[Source:Nick Catford]
Cannock Station Gallery 1: 1920s - August 1963
 A deliberately posed photograph looking north, date unknown but probably around 1920 and no later. Most if not all the men present were railway staff, with the man standing between the rails on the right wearing an apron. He would have been a carrier (driver of a horse-drawn road cart) or in some other way involved with railway horses. The signal box carries a rather diminutive 'Cannock Station' nameboard, the 'Station' suffix implying more than one 'box but in fact this was the only one at Cannock. The siding seen branching off at bottom right served, but did not enter, Cannock Gasworks located immediately east of the station. The locomotive appears to be a LNWR 'Cauliflower' or, more properly, '18 inch goods' which was a reference to cylinder diameter. The 'Cauliflower' nickname came about through the LNWR Coat of Arms which was originally applied to the centre splashers resembling, from a distance, a cauliflower.
Photo from John Mann collection  
1884 1:2,500 OS map shows the layout of the station and goods yard after the line was extended to Rugeley. The gas works is seen to the east of the station but there was no siding serving it at this time. A crane is shown but its position in the goods yard is unclear. The stationmaster's house is seen at the entrance to the station immediately below 1968.
1918 1:2,500 OS map. There have been a few changes, the siding running though the goods shed now has a turnplate at the end. The signal box is now identified (SB). Three buildings have now appeared on the east side of the up platform shelter. A siding serving the gas works has now been provided to the east of the station.
 1957 1:2,500 OS map. The siding running through the goods shed has lost its loop and turnplate and both sidings have been slightly extended. The correct position of the yard crane is for the first time identified ‘Cr’ between two sidings.
old2.jpg)
A view from aloft taken in 1938. The railway runs south to north, bottom left to top right. The rather cramped goods yard is visible left of centre with its shed. The building at the entrance to the yard looks like a weigh office but looking at the maps above the weighbridge was adjacent to the goods shed. In the station a rake of open wagons, some empty and some partially loaded, sit at the southbound platform with no locomotive attached. At the north end the wagons are sitting partly on the crossover between Up and Down platform roads. A locomotive is present in the goods yard however, so one would assume the wagons had been left in the station while shunting in the goods yard was ongoing. One might muse over why the wagons were not left in the centre road, the probable answer being point and signal interlocking not permitting vehicles to stand on the trap point in the centre road. The stationmaster's house can be seen to the left of the road bridge while the house to the right of the bridge was probably for the manager of the gasworks. Today these two houses have ceased to exist. In the siding for the gasworks stands a rake of coal wagons and a reasonable idea can be gleaned of how coal was unloaded directly into the stockpile. All gasworks maintained a stockpile to ensure continuity of gas production in the event of interruption to the coal supply. Cannock gasworks had vertical retorts, as did all but the very smallest of works, and the retort house is the tall, slender structure in more or less the centre of the photograph. It was in the retorts that 'town gas' was produced, by baking coal in an oxygen free environment. What remained was coke along with a number of other by-products of which some were quite nasty substances. Cannock gasworks was originally of the Cannock, Hednesford & District Gas Co. and was to finish up under the auspices of the West Midlands Gas Board. Gas production at the site ceased in about 1959. Thereafter the gasometers were used to store and pressurise gas piped from elsewhere. The last surviving gasometer at Cannock, that closest to the bottom of the photograph, disappeared circa 1980. The site of the gasworks is now the station car park. The buildings towards top right were at various times a brewery and then a sawmill. Some wagons can be seen on the siding serving the sawmill. There was once also an ironworks, situated further south and on the north side of Lichfield Road (that which passes beneath the railway). Click here for a larger version
Photo reproduced with permission from Britain From Above 
Facing north in 1950, before the platform canopy on the left was replaced. Of interest is that the original running-in board has been replaced by a BR 'totem' style device, on the right, which was intended as temporary. There was another on the northbound platform. These 'poster totems' as they were known was printed and pasted onto an advertisement board. They were later replaced by conventional LMR totems.. At this time the station had an odd mix of oil lighting beneath the canopies and gas lighting on the open sections of platform.
