly followed down with the Avonside with maybe 40-50 pounds on the clock, to
buffer up to the required wagon. About thirty feet away from the wagons, on
went the steam brake – nothing! With such low pressure, the brake was
virtually useless, if it was any good in the first place, and not having any
time to grab the hand brake, we hit those wagons with a bang that must have
been heard a mile away. They shot off down the siding, further than they should
have, but fortunately came to no harm. I hadn't realised the reason behind the
lack of brake power at the time, and I don't think the crew did either. They
must have thought I was pretty useless after all they had taught me! The
Avonside was quickly and quietly put back to bed and we heard no more about
it.
All good things sadly come to an end, and when my course at
Dunlop's finished, I said my good-byes to Bill and his mates, promising to look
them up if I was ever in the area again. I did, four years later, but steam had
been replaced by a Rolls Royce Sentinel diesel by then, and a crew I didn't
recognize. The whole works has gone now, another casualty of the decline of
British manufacturing. Happy days.
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