The South Staffordshire Railway (SSR) was authorised in 1847 to build a line from Dudley in the West Midlands of England through Walsall and Lichfield to a junction with the Midland Railway on the way to Burton upon Trent, with authorised share capital of £945,000. It was supported by the newly-formed London and North Western Railway (LNWR) and the Midland Railway, giving each company access to important areas. It completed its main line in 1849. As collieries in the Cannock region rose in importance, it built a second main line from Walsall to Rugeley, as well as numerous short spurs and connections to lines it intersected. Colliery working in the Cannock area expanded enormously, and mineral traffic carryings increased in step. In 1850 the entire company's operation was leased to a private individual, John Robinson McClean, the first time this was ever done. His lease was successful, but the London and North Western Railway wanted control of the network for its own strategic purposes, and it manoeuvred to get the SSR shareholders to transfer the lease to the LNWR; in 1867 the LNWR acquired ownership of the SSR. Short distance passenger operation in the Walsall area was always buoyant, but in the post-1945 period a decline set in, and industrial retrenchment resulted in a gradual loss of goods and mineral business too. In 1965 a major round of passenger service closures was imposed, although the cessation of services on the Hednesford and Rugeley section was reversed from 1989. This Walsall to Rugeley service and a very short section at Lichfield are the only remaining passenger operations on the former SSR system Early railways in Birmingham Birmingham and the surrounding area acquired the epithet The Workshop of the World, supporting a huge range of diverse manufacturing industries. As the requirements of industrial customers became more advanced, it became a feature of Birmingham industry was that one manufacturer would make the basic part of a product, and for that piece to be transferred to another manufacturer for finishing. This resulted in a very large number of increasingly specialised makers, dependent on efficient local goods transport, over a widening local area. The first railways in Birmingham had their terminals on the then eastern margin of the city, around the Curzon Street station of the Grand Junction Railway and the London and Birmingham Railway; the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway had a terminus at