- The major roundabout of tyres in 1976 was changed to something more permanent but still no landscaping.
- Still the ugliest in the UK, after 50 years with landscaping not reinstated after 30 years on central reservation of Halesowen bypass.
- Halesowen railway built on in the 60s and 70s to never to be seen again.
- Stourbridge railway used for freight only to Waterfront, next to Merry Hill. WASTED line, waiting for trains which will be delivered by trams. This is why billions are being spent on Metro trams!
- Merry Hill built but nearby railway for shoppers was never considered and the monorail soon closed.
- In the 90s the Dudley Freightliner depot closed. Metro to take it over.
- 80s: Metro trams started but it took 18 years to build Metro One on the first mainline railway; destroyed when it was meant to enable its reopening!
- This was the first tramway opened in 1999 on UK's last London to Edinburgh via Stourbridge principal mainline railway.
- Two Dudley railways turned into a path in Kingswinford/Pensnett in the 70s or 80s but not touched since!
- This is the Dudley Mudway, now worse than ever!
- Brierley Hill to Pensnett railway never even turned into a footpath
- It took many years to get the Stourbridge Shuttle on the world's shortest branch line.
- An extension to get shoppers from the Transport Interchange and car parks to the shops was never wanted.
- I'm proposing the Stourbridge ring road to Merry Hill/Waterfront cycle-walkway should be part of the 25 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walkway to NW Wolverhampton.
- This week's announcement of the Dudley Dasher dashes all hopes of the railway getting its national, regional and commuter trains back on the UK's forgotten mainline railway when Metro was supposed to do that!
Monday, 24 August 2026
Dud, Deadly, Dudley - catalogue of disasters
How come the rest of Europe has gone for tramways? They must be right, of course they are!
I love trams and always use them rather than buses. The first idiocy by our politicians and transport experts was to destroy the lot of them, apart from Blackpool and up Snaefell hill in the Isle of Man. They then replaced them with a cocktail of poisonous gases from diesel buses and started selling off railway lines for buildings and roads, instead of mothballing them for future railway use to reduce road and railway congestion. How shortsighted. How stupid was that?
Next, in the 80s in Manchester, trams replaced trains and buses at the most colossal expense, when that money could have been better spent. More of the railway network was lost for multi-modal transport to make for more changes. The money should be used for regional Fare-Free Public Transport for every single person from the cradle to the grave and, to entice car commuters out of their tin boxes!
Over one billion to destroy 10 Kms of the principal mainline railway. This is scandalous expense for doing the wrong thing. BUT the tram was sold to us as needing to be built to get the full 56 Kms between Stourbridge Jct and Burton on Trent reopened. Trams to get trains. How stupid is that?
Have you read what I sent you today, David? Have you read anything I have sent you over the years? No-one else does, either!
Midlands Connect has always fully supported Metro trams and their expansion. The £15 billion for 150 miles, 8 lines and 380 tram stops by 2040 has not been cancelled, David. Or, what have you heard? Am I wrong?
All the best and keep in touch. Please try and get Railfuture to fight for trains on freight only or unused, still not built on railway lines. I've been doing their work over the last 40 years in opposing Metro on mainline railways.
Sunday, 23 August 2026
Strong meat about Climate from American Muslim
I have read much of the link below from author, sustainability campaigner and environmentalist, Jonathon Porritt, in response to something I wrote to him, which is below his email. So I am now passing it on. I will read every word. Your own thoughts are welcome.
I think a little soul searching from each of us would not come amiss. And a lot more action in tune with the challenging teaching of the Sermon on the Mount and throughout the Gospels. His teaching was so unacceptable that that dissident rabbi was soon put to death.
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Jonathon Porritt <j.porritt@greenfutures.org.uk
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2026 at 10:53
Subject: Re: I do care what I write but I also have fun at the same time!
To: Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com>
From: Jonathon Porritt <j.porritt@greenfutures.org.uk
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2026 at 10:53
Subject: Re: I do care what I write but I also have fun at the same time!
To: Tim Weller <timweller1@gmail.com>
Strong stuff - but on the money!
You might enjoy this confirmation:
Best wishes,
Jonathon.
