121 – Chasewater Railway Museum Bits & Pieces
From Chasewater News December 1989 – 2
Brownhills Memories – P.Aldridge
Sidney Browne worked on the railways in the area foe nearly fifty years. Like many railway men he had many anecdotes recalling his long service. Sadly Sid died in 1985, but many of his tales are well-remembered by his grandson, Peter Aldridge, who now works on the railway at Chasewater. One of these tales is now recalled, and if it is not true, it ought to be!
In the 1950s Sid worked for British Railways at Brownhills Station in High Street. One morning in late summer a local resident by the name of Meacher arrived in his brand new Austin motor car. 
Pic by oakparkrunner -sorry, don’t know which model – here’s three to chose from
Wikipedia
Before catching his train Mr. Meacher entrusted his car keys to the Station Master. The train, an excursion to Blackpool, arrived hauled by a Bescot ‘super D’, and plodded off towards Lichfield.
Super D at Consall, Churnet Valley Railway, 2005 http://www.steampics.com/html/super_d.html
Later that morning some of the other station staff reported for work. They immediately took a shine to the new car parked in the station yard, and promptly purloined the ignition keys and drove off towards Cannock. Sid, being rather busy, remained at Brownhills.
The day wore on and the Austin did not re-appear. The evening came, still without any sign of the car or its occupants, and Sid began to get worried. What would he do if the owner came back and found his beloved car missing?
Sure enough at 11.30pm a grimy ‘super D’ wheezed up the long climb through Hammerwich, past Anglesey Sidings and into Brownhills. There was Mr. Meacher fast asleep. Carefully opening the carriage doors, Sid called out in a faint whisper “Brownhills….Brownhills” and then quietly sent the train on its way, with Mr. Meacher, fast asleep, still on board.
Half-an-hour later the phone rang….”Hello” came a voice “Is that Brownhills railway station? This is Mr. Meacher. I must have fallen asleep on the train and missed my stop”.
“Yes” replied Sid “I looked for you everywhere, I walked up and down the train calling ‘Brownhills’ as loud as I could”.
“Oh well” said Mr. Meacher “Never mind, I’ll get a taxi home from Walsall and collect my car tomorrow”.
“That’s alright; I’ll look after the car for you! Said Sid, and put down the phone.
At ten to two the Austin re-appeared, being pushed by some very hot and tired railwaymen. The car had run out of petrol near Milford Common, and having spent all their money on beer, they could not buy any petrol from a garage.
Barley Mow on the corner of Milford Common© Copyright David Bagshaw and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
Needless to say the joyriders were sent out early next morning so that Mr. Meacher would, hopefully, never know about his car’s unauthorised – not to mention illegal-day out!
I decided to walk along the Midland Railway trackbed to start with – ‘our line’ from the other side of the M6 Toll. This first pic is taken from the bridge over the motorway.
This bridge is where you first take the footpath along the trackbed, just over the motorway.
Nice to know that the trackbed was put to some good use. This pic was taken a few hundred yards from the previous one – I bet this was better than playing at Wembley when the kids were young – their very own goal-posts!
Talking about football, this was taken in between the A5 and the Chester Road and it is the pitch where Brownhills Scouts used to play – takes some believing!
Back to the trackbed, this is taken facing from the Chester Road back towards the A5.
There is still some brickwork left of the old Brownhills Midland Railway station in the undergrowth.
Walking along the Wyrley and Essington canal now, the photo looks back from High Bridge bridge. I had taken a bit of a short cut, which didn’t do me any good. I’d crossed the Chester Road, meaning to go down the Norton Branch trackbed but found another footpath before I reached it and took that instead. Just a path through trees, nice pool half-way along (which the dog fell in!), otherwise muddy and boring.
This photo was taken on the other side of the bridge and shows the area where the Norton Junction marshalling yard used to be. From here I crossed a field and made my way onto the LNWR Lichfield to Walsall trackbed, from which you can still make out the trackbed of the branch from Walsall Wood Colliery to the LNWR line. We have the train staff for this line in the Museum. This picture was taken by my good friend Godfrey Hucker and used with his permission (well, he would have given it if I’d asked him!!)
