Aston Railway Station - History

History

The route of the Grand Junction Railway, sweeping in a wide arc from Perry Barr through Aston to its terminus at Vauxhall, was dictated by the refusal of James Watt junior, the tenant of Aston Hall and son of the renowned engineer, to allow the railway to encroach upon Aston Park in the grounds of the Hall as planned in the Grand Junction's Act of 1833. The line was originally intended to enter Birmingham through a mile-long tunnel under the high ground on which the park is situated. In clause IV of a second Act of 1834, the Grand Junction was forbidden from

enter(ing) upon or into, take, injure or damage, for the purposes of this Act...any Part of a certain Park lying within the parish of Aston-juxta-Birmingham in the County of Warwick, and Handsworth in the County of Stafford, known by the name of Aston Park...

In 1846, the Grand Junction was one of several railways which were merged and incorporated into the London and North Western Railway (LNWR). Aston was opened by the LNWR in 1854 and became a junction in 1862 when a line was opened to Sutton Coldfield by the same railway.

In 1880 the LNWR opened a line from Aston to Stechford on the Birmingham to Coventry line which also gave access to the Metropolitan Carriage and Wagon Company's works (later Metro-Cammell) at Saltley, reached by a short branch from what the LNWR termed Washwood Heath Junction at the point where the Aston-Stechford line passed over the Midland Railway from Birmingham to Derby. The new line was also used for the Wolverhampton portions of some London expresses and also to provide through carriages between Euston and Walsall.

In the same year, the LNWR opened a line for freight traffic from Aston to Windsor Street goods depot. The latter line closed in 1980. The LNWR's Aston locomotive depot ("Aston Shed") was opened in 1883 in the area between the Aston to Birmingham and the Aston to Stechford lines and with an entrance on Long Acre, Nechells. It was closed in 1965, by then under British Railways ownership.

The station became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway during the Grouping of 1923. It then passed to the London Midland Region of British Railways on nationalisation in 1948.

When Sectorisation was introduced, the station was served by Regional Railways on behalf of the West Midlands PTE, for whom British Rail had been running the trains since the PTE's inception.

In 2011, London Midland, the current operators of the station, proposed a major reduction in the opening hours of the ticket office, with complete closure at weekends.