Bus franchising is unnecessary, risky and exorbitantly expensive
Use the millions to extend FARE-FREE PUBLIC TRANSPORT for all in the W Midlands as the reward for leaving your car at home and jumping on a bus. But there must also be the stick of penalties for those who refuse to free up road space for essential vehicle users in the rush hours. Plus:
You are right, Ray. Let the private sector run the buses, with councils being allowed to become shareholders and the brilliant Enhanced Bus Partnership ensuring sensible working together. And NO more different rail modes to add to the expense and complication under the DfT's Mixed Use Railways obsession. Do you agree Ray?
What do you think, my friend?
... if we do the right thing, no-one else in the world will, anyway. So why bother?
Dear friends - Patrick, Balvinder and Alex, our three prominent Civic Leaders in town
I had a long, ten to fifteen minute conversation with a man sitting in the driver's seat with his big 4x4, engine running, which is why I approached him to, possibly, engine ticking over, long after I left. We talked about his insistence that Climate problems are a fiction and finite fossil fuels are nothing to be concerned about with oil reserves remaining in abundance long into the future. Poisoning the air for passers by was, certainly of no concern.
He in his big car was sitting on the grass dome next to the flag pole with the UK flag flying bravely. He was waiting for a big enough space for free parking in the shopping centre cul de sac road called Great Cornbow. It is literally round the corner from Alex Ballinger's constituency office in Peckingham Street. The driver was doing this because if he switched his engine off, he would not be able to make a racing car start to escape an approaching traffic warden. Rare though they be!
Earlier this year, I did speak to an officer with lower status, I think, than traffic warden who was more concerned about checking the cars in High Street, parked on double yellow lines which had exemptions. Please clarify what the council policy now is. Are there traffic wardens on duty in Halesowen?
Do you still accept Climate science?
How have things changed on the ground since you and your council declared the Climate Emergency - nationally in 2019 and in Dudley in 2020?
Do you believe that combustion engines idling wastefully are adding to the approaching Climate horrors? Is it so symptomatic of our casual and careless view that there is nothing we need to do to change towards right behaviour because if we do the right thing, no-one else in the world will, anyway. So why bother?
Please give me your view. And answer my questions - this time and for a change!
Thursday, 20 August 2026
THE UGLIEST ROUNDABOUT IN THE LAND suggestion
Dear Hilary and Patrick/Balvinder
I refer to landscaping relying on weeds for one, which are growing out of the 99% black tarmac, Grange roundabout on the A456/A459, by the Halesowen cricket ground. You grandly arrive at it from Jct 3, M5 on the nearest and only Gateway to Dudley, "the historic capital of the Black Country" and the motorway gateway to heavenly Halesowen.
In 61 years with a full driving licence, I cannot ever recall driving around the UK, seeing such a major, 30 metre diameter roundabout with nothing on it but tarmac and struggling weeds! Many visitors have noticed, too, over my 50 years living in Halesowen. "How odd" is the common comment.
Why is Dudley ALWAYS so odd and eccentric? From six destroyed railways to masterly negligence over the UK's major, 20 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walkway/Mudway and the Netherton Canal Tunnel towpath slum disgrace (half in Dudley, half in Sandwell).
On the other roundabout at the Asda car park entrance, over 50% of the area is loose white/grey stone, with the fine centerpiece being a peculiar, 45 degree angled conifer collapsing, plus a large branch clearly torn from the main trunk. It looks terrible. There was 100% nature on the previous roundabout that you good people clear felled/wrecked/destroyed for the present shameful mess. What IS the matter with you all?
This is how it should be done
Are the Britain in Bloom judges suffering from poor eyesight, Hilary? You do a magnificent job with HIB and BID but not as regards the two roundabouts, my friend. And you are the more powerful and influential councillor than poor old me who is a complete nobody!
PLEASE REPLY (sorry you did do, Hilary once, earlier this year - thank you), especially Leader Patrick and other Leader Balvinder who both owe me an apology for never, ever replying. And Balvinder once told me, I thought in all seriousness, that she would give some of her time when we met at a WMCA Board meeting in Brum Council House, shortly after her appointment as Chief Exec. Of course, it never happened. At least, I was once granted 15 minutes with Leader Patrick. And a previous Leader, Fred Hunt, told me in the early to mid 90s that the Dudley Tram would be up and running on Dudley's principal mainline railway
by the year 2000 CE, 26 years ago!!
None of this is nowhere near being good enough, my friends.
to Helen Board, Dudley Gp NHS Foundation Trust
Dear Helen
I would also like to know what my Trust is doing over this report from an email I was sent from Operation Noah in June.
