Stafford Common Railway Station

Stafford Common railway station was a former British railway station on the outskirts of Stafford.

It was opened by the Stafford and Uttoxeter Railway in 1874 about seven years after the line opened. There was a single platform with a stationmaster's office and waiting room, but it included a goods yard and an engine shed. It became the headquarters of the line, to reduce dependence on the LNWR at Stafford station.

The Stafford and Uttoxeter Railway was purchased for £100,000 by the Great Northern Railway in July 1881 and the line subsequently passed into LNER ownership with Railway Grouping in 1923.

The original station was to the southwest of the Marston Road bridge (now Common Road). When the GNR doubled the line, the station was rebuilt on the other side of the bridge and bordering on Aston Terrace. It had two platforms and opened in 1882. The station buildings were on the bridge, timber throughout, with covered steps to the platforms where there were small shelters.

Passenger services finished in 1939, though it remained open as Stafford Common Air Ministry Sidings until 1952. Both of the station's platforms remain in situ, albeit under vegetation, and the line through the station has been converted into a public footpath.

From there the line climbed steeply at 1 in 70 before falling at 1 in 75 to Salt and Sandon.

Read more about Stafford Common Railway Station:  Route

Famous quotes containing the words stafford, common, railway and/or station:

    a doe, a recent killing;
    she had stiffened already, almost cold.
    I dragged her off she was large in the belly.
    —William Stafford (1914–1941)

    Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.
    —“Burial of the Dead,” first anthem, Book of Common Prayer (1662)

    Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.
    Angela Carter (1940–1992)

    Say first, of God above, or Man below,
    What can we reason, but from what we know?
    Of Man what see we, but his station here,
    From which to reason, or to which refer?
    Thro’ worlds unnumber’d tho’ the God be known,
    ‘Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

    Alexander Pope (1688–1744)