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The line avoided the Beeching Axe due to social necessity, but throughout the 1970s it was variously threatened with closure, but won a reprieve until the Caledonian MacBrayne service to Lewis was moved from Kyle to Ullapool.
Its station, opened in 1866, was closed in 1964 as part of the Beeching Axe, and its goods yard is now a car park.
In January 2012, plans emerged for new bigger PPMs to be used on the South Staffordshire Line between Stourbridge Junction and Brierley Hill, providing passenger services on the line for the first time since the Beeching Axe.
The present station was built 400 yards south of the original Wilpshire station which served the Ribble Valley Line until its closure just before the Beeching Axe in 1962.
The station closed to passengers in 1963 as part of the infamous Beeching Axe, although freight continued to serve British Gypsum until the early 1980s.
The ground, as the name suggests, was once close to the town's railway station, situated on the Caledonian Railway's main line from Aberdeen to Glasgow and London, but this station was closed in 1968 as part of the Beeching cuts.
There was a second station in the area at Five Ways (on the border with Coseley between 1850 and 1962, but this station was one of the first victims of the Beeching Axe and the line upon which it was situated (between Dudley and Bilston) closed in 1968.
The Portishead Railway was closed in the Beeching Axe but was relaid between 2000–2002 as far as the Royal Portbury Dock with a Strategic Rail Authority rail-freight grant.