End of an era for the Black Country railways
VIRTUALLY all in-situ remains of Wolverhampton’s former Great Western Railway Stafford Road Works and Stafford Road locomotive shed have now been removed.
At Stafford Road Works, initial plans for closure in 1964 were announced (along with that of 11 other main workshops due to overcapacity) on September 19, 1962, when the works still had 366 staff, though at the time it was thought the Western Region were likely to continue its 1932-built repair shops as a diesel running repair and maintenance shop for the West Midlands, although this plan was shelved in 1963.
Closure
On August 22, 1963, it was announced that full closure of the works would be on June 1, 1964, with locomotive repair work to be gradually reduced and then close down completely.
The first 41 Stafford Road employees were given six weeks notice of redundancy in September 1963, and ‘payroll reduction’ began on Friday, October 18, 1963, with 100 of the remaining 200 jobs due to go by Christmas. In 1963 the works had overhauled 123 locomotives of 19 different classes- (and cut up three for scrap) reduced from 214 overhauled in 1962. By Saturday, January 4, 1964, only four locomotives were in the works for overhaul, and all future arrivals would be for unclassified repairs only.
On Tuesday, February 11, 1964, a small ceremony with TV cameras in attendance marked the departure of the last steam loco to be repaired at Stafford Road Works – 1918-built GWR 2-8-0 heavy freight loco number 2859. It had been the only occupant of the works for the previous two weeks. Photographs were taken with 17 or so of the older staff who had worked on it grouped in front of the loco after it was steamed in the works and run out into the yard. Having entered the works on December 16, 1963, for a light/casual repair, it received new coupling and connecting rods and a smokebox repaint, and it returned to its home shed of 86G Pontypool Road. It was condemned at Southall Shed just ten months later, in December 1964 and reached the well-known Barry scrapyard in South Wales in March 1965. It left the yard in late October 1987, initially for the Llangollen Railway following an unsuccessful attempt to buy it for £9,000 by Wolverhampton Council. In October 2017 its unrestored remains were purchased for restoration by Paul Walley in Cheshire.
Departure
Its departure from Stafford Road left 2-6-2 tank 4153 still in the test shed but no other locos in the works. Photos taken at the time show just 2859 being reassembled in the main building with a locomotive boiler in the background and another next to
it, possibly the spare for tank engine 4555 judging by the safety valve cover.
Just 130 employees remained at the works at the time to dismantle the equipment.
The works officially closed on Monday, June 1, 1964.
The 10½ acre Stafford Road Works site was sold ‘subject to contract’ on November 12, 1964.
The derelict 1932 repair shops at Stafford Road Works were demolished in April 1969, with demolition of the rest of the works underway by that February. The bottom ten of the former GWR Mechanics’ Institute steps at the entrance to the site remained until demolished around June 1988.
On November 21, 1985, Wolverhampton unveiled its £16,500 contribution to the national GWR 150 celebrations. Funded by West Midlands County Council, this was at the junction of Stafford Road and Gorsebrook Road, near the site of the works and consisted of reproduction station seats and a short section of track and pair of wheels (acquired from the then winding-down Swindon Works from a scrapped class 08 Diesel shunter). The area was refurbished, with new track laid, in early 2000, funded by City Challenge and British Rail.
Timetable
Stafford Road shed, shed code 84A, officially closed on Monday, September 9, 1963, at the end of the 1963 Summer timetable, but remained in use for a while as a signing on point for diesel drivers, presumably those for the ten diesel set local DMUS (mostly three-car suburban units) and eight-car ‘Birmingham Pullman’ 2000hp Blue Pullman unit kept on three of the eleven nearby Cannock Road carriage sidings which had refuelling facilities and an inspection pit for the diesels.the Blue Pullman ran daily from Wolverhampton Monday to Friday at 7am and back around 7.20pm from Monday, September 12, 1960, until Friday, March 3, 1967.
The Stafford Road footplate crews and its final steam loco allocation – pannier tank 3792, ten ‘Castles’ and BR Standard 2-6-0 78008 nominally transferred to Oxley Shed (84B) though two withdrawn engines remained stored at the closed shed for a few weeks.
At the same time short-lived experimental white-liveried BRCW/AEIbuilt 2,750hp, 114-ton diesel D0260 Lion, built at Smethwick in 1962, transferred from its nominal Stafford Road allocation to Finsbury Park, London on the Eastern Region. Known as the ‘White Lion’ It had been based intermittently at Stafford Road since mid-may 1962, initially running trials between Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury then running two return trips daily between Paddington and Wolverhampton, from Monday, May 14 until the following month, a total of 492 miles per day. It was one of just two main line diesels to be briefly allocated to Stafford Road shed, arriving there on a Birkenhead working on May 14, 1962, when it was photographed on the turntable by the coaling plant.
Failed
It failed on the 7.10 ex Paddington on May 17. It is likely that it was refuelled at the Cannock Road sidings and was certainly turned on the turntable adjacent to the coaling stage to maintain the forward position of its ‘A’ end cab, but probably didn’t enter the run-down and poorly maintained shed yard. Back at Stafford Road between March until September 1963, It was withdrawn around February 1964, and having run just 80,000 mile was broken up in Sheffield in 1965 when just three years old. In the early 2000s there was even an unsuccessful Yorkshire-based project to build a working replica of the loco.
Shortly afterwards, during preliminary training of crews on the new 2,700hp ‘Western’ diesel hydraulics for the winner timetable starting that September, the month-old D1004 Western Crusader was on loan from
83D Plymouth Laira shed to Stafford Road from June 11, 1962, and worked the 6.50am and 10.15am Wolverhampton to Stourbridge local trains returning at 7.55am and 11.50am respectively as well as the 4.53pm Wolverhampton-chester and return. From June 25 four of the class were allocated to the nearby Oxley Shed for Paddington-wolverhampton duties.
By Saturday, September 7, 1963, the last two engines in the shed yard were withdrawn – 5910 Park Hall and longwithdrawn ‘King’ 6012 King Edward VI standing smokebox to smokebox in the shed yard, which on that day contained at least six lines of mainly open wagons but no other locomotives. Withdrawn in September 1962, 6012 was the last to go, to Cox and Danks at Langley Green, Oldbury, for scrap, its departure hauled by a diesel shunter being covered by the Express and Star. It was cut up in October 1963.
Coaling
The coaling stage initially remained in use for a while at weekends to ease congestion at Oxley, with ‘Hall’ 6971 being coaled there on Saturday, September 14.
At the former Stafford Road shed site, most of the buildings were demolished and the site cleared around May-june 1966, with the inspection pits filled with rubble. The remains of 1,2 and 3 Sheds including the lower yard erecting shop survived until 1978, being demolished along with its roof support pillars actually cast at Stafford Road works from February 9 that year – they had been used for tyre storage since clearance of the rest of the site. Site was redeveloped as the Wulfrun Trading Estate. In 1985-6 the rest of the Stafford Road shed area was landscaped as part of Wolverhampton Council’s inner areas programme, with the remains of the coaling stage and ramp completely buried/removed by October 1985, leaving just the very battered remains of the turntable pit.