Photo by D Thompson  Facing north, towards Rugeley in about 1952. As is evident, the centre road was used as a siding. It was double-ended, in other words formed a loop and contained trap points which are here out of view behind and left of the camera. Note that the northbound platform canopy has been replaced. The second temporary 'totem' running-in board can be seen on the left. The origin of the 'totem' name is a mystery and it seems to have been coined when the design was devised shortly after Nationalisation. In due course the station would regain more conventional running-in boards as well as standard, if there ever was such a thing, totem nameplates. Photo from John Mann collection old7.jpg) In May 1963 a four-car diesel multiple-unit (DMU) arrives with a northbound service with, apparently, just one passenger waiting and what looks like a staff member casually leaning against the far end of the building. Obviously there was no great surge of passengers and nor was one expected. More standard types of running-in board had by now been provided and a conventional style of 'totem' nameplate can be seen mounted on the wall, far right. We have a good view of the trap point in the centre road and it appears to be fitted with a point indicator. The design of the trap point is a little unusual in that it looks to be intended to prevent any derailed vehicle from fouling the southbound platform road. If so, quite how effective this would have been in practice is open to question. The DMU is formed of a pair of two-car Park Royal units which became Class 103. Despite these units being universally referred to as 'Park Royals', the company which was awarded the contract, they were actually built by Crossley Motors of Stockport. The reason was that Crossley Motors and Park Royal Vehicles had, along with others, become part of the AEC empire. Only twenty Park Royal DMU sets were built which, as time was to show, was perhaps just as well because by the late 1960s they were beginning to show signs of bodywork problems. The units were quite widely dispersed and are perhaps most familiar from North Wales, what is now the West Midlands and to a lesser degree the West Country. Watford shed, at the southern end of the West Coast Main Line also had two or three which are best known for working the Harrow - Belmont shuttle. Nevertheless, for all their faults the final units in passenger service lasted until 1983. Several cars entered preservation but of these only three, possible two, now survive.
Photo by Peter Shoesmith old8.jpg)
Looking due south across the station in August 1963 with, it would appear, a train due at the Down platform. This photograph provides an interesting comparison with that taken from a similar viewpoint after closure. It is sometimes assumed main station buildings were situated on Up platforms but this was not the case. Main buildings were generally situated on the side of a station closest to the village, town or city centre and this was the case at Cannock. Passenger movement to and from the Up platform was via the main building and the barrow crossing located at the south end of the platforms, near the signal box.
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by G C Lewthwaite
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Cannock station was provided with two facing platforms with a third line between the running lines that was used as a siding and was in the form of a loop with trap points. The main station building was on the down (northbound) side where there was a short approach road from Mill Street. The rectangular building was of brick construction with a hipped slate roof and a hipped canopy with seven cast iron supports stretching the full length of the building. In the early 1950s, this canopy was replaced by a simpler shorter sloping canopy without the need for any supporting columns. The up platform had a timber weather boarded waiting room with a hipped canopy and three timber buildings behind it; the only access was using a barrow crossing at the end of the platform. A signal box was provided at the south end of the down platform. A stationmaster's house stood on the east side of the station approach road.
Cannock station was reopened on 10 April 1989. There were two new platforms, the up platform being slightly west of the original as there are now two lines instead of the original three. Both platforms were provided with a waiting shelter. A remnant of the original up platform survives at the north end of the new platform.
In 1850 the entire company's operation was leased to a private individual in London, chief engineer for the SSR, John Robinson McClean, for a period of 21 years, the first private individual to be the sole owner of a railway. His lease was successful, but the London and North Western Railway wanted control of the network for its own strategic purposes, and it manoeuvred to get the SSR shareholders to transfer the lease to the LNWR from 1 February 1861. Under Section 77 of London and North Western Railway (New Works and Additional Powers) Act 15 July 1867, LNWR were within 12 months of passing an act to issue shares or stock of their company in substitution for shares or stock of South Staffordshire Railway Company, and upon such issue, under Section 79, South Staffordshire Railway Company was to be dissolved and vested absolutely in London and North Western Railway Company. It is probable that the first trains were operated by the LNWR using their own rolling stock.
A prospective railway company called the Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire Junction Railway had tried to get parliamentary authority to build from Uttoxeter to Dudley, connecting Manchester in to its network as well by means of running powers. It had been rebuffed, but in the 1847 session a more modest scheme was authorised by the Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire Junction Railway Act 1847 from the North Staffordshire Railway at Uttoxeter to Cannock, making an end-on connection with the (proposed) SSR line there. Several years passed without much progress, largely due to failure to generate share subscriptions, and attempts to bring one of the large railway companies on board as a financial sponsor were also fruitless.
A colliery line (Norton branch) serving Cannock & Leacroft Colliery was opened on 1 February 1858 from Norton Junction on the SSR's Lichfield line to Norton Crossing Junction. A continuation of this branch to East Cannock Junction on the Walsall to Rugeley line, just north of Cannock station, opened on 25 April 1879 forming a through route.
There was a nationwide wave of withdrawal of unremunerative passenger services during the 1960s. The former Western Region services from Birmingham Snow Hill to Dudley were withdrawn on 15 June 1964, and the Walsall to Dudley line closed to passengers on 6 July 1964. The following year a large-scale passenger closure took place on 18 January 1965: from Walsall to Wichnor Junction via Lichfield; from Walsall to Water Orton via Sutton Park; from Walsall to Wolverhampton via Pleck; and Walsall to Rugeley which included Cannock station.
The line north of Hednesford had been reclassified operationally as a goods line, and re-equipping it for passenger operation was stated to be excessively costly. However in November 1993 it was announced that the line would be reopened to passengers, but then the necessary work was greatly delayed and the services did not begin until March 1997. In 2014 it was announced that the line between Walsall and Rugeley was to be electrified, with a completion date of 2017.
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