South Staffordshire Line

The South Staffordshire line is a railway line that once connected Lichfield in Staffordshire, England with Dudley, formerly in Worcestershire. However, it joined the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway's (OW&WR) line just north of Dudley Station, where it, in essence, continued to Stourbridge, in Worcestershire (Dudley and Stourbridge were later to become part of the West Midlands conurbation). The section south of Round Oak remains open for freight workings only. On 12 July 2013, in a suspected terrorist attack, a bomb was believed to have been detonated on the disused section of the line in Tipton, at Binfield Street, near Sedgley Road.

The line officially began at Wychnor Junction, north of Lichfield, and ran through what is now Lichfield Trent Valley. Trains then continued through to Lichfield City itself. From there, a plethora of stations along the route were served. The line continued through to Walsall and a low-level station at Dudley Port. This was technically the terminus of the line but it was connected to the OW&WR's line which ran through Dudley itself from 1860. It went on to serve other stations at the south-western extremity of the Black Country at Stourbridge Junction.

Just before Stourbridge, the OW&WR crossed (and continues to cross) the massive Stambermill Viaduct which is one of the local area's most significant landmarks. It also crossed Parkhead Viaduct just south of Dudley and for several hundred yards passed through Dudley Railway Tunnel.

The line was opened on 1 May 1850. This was soon to become part of the London and North Western Railway as far as Dudley station, which, in 1860, was opened as a joint venture with the OW&WR itself later to become amalgamated into the Great Western Railway. This station was built ten years after the original connection, however, and trains on the South Staffordshire line ran from Walsall to Stourbridge fairly early on. Dudley provided a useful change point for passengers from Walsall and Stourbridge to Wolverhampton, though this wasn't utilised to quite the effect the OW&WR had hoped, due to the similar connection at Dudley Port by the SSR with the Stour Valley Line – which today forms part of the West Midlands section of the West Coast Main Line.

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