Buildwas railway station was an isolated junction railway station on the

Wellington to Craven Arms Railway The Wellington to Craven Arms Railway was formed by a group of railway companies that eventually joined the Great Western Railway family, and connected Wellington, Shropshire and Shifnal, with Coalbrookdale, Buildwas, Much Wenlock and a junction ...

and

Severn Valley Railway The Severn Valley Railway is a standard gauge, standard-gauge heritage railway in Shropshire and Worcestershire, England. The single-track line runs from Bridgnorth to Kidderminster, calling at four intermediate stations and three request stop ...

. Opened on 1 February 1862. Although the station served both the Severn Valley Railway and

, it was an interchange station in open countryside with no passenger access except by rail. The station had three platforms, with two platforms at a lower level serving the Severn Valley Railway and one at a higher level serving the Wellington to Craven Arms Railway. At its peak, the station had a total of eleven staff, including the station master. Up to 1923 the area was controlled by two

signal box A signal is both the process and the result of transmission of data over some media accomplished by embedding some variation. Signals are important in multiple subject fields including signal processing, information theory and biology. In ...

es, the Station signal box controlling the station area and the Junction signal box controlling the junction between the Severn Valley line and the

double track A double-track railway usually involves running one track in each direction, compared to a single-track railway where trains in both directions share the same track. Overview In the earliest days of railways in the United Kingdom, most li ...

line across the Albert Edward Bridge towards Lightmoor Junction. These were replaced with a single signal box approximately midway between its predecessors in 1923. This box was subsequently enlarged to accommodate a frame containing 113 levers on 9 December 1931. The track layout was altered several times during its existence including the additional

CEGB The Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) was responsible for electricity generation, transmission and bulk sales in England and Wales from 1958 until privatisation of the electricity industry in the 1990s. It was established on 1 Janua ...

sidings opened in 1932. The planned closure of the northern end of the Severn Valley Line including Buildwas station pre-dated the

Beeching report Beeching is an English surname. It is either a derivative of the old English ''bece'', ''bæce'' "stream", hence "dweller by the stream" or of the old English ''bece'' "beech-tree" hence "dweller by the beech tree".''Oxford Dictionary of English Sur ...

. Following closure, the station was demolished to make way for Ironbridge B Power Station.

Coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

for the power station was offloaded close to the site of the original station until the power station stopped generating electricity in November 2015. The

Telford Steam Railway The Telford Steam Railway (TSR) is a heritage railway located at Horsehay, Telford in Shropshire, England, formed in 1976. The railway is operated by volunteers on Sundays and Bank holiday, Bank Holidays from Easter to the end of September, an ...

has aspirations to operate to this site, running over the Albert Edward Bridge to a new terminus on or close to the site of Buildwas station. Looking towards where Buildwas station was as the building can be seen in the past photo

Looking towards where Buildwas station was as the building can be seen in the past photo

Power Station Regeneration Project

The

Ironbridge Power station The Ironbridge power stations (also known as the Buildwas power stations) refers to two power stations that occupied a site on the banks of the River Severn at Buildwas in Shropshire, England. The Ironbridge B Power Station was operated by E.ON ...

closed in 2015 and the site was decommissioned by

Uniper Uniper SE is a German multinational energy company based in Düsseldorf, Germany, which has been a state-owned enterprise since late 2022. It is one of the biggest energy companies by revenue in Europe. The name of the company is a portmanteau o ...

until sold to the Harworth Group in June 2018. Regeneration of the site is set to include approximately 1000 new homes with the potential of the reopening of a train station on the site. Both

and

National Rail National Rail (NR) is the trading name licensed for use by the Rail Delivery Group, a group representing passenger train operating companies (TOCs) of England, Scotland, and Wales. The TOCs run the passenger services previously provided by ...

have expressed interest in the reintroduction of both heritage and passenger services to the site using the disused tracks, which currently links the power station to the

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

Shrewsbury Shrewsbury ( , ) is a market town and civil parish in Shropshire (district), Shropshire, England. It is sited on the River Severn, northwest of Wolverhampton, west of Telford, southeast of Wrexham and north of Hereford. At the 2021 United ...

line near

Telford Telford () is a town in the Telford and Wrekin borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in Shropshire, England. The wider borough covers the town, its suburbs and surrounding towns and villages. The town is close to the county's eastern b ...

. Harworth Group's planning proposal was initially rejected by

Shropshire Council Shropshire Council, known between 1980 and 2009 as Shropshire County Council and prior to 1980 as Salop County Council, is the Local government in England, local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Shropshire (district), Shropshire in t ...

in August 2021 over a number of issues including the level of guaranteed affordable housing, but was granted in September 2021 after amended proposals were submitted. In March 2020, a bid was made to the Restoring Your Railway Fund to get funds for a feasibility study into reinstating the line from Wolverhampton to Ironbridge. In March 2021 a bid was made to the Restoring Your Railway fund for money to strengthen and develop the case for plans to reinstate the former Ironbridge to Bridgnorth line. Both bids were unsuccessful. During 2021 part of the former railway line at the site was recommissioned and buildings, platform and other infrastructure features were installed to act as a marketing facility for the Revolution Very Light Rail (RVLR) Demonstrator vehicle announced in October 2021.

Power Station Regeneration Project

References

Further reading