THE OXFORD, WORCESTER, AND WOLVERHAMPTON RAILWAY STATION AT DUDLEY.
To the Editor of the Dudley and Midland Counties Express.
Sir,—Scarcely three months have rolled over our heads, since the leading officials of the above line did penance on the stool of public opinion, erected at a town’s meeting held in the Old Town Hall, Dudley, “to consider the disgraceful state of the Railway Station in Dudley, and the want of railway accommodation afforded to the town generally.”
On that occasion a considerable amount of special pleading was resorted to by the parties complained of; and much stress was placed upon their intentions for the future, promising to mend their ways (and the station also) if the indulgent public would only continue to pay their money, take their trips, and cease grumbling.
Such, in June last, was the promise given; now, Mr. Editor, let us see how the performance has tallied with that pledge of amendment. Report, with her thousand tongues, runs rife in our busy streets and gossiping saloons, saying that the good people located at Queen’s Cross, in the densely populated streets surrounding the Gas Works, and the industrious community at Netherton, are to have their station accommodation increased (when they wish to go to Stourbridge, &c.) like the Yankee fashion of progressing backwards; for it is said, that the Netherton station is doomed to be blotted out of the fair features of this eccentric line, by being knocked off the line for passenger traffic altogether. If such be correct, this false economising system seems fitted to make those inhabitants pay an extra fare, and stretch their aged or rheumatic limbs, by walking to and from their domiciles down to the Dudley station; besides giving the timorous the benefit of an unnecessary fright in our waterproof tunnel.
Doubtless, Mr. Editor, you can furnish the public with some official contradiction to this rumour; otherwise we must be up and doing, ere our contested rights (hardly fought for, and fairly won in 1845-6) are wrested from our hands by some mistaken system of cheeseparing and illiberality.
If the aged, lame, infirm, or timid railway traveller casts his anxious eye towards the Dudley station, expecting to find any improvement effected at that delightful arena of decorum and propriety, (more especially on a wet Saturday night), he will be most woefully deceived. For can it be supposed, Mr. Editor, that a railway company, already prolific in blunders, misunderstandings, and broken promises, could be so egregiously foolish as recently to remove their ticket office at the Dudley Station from its legitimate ground-floor platform to the extreme entrance of that highly artistic wooden tunnel, spanning its unwieldy proportions across the domain of two important railway companies!! To passengers starting from Dudley the boon is offered, we presume, as being highly convenient to take your ticket before you take your choice of standing upon that spacious gallery. In warm weather it may be thought pleasant to cool one’s heels in a mighty torrent of wind and dust, usually generated in that elegant ladies’ waiting room (?); but pray, Mr. Editor, are our shivering limbs to be subjected to the piercing winds of a severe winter’s night,—sans fire, sans doors, sans seats—yea, sans everything that ought to be afforded to an important town like Dudley?
This, truly, may suit the economy of the O. W. and W. R. Co., but surely the sensible, well-thinking, and comfort-loving people of Dudley will not tamely submit to this additional indignity. To the casual traveller (more especially the infirm, aged, and children) who may be so unlucky as to require rebooking from an in-coming train on the South Stafford line, the amount of annoyance and physical exertion cannot fail to be intolerable. Fancy, sir, some poor aged traveller, or a lady with children (not an O. W. and W. Railway Director) arriving by a late train on the South Stafford line, and having to hobble or rush up and down two pairs of slippery stairs, then along that precious gangway, for another ticket, occupying some considerable time at the present spacious ticket office, ere they can arrive at the object of their solicitude, the waiting train below.
Such scenes would appear decidedly improbable in this our day of tidy railway accommodation; but, Mr. Editor, if you or the proper officials connected with the line are at all doubtful of the truthfulness of the same, pray let me induce both to witness (on any coming dark or rainy Thursday or Saturday evening) the arrival of a South Stafford train, laden with its living freight of young and old, halt and timid—and I venture to predict that you will think that my remonstrance and call to duty are not overcharged, but that we live in times when the honour, integrity, and liberality of a railway company can be summoned legitimately to the bar of public judgment for neglect of duty and broken promises, viz., for committing a positive and palpable deviation—thereby breaking faith with the public—from the offered accommodation intended to be secured to the inhabitants of Dudley when its promoters originally solicited that public to give it their preference to a competing line in 1844-5-6.
C. F. G. CLARK.
Dudley, Oct. 27, 1857.
[In our first number we drew attention to the disgraceful state of the station accommodation of this town. Unless strong measures are adopted we think little will be done.]
A long-suffering period of twenty-two years passed over our heads before the London and North Western Railway Company could be prevailed upon to erect a decent Railway Station for Dudley.