Based on a planned railway never built, Cradley Heath Model Railway Club rewrote history and created an unusual Midlands-based GWR terminus in ‘OO’ gauge, as GEORGE SHERIDAN explains. Photography, Jonathan Newton.
In 1905, the GWR (New Railway) Act granted the Great Western Railway permission to construct a branch line from Oxley, near Wolverhampton, to Bridgnorth on the Severn Valley Railway via Wombourne and Halfpenny Green. This also included an extension from Wombourne to join the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton main line at Kingswinford Junction, near Stourbridge.
However, this scheme was revised in 1913 which saw the line towards Bridgnorth postponed and the main construction project to focus on the line towards Stourbridge. In the event, the originally planned line never was built - but what if the contractors had started building the line before it was abandoned?
