Heritage Railway Magazine 256 - 05 July 2019 Edición anterior

NINE years afterNetwork Rail needlessly demolished three redundant
signalboxes to the chagrin of local conservationists and Solihull’s
thenMP, the powers that behave now woken up to the fact that the NorthWarwickshireLine is a major asset to the local economy just waiting to be switched on.

I lived near the Tyseley to Stratford-upon-Avon route
for much of my life, and before I moved into railway magazine editing in Lincolnshire, spent 10 happy years living within earshot of The LakesHalt.
Long used as the route of the‘Shakespeare Express’, the line somewhat miraculously evaded a post-Beeching attempt at total closure in1969 and then survived moves to close it south of Henley-in-Arden in
1984.

The northern most half in particular has become a thriving and essential commuter route for Birmingham. Not only is this line still double track throughout, it retains most of the original structures built by theGWR
for its opening in 1908–only a few years after that of the GreatCentral Railway’s LondonExtension. Serving a series o rural villages in beautiful unspoilt rolling Forest of Arden countryside, it has so much in common with rural routes lost forever in the swathe of Sixties closures.