CODSALL RAILWAY STATION
The railway station was a much busier place than it is now. About a hundred passengers would travel on the early morning trains. Opposite the present Booking Office, across the line, is a brick building which is all that is left of the original First and Second Class waiting rooms. The First Class room had nice arched windows and on a cold winter's day there would be a fire burning in the grate. Of course no-one used the Second Class room. There were two Passenger Entrances. The one on the village side said 'Passengers for Wellington and Shrewsbury please use the Egress on the other side'. I had just met the word egress in my Latin studies and was most amused to see it used in such an unusual setting.
Along the railway, towards the Histons Hill bridge, on the right, there were the offices of Alcock the coal merchant. The other coal merchant was Edwin Blurton. There was a little siding leading to a cattle ramp and cattle pens. The ramp was built up so that it was level with the floor of the truck when it moved slowly in. The truck was wooden with open sides and a roof over the top. The cattle were probably going to the market in Shrewsbury. If they were going on a long journey then they often stopped at places like Codsall to feed and water them. Of course Codsall was only a country village in those days.There was a good local train service. In about 1925 the morning London train stopped here too. There was a story that a local man who lived in Landsdowne Avenue, and who worked in Birmingham for the railway was responsible for the fact that it stopped in Codsall. The official explanation was that it approached Wolverhampton too quickly after the preceding local train. Anyway you could catch the 8.18 and arrive in Paddington at eleven o'clock in the morning. In the morning the platform was always full of people waiting for either the 7.22, the 8.5, the 8.18 or the 8.33.
At night the 7.10 came from Paddington as a fast train as far as Wolverhampton and from there it became the local train to Shrewsbury. The Day Excursion fare to London Paddington was 10 shillings and the journey took two-and-a-half hours. The 8.15 from Birmingham was always called the Zulu. It was well known as this, but I don't know why. For many years the station masters were all called Evans. There was old Mr Evans, then his son. After that there was a gap when a man called Swan was in charge and then another Evans, who was related to the two previous Evanses. They lived in the Station House. Their garden was down a slope towards Chapel Lane. It was very steep and had steps going down to it.
THE BUS SERVICE TO WOLVERHAMPTON
As the village started to expand the Wolverhampton Corporation wanted to bring buses into Codsall but before they could do that they had to widen Palmer's Cross, to enable
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