"Parts of mainland Europe also suffered and still are suffering from a heatwave which may be responsible for hundreds of excess deaths according to the World Health Organization, with Germany experiencing its hottest day ever recorded."
How is the Trust adapting to and mitigating the coming Climate horrors?
Bad health consequences from failing to act ...
... over Gornal/Kingswinford landfill site, over failing to upgrade routes separated from traffic for cycling, walking and wheeling.
Assumption that the more we spend, the less we have of fatal, finite, fossil fuels - the fools' gold of extraordinary advantages but also the most fearful downsides we stubbornly bury for the sake of our mental health!
UK's Top Active Travel Route because:
Yesterday, Sunday 16 August, I cycled from home in Halesowen to Castlecroft on the S Staffs/Wolves border, before turning back.
Since discovering the route last decade, the Dudley section is the worst I have seen it but the S Staffs section, where it is tarmacked, is the best with the greatest number of users.
Apart from Chris Barnett with whom I have cycled his wonderful 'Chris Barnett Circular' a couple of times, there is STILL zero interest from a single officer or member of that council. But last week I met Cllr Jon Mucklow - hope!
Dudley Council, from my experience, will not send out a single member of their staff to cut back vegetation on the Pensnett/Kingswinford Railway Walk. I did a little some years ago but no longer! It needs a wholesale restoration to keep the ASB brigade out who have wrecked the cycle-walkway, as here, with Dudley Council allowing them to do this destruction.
PROW = Public Right of Way. Means open to all to walk/ride over the adjacent landfill site with its cocktail of poisonous gases. Dudley's fault - again!
In my opinion, the 25 Kms from Stourbridge ring road, via Fens Pool Avenue, Brierley Hill to NW Wolverhamton (and even on into deepest Staffordshire) is easily the Top UK cycle-walkway because:
- It is in the heart of England in the West Midlands with its population of 2.8 million.
- Its urban-rural-urban nature means it is vital for commuter, business and leisure use.
- Climate problems make it essential for us car users to leave them at home more and to use our flat feet, two wheels - and the Andy Burnham BUS!
- Making the full 25 Kms length fit for purpose is one of many urgent ways to do something about the Climate no 1 Emergency.
- Yet, still no NCR number. Shocking!
- The two railway lines which make it up are now ideal for active travel, ONLY. No more trams - the bane of my life for these past 40 years with two mainline railways destroyed for trams, the most expensive transport mode to construct, per Km, after the ongoing HS2 tragedy. Midland Metro trams have taken over from national, regional and commuter trains but, so far, we got only 23 Kms of tramway in 45 years of expensive endeavour!
2 stations are Coffee Stops but 3 saved and another is a tram stop!
The Wombourne station is the coffee shop, called 'The Platform'.
The Tettenhall station on the Black Country Active Travel Route is another coffee shop, called Cupcake Lane, as here - https://cupcake-lane.com/.
The three new stations on the Camp Hill line were going to be tram stops under the West Midlands Metro tramway plan from 1981 to 2016. Only in 2016, before Andy Street was elected, did they finally cancel the tram plan and decided on reinstating the commuter trains instead. It took them ten years to achieve it!
I was writing from the 1990s opposing existing, three mainline railways being turned into tramways. The first tramway on the first mainline opened in 1999. The second on the London to Edinburgh, principal mainline railway through Dudley opens in time for Christmas - for the last two or three years - perhaps this year!
Please take a look at riversimple.com and tell me what you think.
Our side is STILL behaving like the Nazis of ...
... the 30s and 40s but, this time, towards Arabs/Muslims and Palestinians, in particular.
With no effective condemnation of Israel in word, let alone the BDS we impose on Russian aggression, we are supporting the Jewish hate filled, anti Muslim feeling in thought and deed. Therefore, we are STILL treating Gazans and Palestinians like we did the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15 v 3 in our own Holy Book.
The Jewish-Zionist and Christian massacre and ill treatment of Muslims in Gaza, Judea and Samaria continues apace and we don't turn a hair. This is astonishing, despicable and hate-filled from beginning to end. Yet, we consider ourselves as the Righteous of the International Rules Based Order, upholding the cruel and callous behaviour of Trump and Netanyahu with their mainly American evangelical core base. But also some British evangelicals I know, love Bibi too.
His much loved reciprocation policy (I read and enjoyed his mighty 654 page memoir) means when the enemy Hamas/Gazans hit back, beloved Bibi hits back 70x7 in reciprocation. Mind you, don't call it revenge! 1 Samuel 15 v 3 always takes precedence for our side over the life and teaching of Jesus Christ of the more noble and honourable values which our Judeo-Christian world has never been able to attain for the last 1700 years of our control, domination and warfare around the world.
