Aston railway station serves the districts of Aston and Nechells in Birmingham, England. The passenger entrance is on Lichfield Road. The station is on the Cross-City Line and the Chase Line. It is one of two local stations for Aston Villa Football Club (the other being Witton) and near to the Aston Expressway and to Gravelly Hill Interchange (Spaghetti Junction).
The station is situated adjacent to and above the Lichfield Road (A5127), crossed by a bridge as the railway line, part of the original Grand Junction Railway, opened in 1837, is on an embankment through what was "pastoral parkland" at the time of its construction. The line also crosses the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal, just south of Lichfield Road, on a bridge which is all that remains of a longer viaduct of ten arches, described as "one of the most beautiful structures on the line of the Grand Junction".
The section of the viaduct crossing Lichfield Road, immediately south of the station, was replaced by a steel bridge in 1906.
History
The route of the Grand Junction Railway, sweeping in a wide arc from Perry Barr through Aston to its terminus at Vauxhall, was dictated by the refusal of James Watt the younger, the tenant of Aston Hall, to allow the railway to encroach upon Aston Park in the grounds of the Hall as planned in the Grand Junction's Act of 1833. The line was originally intended to enter Birmingham through a mile-long tunnel under the high ground on which the park is situated. In clause IV of a second Act of 1834, the Grand Junction was forbidden from
enter(ing) upon or into, take, injure or damage, for the purposes of this Act...any Part of a certain Park lying within the parish of Aston-juxta-Birmingham in the County of Warwick, and Handsworth in the County of Stafford, known by the name of Aston Park...
In 1846, the Grand Junction was one of several railways which were merged and incorporated into the London and North Western Railway (LNWR). Aston was opened by the LNWR in 1854 and became a junction in 1862 when a line was opened to by the same railway.
In 1880 the LNWR opened a line from Aston to on the Birmingham to line which also gave access to the Metropolitan Carriage and Wagon Company's works (later Metro-Cammell) at Saltley, reached by a short private siding, known in LMS days as the Metropolitan Siding, opened in 1904, from what the LNWR termed Washwood Heath Junction at the point where the Aston-Stechford line passed over the Midland Railway from Birmingham to Derby. The Metropolitan Siding descended on an incline from Washwood Heath Junction and was the subject of detailed instructions on the working of trains and prevention of what the instructions term "breakaway" wagons on the siding. The new line was also used for the Wolverhampton portions of some London expresses and also to provide through carriages between Euston and Walsall. In May 2022 the arched viaduct carrying the Aston-Stechford line was replaced with a new steel bridge, 92 metres long with space below for the future HS2 tracks to run parallel to the Birmingham-Derby line.
The first station at Aston was replaced by a new building during the construction of the Stechford line with a booking office level with Lichfield Road. Stairs and hydraulic lifts for goods traffic gave access to each of the two platforms.
Also in 1880, the LNWR opened a line for freight traffic from Aston to Windsor Street goods depot. The latter line closed in 1980. The LNWR's Aston locomotive depot ("Aston Shed") was opened in 1883 in the area between the Aston to Birmingham and the Aston to Stechford lines and with an entrance on Long Acre, Nechells. It was closed in 1965, by then under British Railways ownership.
The line between Aston and Vauxhall and Duddeston was quadrupled in 1891.
In 1900, a connection to Nechells gas works was opened from a point near Nechells Park Road bridge on the line towards Birmingham New Street. When the gas works closed in 1969, the branch was taken out of use at the same time. Although the tracks have been lifted, the embankment on which it ran remains substantially intact.
The station became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway during the Grouping of 1923. It then passed to the London Midland Region of British Railways on nationalisation in 1948.
When Sectorisation was introduced, the station was served by Regional Railways on behalf of the West Midlands PTE, for whom British Rail had been running the trains since the PTE's inception.
In 2011, London Midland, proposed a major reduction in the opening hours of the ticket office, with complete closure at weekends.