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Bilston Central Station
1854 - 1972
The Bilston stations (West and Central) have caused me more problems than any other
so far in the production of this website. For Bilston Central the problem was that according to various sites
regarding the Midland Metro, the current Bilston Central Metro stop is built on the site of the old Bilston
Central station. My first visit to the site located the station a few hundred yards down the tracks from the current
Metro stop however, and I had to spend some time rechecking map coordinates with several OS editions and running them
through a current day coordinate map finder from which I concluded I was right in the first place and thus have had
to revisit the site. The picture above shows the former GWR station in 1966 (photo: A.Muckley) - the Midland Metro stop is
just through the bridge in the distance which carries what is now Hall Drive. However, in the present day, our old
friend the Black Country Route has crossed the line with a dual carriageway which with regard to the above image
bridges the trackbed roughly at the rear end of the DMU.
Above-left we are on the Black Country Route looking down the now truncated Railway
Drive in the opposite direction to the 1966 photograph - the station occupied all the land to the right
of the path. Above-right we are at the other end of Railway Drive with the station site ahead and to the left.
Above-left we are on the 'platform' at which the DMU once stood roughly around the area of the station building but
looking in the opposite direction towards Bradley. Above-right we are in the same spot as the previous image but looking in
the same direction as A.Muckley in 1966. The road bridge is for the Black Country Route and obscures the bridge seen in
the 1966 photograph (which can be seen on the page for Bilston Central Metro
stop). It appears that the area was cleared several years ago but no one quite knew what to do with the
station area so they just blocked-off the access road and left it to grow-over.