[Source:Nick Catford] old2large.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).
Photo reproduced with permission from Britain From Above.
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