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Advertised in '''August 1845''' seeking capital of £800,000. The route was described as "''This important railway is 42 miles in length; will commence at the railway station of the Oxford Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway at Kidderminster, and will proceed from thence by way of Tenbury and Leominster to Hereford''". The article also noted that "''The line is free from engineering difficulties, and gradients highly favourable''."<ref>Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, 21 August 1845 via the British Newspaper Archive</ref> That description does not really accord with the Engineer's map, which shows the proposed line crossing the Severn by a bridge approximately where Dowles Bridge was built, then entering a tunnel at Northwood Lane which ended beyond Habberley Valley, a length of around 1.8 miles or about the same as Brunel's famous Box Tunnel.<ref>Copy of map prepared by J Gardener, held by Worcester Archive</ref> By 1846 it had been amalgamated with another scheme backed by the same promoters, the Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire Junction Railway.<ref>Worcestershire Chronicle, 4 November 1846 via the British Newspaper Archive</ref> It was later alleged that this merger was unlawful, and by 1851 action was being taken to wind up the affairs of the 'Direct East and West'.<ref>Worcester Journal, 26 June 1851 via the British Newspaper Archive</ref>
===Shropshire Union Railways and Canal Company===:''Main article: [[Shropshire Union Railways and Canal Company]]===''
First proposed by Robert Stephenson in '''July 1845''' as one of four planned railways for the Shropshire Union. Stephenson surveyed the route from Worcester to Shrewsbury in 1846. A Bill was raised in Parliament the same year, but never enacted. Proposals for formation of a company to build railway appeared in July 1847, but no further action had been taken by 1848 after which time the Shropshire Union let the plan lapse. However Stephenson's plans were used by [[Robert Nicholson]] for what became the [[The Severn Valley Railway Company (19th Century)]].
Proposed in 1874, the route would run from the LNWR line south of Wolverhampton via Kingswinford, west of Stourbridge, Wolverley, west of Kidderminster to connect to the Tenbury and Bewdley Railway with a short branch to Bewdley. The scheme, which was backed by the LNWR as an alternative to the [[Kidderminster Loop Line]], was rejected by Parliament in 1875.<ref>[[Bibliography#Books|Marshall (1989)]] p. 81.</ref>
===[[Cleobury Mortimer and Ditton Priors Light Railway]] (extensions)=== :''Main article: [[Cleobury Mortimer and Ditton Priors Light Railway]]'' Some time after opening in 1908, the CM&DPLR considered an extension to Billingsley, whose [[Collieries served by the Severn Valley Railway|colliery]] was instead served by a [[Kinlet and Billingsley Sidings signal box|branch from the SVR]] authorised in 1911 and opened in 1913. In 1912 the railway considered three other possible extensions from the terminus at Ditton Priors, one of which would have joined the SVR near Bridgnorth. None of the extensions were taken up after the First World War.<ref>[[Bibliography#Other References|Price (1995)]] pp.39-40.</ref>.
==See also==
