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From Agenoria to Beeching - The first and last days of steam in Dudley
An exhibition of photographs and other material entitled From Agenoria to Beeching - The first and last days of steam in Dudley was organised by the Dudley Archives and Local History Service and the Black Country Society between October to December 2025, as a contribution to the national Railways 200 celebrations, which marked the 200th anniversary of Railways in Britain.
The exhibition, held in the foyer of the Archives, was in two parts. The first part illustrated the first days of steam railways in the Dudley area between 1830 and 1860, mainly using material from the Dudley Archive collections. The second part of the exhibition illustrated the final days of steam in the area, from the late 1950s and early 1960s, through photographs from the Terry Hyde Collection held by the Black Country Society.
Exhibition organisers
Black Country Society - Chris Baker, Keith Hodgkins and Quintin Watt
Dudley Archives and Local History Service - Hannah Clynes and Paul Ford
The opening
The exhibition was opened on October 11th by Ned Willams, a former President of the Society and author of a book on the Earl of Dudley’s Railway, to an audience consisting mainly of those Society members who were kind enough to offer financial support. The gallery to the right shows some photographs of the opening event,
The Introductory slides and booklet
The exhibition was introduced by a looped slide show that outlined the contents, together with a short booklet giving more information on Terry Hyde. A recording of the slide show can be found to the left, and a link to a pdf of the booklet is given below.
Introductory booklet
From Agenoria....
The first part of the Exhibition included plans and documents describing the Earl of Dudley’s Shut End (Kingswinford) Railway and in particular the locomotive Agenoria, that ran between Ashwood Basin and Shut End in Pensnett from 1829 to 1864. In addition photographs and timetables were displayed of the first main line railway to run through the region – the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway, together with early photographs of Dudley station. Only some of this material is given in the gallery for copyright and licensing reasons. A list of the material that is not included, with Archive references, is given in the pdf.
Material in Dudley Archives
The buttons below give access to three external websites with more information about Agenoria. Early Stourbridge Locomotives is a page of Agenoria pictures, with links to a page dedicated to the Stourbridge Lion. In Search of Agenoria is an exhibition of photos by Ian Grant some of which show the remains of the Shut End Railway and other railways in the area. Agenoria - Tracing the past is a National Railway Museum blog that investigates an early drawing of Agenoria and the donation of the engine to the Science Museum.
...to Beeching
Terry Hyde is a Blackcountryman, now resident in Germany, and during his early years, he and his best friend David Wilson became train spotters and travelled around the area and photographed some unique images of engines, trains and rail infrastructure in the last days of steam in the Black Country. These pictures also captured many aspects of the Black Country landscape of the period. More on Terry’s work can be found in earlier editions of the Blackcountryman Volumes (55.1 and 55.3)
Black Country History Day
The exhibition was on view on November 8th 2025 for those attending the Black Country History Day at the Black Country Living Museum "After Agenoria – aspects of the Railway Revolution in the Black Country" (another contribution to Rail 200). A prgramme for the day and talk summaries are given in the pdf. One of the presentations that was made that day was particularly relevant to the exhibition "Agenoria, Aristocrats and Iron Masters - Railway beginnings in the western Black Country 1820 to 1860" by Chris Baker. A link to a recording of this talk is given on the right.
Black Country History Day Programme and Summaries of Talks
Virtual Heritage Group
The photographs in the second session were also used for the third Rail 200 event organised by the Society – the Virtual Heritage Group meeting A Black Country Steam Photographer rediscovered by Keith Hodgkins on December 1st on 2025 – a recording of which is available on the society YouTube site.
Acknowledgements and thanks
The organisers of the exhibtion would like to thank Terry Hyde for making his photographs available. He was able to attend the Exhibition himself and can be seen in the picture to the right with his grandson Adam.
In addition thanks are due to the following members of the Black Country Society for their financial support - Joanne and David Healey, Mike Jee, Judith Hurst, Julie Clarke, Paul Owen, John and Sally Huband, Ray Smith, Tony and Vivienne North, Nick Matthews, Nigel Easom, Sara McNally, Greg Ball, Philip Cadman, Anthony Cartwright, Roger Moore, Derek Millward, Gerard Smith, Audrey Smith, Alan Mansell, Ned Williams, Peter Maddison and Michael Jones.