Bewdley North, Worcestershire — Severn Valley Railway

Bewdley is the middle station of the Severn Valley Railway, the 16-mile heritage line the SVR describes as "running through 16-miles of beautiful Worcestershire and Shropshire countryside" between Kidderminster and Bridgnorth. The railway itself opened in 1862 — "after a nine-year building project", originally part of the longer Shrewsbury to Hartlebury line — and the section that reaches Bewdley from the south is pure Great Western: "The Bewdley to Kidderminster section, or loop line, was constructed by the GWR, who ran many of the railways in the area, and opened in June 1878." British Railways closed the line to passengers in 1963; preservation began in a pub in 1965, and on 1 February 1966 BR agreed to sell the line for £25,000. Bewdley has three platforms and was once a double junction, for the Wyre Forest and Stourport branches, both now reduced to sidings. It is still worked mechanically by two signal boxes, Bewdley South and Bewdley North, whose construction the GWR board authorised in October 1877 to prepare for the Kidderminster loop; Bewdley North still has the 37-lever GWR 3-bar horizontal tappet frame that replaced its McKenzie and Holland frame on 25 June 1908, and it hands trains on to Arley and Highley by electric train token. The station itself keeps a heritage-covered wooden footbridge and an open-roofed cast-iron gents' urinal on platforms 2 and 3, relocated from Melrose in Scotland and reinstalled by volunteers. The camera is one of six the Severn Valley Railway launched with Railcam in April 2021 and publishes on its own webcams page. Railcam UK Ltd chose the positions and fitted the microphones; the railway hosts the streams on its own YouTube channel and shows them free of charge. The SVR's duty officers use them operationally — Senior Duty Officer Dave Brattan said the cameras "will significantly improve the way the duty officer will be able to manage the day-to-day running of the train service and improve how we deal with any delays". The view has survived worse than a quiet afternoon. On the evening of Tuesday 19 June 2007 a storm broke the line in 45 separate places between Bridgnorth and Northwood Halt, just north of here; repairs cost around £3.7m, funded by roughly £1.9m of grants, about £1.0m of insurance and a public appeal, and the whole railway reopened on 21 March 2008.