Stambermill Viaduct

The viaduct was built for the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway (OWW). The OWW was under the influence of the Great Western Railway (GWR) and so commissioned the GWR's chief engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, to survey the route for its line. Brunel designed three similar viaducts within the space of eight miles (12 kilometres) between Kidderminster and Stourbridge—the Hoo Brook Viaduct, shortly after leaving Kidderminster, Blakedown Viaduct, and Stambermill Viaduct. Brunel supervised the early stages of the construction of the line, including the three viaducts, and it opened from 1852.^[1]

To save costs, Brunel designed all three viaducts as timber structures. The engineer famously used timber on his Cornwall Railway viaducts but contemporary photographs show that the OWW viaducts had little else in common with those in Cornwall. All three were replaced with Staffordshire blue brick arch structures in the 1880s—Stambermill between 1881 and 1882.^[1]

Stambermill Viaduct carries the line across the River Stour, and it carried passenger trains until 1964. It is still in use for goods trains, as the railway continues on to the Round Oak Steel Terminal at Brierley Hill (trains have not travelled beyond that point since 1993). Freight trains can still be seen passing over the viaduct.

A reopening of the South Staffordshire Line between Dudley and Walsall, is expected to be ready by 2023, with West Midlands Metro trams sharing the line with freight trains. A business plan for the reopening of the line was submitted to Network Rail in March 2011.^[2] In January 2012, plans surfaced to run a passenger service between Stourbridge Junction and Brierley Hill, with stations being re-opened along the route, including Brierley Hill. The service would be operated by railcars built by Parry People Movers, who built the Class 139 units which run the Stourbridge Town service.^[3]

The viaduct was subject to six weeks of maintenance and improvement works in September 2013.^[4]