Seaside trip was a gas
94 YEARS have passed since our front page photograph. It shows a group of Black Country families all set for a day out at the seaside, standing expectantly, waiting for their train at Swan Village Station in West Bromwich.
The grown-ups were workers at the nearby Swan Village Gas Works and the day out had been organised as a special treat for the families – back in the days when workplaces engendered a real sense of community among their employees.
Their destination was the north Wales coast and the resort town of Rhyl.
Alas, we can name only one person among the dozens in the picture. That is the young lad holding a Box Brownie camera at the centre of the picture reproduced on this page. His name was Jack Plant and it was Jack who gave us this photograph many years ago.
It was Jack’s father, Tom Plant, who had organised the day out, arranging with the Great Western Railway to lay on a special train. However, it is rather unfair that because of his shift pattern, Tom was not able to go on the day out and had to go to work as normal.
Swan Village Gas Works were completed in 1829 and were then the largest in the country. Built by the Birmingham and Staffordshire Gas Light Company, they supplied coal gas, or “town gas” as it became commonly known, to Birmingham and several surrounding towns.
The works were originally supplied with coal via the Ridgacre Canal, a branch of the Wednesbury Old Canal and the Birmingham Canal Navigations. The opening of the GWR’S Birmingham Snow Hill to Wolverhampton Low Level Line in 1854 meant that much more coal could be easily delivered and output from the gas works greatly increased.
Opened
Swan Village Station opened in November 1854. It had two platforms, connected by a footbridge, with wooden buildings and access was via Bilhay Lane or a pedestrian entrance off Swan Lane.
The line was originally dual gauge, both Broad and Standard gauge, and in 1866 the station was expanded with the opening of a branch line connection to the London and North Western Railway’s South Staffordshire Line at Horseley Fields, which allowed trains to run through to Dudley. At the same time lines directly into the gas works
were built and in 1869 and further branch to the newly built Swan Village Canal Basin was opened. That same year saw the line converted solely to Standard gauge.
1953 saw an extension to the gas works opened and in the late ’50s the old wooden buildings of the station were replaced with new brick buildings.
The switch from coal gas to natural gas saw a dramatic fall in freight traffic through the station. The branch through to Dudley closed in 1964 and Swan Village Station was closed in 1972, along with
the main line. The line was later resurrected as the Midland Metro tramline but virtually all trace of the Swan Village Station was removed. However, the Black Lake tram stop was built on the other side of the Swan Lane level crossing from the old station site.
Very little of Swan Village Gas Works survives. The site of the old works was cleared to become an industrial estate, while the new works site is occupied by the National Grid. The distinctive gas holders, a landmark for generations, were removed in 2019.