Harborne Walkway
| Harborne Branch Line | |
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The Harborne Railway was a short railway branch line that connected the city centre of Birmingham, England with the outlying suburb of Harborne.
The line was first authorised in 1866, and was a proposed single line to connect Soho on the Great Western Railway Birmingham to Wolverhampton route with Lapal, on a proposed line from Halesowen to Bromsgrove, with a connection to the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) near Monument Lane. However, objections from landowners prevented most of the line from being built, and in the end only 2 1⁄2 miles (4.0 km) built, from Monument Lane to Harborne. It took five years to build, but finally opened to passengers on the 10 August 1874 and goods on the first of October.
There were three intermediate stations, at Icknield Port Road, Rotton Park Road and Hagley Road. The section immediately after the main line crossed the Birmingham Main Line canal, which ran in a deep cutting. Today, only the bridge pillars remain of the steel girder bridge. The line climbed at 1 in 66 to Hagley Rd, with a break of 1 in 224 through Rotton Park Rd station, and then descended to Harborne at 1 in 66, crossing the Chad Valley on a high bank.
The line was independently owned, but was operated from the start by the LNWR, who took 50% of the gross receipts from both passenger and freight traffic. It was a single line throughout, worked by the "one engine in steam" system, with six trains each way on weekdays, taking 25 minutes from Birmingham. "Staff and ticket" working began in 1882, superseded by "electric token" working in 1892. With the continuing growth in traffic, a passing loop was installed at Rotton Park Road in 1903.
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