A couple of weeks ago I took a trip up to Worcestershire. On the way up the train went via Shrub Hill but on the way back Foregate St. Given how close they are and how run down the railways were in the 1960s, I couldn't help wondering how they both survived and why one of them wasn't closed, considering that one of the driving forces behind Beeching was ending duplication.
Simply look at a map of central Worcester - Foregate Street is right in the heart of the city centre. Shrub Hill isn't.
Trains between Birmingham and Great Malvern/Hereford incur a time penalty for going into Shrub Hill and reversing. Never mind that, as 30907 says, had you shut Foregate Street, trains would still have to run through it anyway.
At the same time, even without the restrictive 1970s track layout through Foregate Street, it only has two shortish platforms, perched up on top of a viaduct and nowhere for car parking or anywhere to drop off/pick up, except in a busy street. Any terminating/reversing services occupy one of the platforms while doing so, as there are no bay platforms or adjacent sidings.
There were no easy answers at Worcester and still aren't. As a result, trains between Worcester and London will, from December, have to make three stops in the space of four miles to serve the city.
The chairman of the Carlton Club (the original home of the
Conservative Party before the days of Conservative Central Office) was the MP for Worcester, Peter Walker.
At the time of the Beeching report, Peter Walker was a recently-elected backbench MP in a party that was removed from office in the 1964 general election, so hardly in a position of great influence. He served as chairman of the Carlton Club from, er, 1998 to 2004.
