Stafford railway station

Stafford railway station is a major interchange railway station in Stafford, Staffordshire, England, and is the second busiest railway station in Staffordshire, after Stoke-on-Trent. The station serves the county town, as well as surrounding villages. The station lies on the junction of the Trent Valley line, the Birmingham Loop/Rugby–Birmingham–Stafford line, and the West Coast Main Line. Stafford station also formerly served the now defunct Stafford to Uttoxeter and Stafford to Shrewsbury lines. The current brutalist station building was built in 1962, and is the fourth station to have existed on this site. The interior of the station was refurbished in 2015, which allowed the station to have a new WHSmith store and an improved ticket office. The first station was built by the Grand Junction Railway and opened in July 1837. It soon became inadequate and was replaced by a second station in 1844. A third station was built in 1862, which was eventually replaced by the current concrete Brutalist building in 1962, built as part of the modernisation programme which saw the electrification of the West Coast Main Line. Lines originally built by the Stafford and Uttoxeter Railway and the Shropshire Union Railways and Canal Company (to Shrewsbury) also used the station. The Stafford to Uttoxeter line closed to passenger traffic in 1939, with the Shrewsbury line closing as part of the Beeching Axe in 1964. Following the rebuilding of the station between 1961 and 1962 by the architect William Robert Headley, Isabel, a narrow gauge engine built by local firm WG Bagnall, stood on a plinth on the opposite side of Station Road, at the junction of Railway Street, until it was removed in the mid-1980s. It is now on the Amerton Railway. Two accidents have happened at Stafford since 1990: On 4 August 1990, an out-of-service train heading to a depot in Birmingham crashed into the back of an express train bound for Penzance on platform 4 at Stafford station. The driver was killed and 36 people were injured.