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King Street - The Railway Age Begins
The Railway Age Begins
A line connecting Shrewsbury to the West Midlands via Wellington was first proposed in 1839 by the Grand Junction Railway, but it was not until 1846, after a number of aborted schemes, that an Act of Parliament was successfully acquired by the Shrewsbury and Birmingham (S&B) Railway Company to build a route through the town. At the same time, the Shropshire Union of Railways and canals (SURC) was also given permission to build a line from Shrewsbury to Stafford, which shared the same track as the S&B route before diverging at Wellington. As a consequence, both the town's station and the line itself would be operated by joint agreement between the two companies and the London North Western Railway (LNWR) which owned shares in the SURC, with all the parties formally agreeing to divide the traffic along the route.