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I have been looking at this line on Google Maps and I noticed that the line passes the Royal Mail depot in Sutton Coldfield. I know from visiting that place several times that there is a disused railway station there. Is this included in the list of stations? If not, is there a reason why it isn't? Thanks - Erebus555 12:20, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
The line is surely open. The so-called re-opening would actually be about:
Living as I do in a property that overlooks part of this line, a recent bit of musing whilst looking out of the window led me to realise something I should have done many months ago, if not longer... the bridges around Walmley are "too wide"! The ones carrying Penns Lane, Eachelhurst Road and a couple of other minor routes have two double-track-width portals, vs others along the line (as shown by aerial views on Google Maps and similar) having only single portals. The line in each case runs only through the more northerly of the two. The aerial views, and indeed what I can see out of my window, suggest that at some point the ground was at least prepared for the laying of additional Permanent Way, although it either never happened, or it has been lifted a long time since.
This only seems to be the case for a certain distance either side of Penns station - by the time the line passes the nearby "water park" nature reserve to the southeast, or starts to pass through New Hall Valley to the northwest, it has definitely returned to being plain double-track - the embankments/cuttings, bridges etc are only wide enough for that and there's no sign it was ever different.
I guess, therefore, that given the line's mixed use, the station had some kind of passing loop arrangement - presumably the passenger trains travelled along the outermost rails (diverting two lines to the left from the double-track when heading north, or staying on the same line when heading south), and allowed freight trains to pass through the middle pair (diverted one left heading north, one right heading south)? Or even the freights stopped in the middle whilst faster, more easily stop-started passenger trains undertook them on the outside. The potential length of loop is long enough that a not-too-excessive freight train could fit within the diverge/merge points, and a local passenger service could even be overtaken by an express without having to particularly extend its waiting time at the station, but you couldn't realistically have one train in motion overtaking another.
That, or it's actually just ancient sidings, and they ended at buffers up-against the end of the platform in both cases.
Does anyone know what the true history of this piece of track would be in this regard? My only real recourse other than asking here is to go hunt out old maps (...or old low-altitude aerial photos?!) that _might_ show it (if they don't just show the tracks as a single thick black-and-white line that is). If nothing else, it'd make me a bit more grateful, next time some heavily loaded rake of aggregate wagons thunders past, literally making everything in the room shake even on the other side of the building, that they are at least not 10 metres closer still... 146.90.199.209 ( talk) 18:38, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: move to Sutton Park line. Primefac ( talk) 17:29, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
Sutton Park Line → Sutton Park line – Not a proper name; sources (few though they are) generally don't cap line in this one. Dicklyon ( talk) 05:19, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I have been looking at this line on Google Maps and I noticed that the line passes the Royal Mail depot in Sutton Coldfield. I know from visiting that place several times that there is a disused railway station there. Is this included in the list of stations? If not, is there a reason why it isn't? Thanks - Erebus555 12:20, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
The line is surely open. The so-called re-opening would actually be about:
Living as I do in a property that overlooks part of this line, a recent bit of musing whilst looking out of the window led me to realise something I should have done many months ago, if not longer... the bridges around Walmley are "too wide"! The ones carrying Penns Lane, Eachelhurst Road and a couple of other minor routes have two double-track-width portals, vs others along the line (as shown by aerial views on Google Maps and similar) having only single portals. The line in each case runs only through the more northerly of the two. The aerial views, and indeed what I can see out of my window, suggest that at some point the ground was at least prepared for the laying of additional Permanent Way, although it either never happened, or it has been lifted a long time since.
This only seems to be the case for a certain distance either side of Penns station - by the time the line passes the nearby "water park" nature reserve to the southeast, or starts to pass through New Hall Valley to the northwest, it has definitely returned to being plain double-track - the embankments/cuttings, bridges etc are only wide enough for that and there's no sign it was ever different.
I guess, therefore, that given the line's mixed use, the station had some kind of passing loop arrangement - presumably the passenger trains travelled along the outermost rails (diverting two lines to the left from the double-track when heading north, or staying on the same line when heading south), and allowed freight trains to pass through the middle pair (diverted one left heading north, one right heading south)? Or even the freights stopped in the middle whilst faster, more easily stop-started passenger trains undertook them on the outside. The potential length of loop is long enough that a not-too-excessive freight train could fit within the diverge/merge points, and a local passenger service could even be overtaken by an express without having to particularly extend its waiting time at the station, but you couldn't realistically have one train in motion overtaking another.
That, or it's actually just ancient sidings, and they ended at buffers up-against the end of the platform in both cases.
Does anyone know what the true history of this piece of track would be in this regard? My only real recourse other than asking here is to go hunt out old maps (...or old low-altitude aerial photos?!) that _might_ show it (if they don't just show the tracks as a single thick black-and-white line that is). If nothing else, it'd make me a bit more grateful, next time some heavily loaded rake of aggregate wagons thunders past, literally making everything in the room shake even on the other side of the building, that they are at least not 10 metres closer still... 146.90.199.209 ( talk) 18:38, 24 April 2013 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: move to Sutton Park line. Primefac ( talk) 17:29, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
Sutton Park Line → Sutton Park line – Not a proper name; sources (few though they are) generally don't cap line in this one. Dicklyon ( talk) 05:19, 4 March 2017 (UTC)