Round Oak railway station

Round Oak
General information
Location	Brierley Hill Dudley England
Coordinates	52.4886°N 2.1206°W / 52.4886; -2.1206
Grid reference	SO919878
Other information
Status	Disused
History
Original company	Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway
Pre-grouping	Great Western Railway
Post-grouping	Great Western Railway
Key dates
1852	Opened[1]
1962	Closed[1]

Round Oak railway station was a station on the Oxford-Worcester-Wolverhampton Line serving the town of Brierley Hill in England.

History

It was opened in 1852 to serve the town of Brierley Hill. Two railways/routes served the station - originally the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway and the South Staffordshire Railway, which later became the Great Western Railway and London, Midland and Scottish Railway (through amalgamation of the London and North Western Railway) respectively.

Accident

Main article: Round Oak rail accident

In 1858 a coupling broke on an excursion train at the station and the rear portion rolled back down the gradient from Round Oak railway station towards Brettell Lane where it collided with another train (which was actually part of the same excursion, the train already having been safely divided once due to its extreme length!) 14 passengers were killed and 50 more injured.

Closure

British Railways closed the station pre-Beeching in 1962 and plans for a freight use were abandoned at the same time. Goods trains continue to pass the site for a few hundred yards northwards, to Round Oak Steel Terminal.

West Midlands Metro

A £1,100,000/15-year-long regeneration project will see the station become part of the local tram network with the line reopening between Walsall, Dudley Port railway station, Dudley railway station and the Merry Hill Shopping Centre for trams on one track and for freight on the other. The freighters would continue on past Brettell Lane railway station and on to the mainline at Stourbridge junction.^[2] The closed section of railway through Dudley was expected to re-open during the 2010s,^[3] as a combined Midland Metro tramway and a heavy rail line for goods trains.

It was originally set to re-open as a through route in 2012, to run alongside the second phase of the Midland Metro - though it is expected that trams will diverge from the line at around the location of Harts Hill. Due to originally open in a revised date of 2023, cost overruns have seen work put back with a currently planned opening date of 2025. However as of July 2023, no funding of the section between Brierley Hill and the Merry Hill Centre has been made available.

References

1. "Round Oak Station". Rail Around Birmingham and the West Midlands. Retrieved 31 March 2017.
2. Chadwick, Edward (25 November 2010). "Plans for 1.1 bn West Midlands Metro system unveiled". Birmingham Post. Archived from the original on 25 December 2010.
3. "Midland Metro - Wednesbury to Brierley Hill Timetable, Funding and Support". Midland Metro. Archived from the original on 17 May 2008.

Further reading

• Mitchell, Vic; Smith, Keith (2007). Stourbridge to Wolverhampton. West Sussex: Middleton Press. figs. 20-21. ISBN 9781906008161. OCLC 261924375.

Preceding station		Disused railways		Following station
Harts Hill		Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway Later Great Western Railway, then British Rail Oxford-Worcester-Wolverhampton (1852-1962)		Brierley Hill
Harts Hill		South Staffordshire Railway Later LNWR, then LMS, finally BR South Staffs Line Dudley-Stourbridge Junction section (1852-1962)		Brierley Hill