Cannock Mineral Railway

The Cannock Mineral Railway ran from a junction with the South Staffordshire Railway at Cannock though Cannock Chase to a junction with the London & North Western Company's Trent Valley Line at Rugeley. It was authorised by The Cannock Mineral Railway Act, 1855. The line was originally authorised in 1847 as the Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Worcester Junction Railway. This line was rather longer as it would have continued from Rugeley to join the North Staffordshire Railway close to Uttoxeter. However it proved to be too difficult to raise the capital for this project. That was the reason that the Directors went back to Parliament in 1855 to reform the Company as the Cannock Mineral with less ambitious and so a less costly plan.

Originally, the construction contract was let to Taylor R Stephenson who was a railway contractor. His civil engineer for the project was George Heald. In 1858 Heald died of tuberculosis at Rugeley; the person who reported the death was T.R. Stephenson. Losing the engineer for the project and with the line incomplete, Thomas Brassey was engaged to complete it. Thomas Brassey and George Heald had worked together many times before, notably on the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway and the Caledonian Railway. The heaviest engineering work on the Cannock Mineral Railway was at Rugeley where a stone viaduct was built over the River Trent and a long embankment constructed across the Trent Meadows.

As soon as the Board of Trade had approved the line for opening the line was leased to the London & North Western Railway Company per the agreement between the two companies. The first trains ran on 7 November 1859.

In 1869 the Company was taken over by the London & North Western Railway. Shares in the Cannock Mineral were exchanged for shares in the London & North Western.

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