IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Great Western Street, WEDNESBURY, WS10 7LL

Actually just for rent and you're really old if you recognised the title as a song lyric! Stafford Street, Wednesbury.

Sant Nirankari Centre of the Sant Nirankari Mission, which teaches Neti Neti Meditation. https://www.sandwell.gov.uk/directory_record/3025/sant_nirankari_centre The mission, which is based in Delhi, claims to be neither a new religion nor a sect of any existing religion, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sant_Nirankari_Mission The Nirankari movement originated in Punjab among Sikhs. https://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Nirankari The Oneness Centre is next to the Great Western Street tram station.

This bridge - still there today but now infilled from the far side - carried Victoria Street over the line from Wednesbury Town to Darlaston. Originally a passenger service operated over the line, but this lasted only until 1887, after which date the line was used solely for freight traffic. It mostly served Patent Shaft steelworks which were near here. I worked for a while for a road haulage company which was based in the old goods yard and shed, and this bridge was used as our garage!

Opened in 1854 by the Great Western Railway on its line from Wolverhampton to Birmingham Snow Hill, this station closed in 1972. The formation was taken over by the Midland Metro who opened a tram stop called Wednesbury Great Western Street on the same site (although the station platforms had stretched further west). View north west towards Wednesbury Parkway & Wolverhampton. Part of the wall of the original station was still extant behind the shrubbery to the right, when this image was taken. See http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/w/wednesbury/index.shtml for more details.

The pantograph contacts the overhead wire which carries the electric current to power the tram. The pantograph, which is seen folded down here, has a graphite plate fastened on to it. It is this graphite plate that makes the actual contact with the wire. Because graphite is a soft material, it wears away without damaging the wire. Every so often, a new graphite plate is fitted.

The Great Western Street Stop is close to the Town Centre.

One of the new trams which have recently replaced the original fleet, supplied in 1994.

This is the old goods yard operated by the LNWR at Wednesbury. I have a 1975 picture of this yard in Ned Williams's book "Railways of the Black Country" which shows these two little diesel locos parked up in exactly the same place! After the yard closed to railway freight traffic, it was operated as a scrap yard by R A Giblin; this picture shows the site just before it was cleared.