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King Street - The Railway Age Begins
The First Train at Platform 2
Rail services commenced between Shrewsbury, Wellington and Stafford on the 1st June 1849, although delays in the construction of Oakengates tunnel ensured that no through traffic reached Wolverhampton until November, when two locomotives, 'Salopian' and 'Wrekin', pulled 50 carriages of passengers from Shrewsbury to celebrate the event. Ordinarily, the price of fares for paying passengers would have ensured that many townsfolk only had limited opportunities to use the new facilities. At one shilling and four pence, a second class ticket to Shrewsbury alone would have been beyond the means of many Wellingtonians, while a ticket from Shrewsbury to London cost the equivalent of an average weekly wage for many workers! Parliament had introduced laws that forced railway companies to provide at least one daily third class carriage in each direction, with fares costing no more than a penny a mile, but in practice these services were operated at such inconvenient times (in the middle of the night, in some cases!) that they were rendered all but useless to most potential passengers. However, a chain of events then unfolded that changed the situation in Shropshire dramatically.