From here I walked along the trackbed towards Brownhills.
A lone signal post is all that’s left and a little further along, the trackbed gets much narrower. If you look closely at our Ellie you will see that she looks as though she has got grey wellies on. It was foul smelling clay-type mud – if the weather had got much warmer I would probably had to chip it off!
Back on to the Wyrley and Essington canal now, looking through the LNWR railway bridge to the Pelsall Road bridge beyond.
I came off the canal in Brownhills at the new bridge and walked across the parade towards Chasewater. I took this photo to illustrate my point from the first walk, about the lack of light and grass under the trees – it uses to be just grass and very pleasant.
Back to the entrance to Chasewater Country Park and a chance for Ellie to have a paddle to get rid of the mud – not to mention a well-earned drink!
Nearly back at the railway, and as you can see, the mud has been washed off and she has company – she ignored them to start with but had to say a quick ‘hello’ eventually. They were completely unimpressed and it was their turn to ignore her!!
I parked at Chasewater, by the Innovation Centre, instead of at the Railway – makes a change – and my trusty hound and myself went back over the bridge and turned left on to the public footpath by the old trotting track.
The picture shows what’s left of the back straight. We went over to cross the A5 by the White Horse, and then on to the common.
This pic shows the common not far off the A5. When we were kids, this area was long, tufty grass with lots of small pools in and around – almost impossible to walk across – so a great deal of work has been done to get the ground up to this standard.
This is where the Brownhills St. James football team first started playing. This is somewhere else where a lot of work has been done. We never had a surface to play on anything like this – talk about jealous!! Passing through the gate and into the park we came to another pitch we used to play on.
In fact, we were the first team to use it, the land the pitch is on was also reclaimed from long, tufty grass – you’d never believe it now. The only used to be a triangular path round the park leading from the entrance to some swings near the far gate, then across and along the fence by the cricket pitch to the ride called the ‘Boat’, then back to the entrance and the ‘Giant Stride’ and the ‘Witches Hat’.
Again, when we were kids, we used to have a kick-about along this area. If I remember correctly, there was a well spaced row of trees on either side of the parade but the grass area was just that – open grass. Now there doesn’t seem to be any light along there, the grass struggles to grow and when the leaves fall it becomes something of a mess (just my opinion but I much preferred the open space).
Through Brownhills next, past the ‘Miner’ down the High Street and up Church Hill. Through the Church Yard and down Vicarage Road to Ogley Road. Turned left and went towards Newtown Bridge, getting on the canal side to walk back to Chasewater (I’ve got used to the name now, but when thinking back to Sunday afternoons of our youth, we still went for a walk ‘over the pool’ – a reference to the old name of ‘Norton Pool’).
Walking along the tow-path, it’s nice to see that some of the residents on the far bank have made a very neat job of running their gardens down to the canal-side.
Just putting my railway head on for a while, on the other side of this bridge, the railway and canal came together. It seems a shame that they both couldn’t have passed under the M6 Toll together, too. That bridge looks very wide just for a canal!
That’s the direction the railway used to take. A level crossing across the road and on to Anglesey Sidings. The next picture faces the other direction.
The track used to be here and a building which housed the old stables from way back. There’s plenty of room for a small station building and a run around loop, if only we could get there!
The old track bed is still there for a lot of the way, but as you can see in top right of this photo, the road runs on some of it before running down to the island at the access to the M6 Toll. Shame. Not far to go to Chasewater now, so back along the canal. passing what is left of the loading gantry and the overflow from Chasewater.
If the canal also gets full to overflowing, the water can run through the grating at the front of the picture and on to the low lying ground behind. Towards the basin and the start of the canal – where the water comes in from the reservoir.
It would be nice to think that, sometime in the future, if the Lichfield and Hatherton Canals Trust succeed in reopening the canal as far as Lichfield, and we at Chasewater Railway, should succeed in reaching the wharf, the basin would again be a hive of activity, this time for tourists. Well, we can but dream!