Our popular new Prime Minister voted for all our recent wars on the Arab Muslim world. Israel, like our side always has, acts with impunity and is immune to criticism, always calling it antisemitism. It is their get out of jail free card which never expires.
No wonder Putin calls us the new Nazis. I think we are the biggest, immoral, international law breaking hypocrites out.
FoE Warehouse down for demolition and conversion to ...
... railway station platforms because NOT one other FoE member joined me in my vigorous and long running, writing and speaking efforts in opposing Metro destroying three mainline Brum and Black Country railways. I was successful in saving one - the Camp Hill (Kings Heath/Moseley) railway. The other two are lost forever, despite them saying, "Light rail (Metro) investment provides the basis for restoring heavy rail services at the appropriate time" (September 2000 letter).
I have just written in my submission:-
"Because what you want to do (demolishing the FoE Warehouse) would NOT have been necessary if you had followed my advice and stopped the part conversion of our regional railway network into tramways, buildings and roads. The Victorian railway network had everything we need today. But you never kept/safeguarded Beeching's quite properly closed railways, for future use."
IDF should escort officials from the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza
This is us, our side, the upstanding and honourable, full of moral rectitude and honour, the Judeo-Christian world doing the most appalling wickedness, illegality and never ending oppression, quite apart from forever wars on Arab Muslims in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Lebanon. And since the 28 February 2026, on Iran.
Why can't the IDF impose law and order on even the 60% of Gaza that they control and govern?
Why can't the IDF escort officials from the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza to allow them to do their work?
Fare-Free Public Transport
Burnham says he is going to devolve more of natiional taxation back to the regions, this would be an opportunity to kick start a FFPT scheme, or at the very least set up a feasibility study to look into successful schemes in Dunkirk, Malta, Luxemburg, Tallinn etc and how to start one here.
Wednesday, 19 August 2026
In the past, two really duff, inadequate, truly weird and wonderful traffic roundabouts have won it for ...
... HALESOWEN IN BLOOM!
Dear Hilary and Patrick/Balvinder
I refer to landscaping relying on weeds for one, which are growing out of the 99% black tarmac, Grange roundabout on the A456/A459, by the Halesowen cricket ground. You grandly arrive at it from Jct 3, M5 on the nearest and only Gateway to Dudley, "the historic capital of the Black Country" and the motorway gateway to heavenly Halesowen.
In 61 years with a full driving licence, I cannot ever recall driving around the UK, seeing such a major, 30 metre diameter roundabout with nothing on it but tarmac and struggling weeds! Many visitors have noticed, too, over my 50 years living in Halesowen. "How odd" is the common comment.
Why is Dudley ALWAYS so odd and eccentric? From six destroyed railways to masterly negligence over the UK's major, 20 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walkway/Mudway and the Netherton Canal Tunnel towpath slum disgrace (half in Dudley, half in Sandwell).
On the other roundabout at the Asda car park entrance, over 50% of the area is loose white/grey stone, with the fine centerpiece being a peculiar, 45 degree angled conifer collapsing, plus a large branch clearly torn from the main trunk. It looks terrible. There was 100% nature on the previous roundabout that you good people clear felled/wrecked/destroyed for the present shameful mess. What IS the matter with you all?
This is how it should be done
Are the Britain in Bloom judges suffering from poor eyesight, Hilary? You do a magnificent job with HIB and BID but not as regards the two roundabouts, my friend. And you are the more powerful and influential councillor than poor old me who is a complete nobody!
PLEASE REPLY (sorry you did do, Hilary once, earlier this year - thank you), especially Leader Patrick and other Leader Balvinder who both owe me an apology for never, ever replying. And Balvinder once told me, I thought in all seriousness, that she would give some of her time when we met at a WMCA Board meeting in Brum Council House, shortly after her appointment as Chief Exec. Of course, it never happened. At least, I was once granted 15 minutes with Leader Patrick. And a previous Leader, Fred Hunt, told me in the early to mid 90s that the Dudley Tram would be up and running on Dudley's principal mainline railway
by the year 2000 CE, 26 years ago!!
None of this is nowhere near being good enough, my friends.
Helen at RHH
Dear Helen
I would like to come along next month to the Board meeting if members feel able to let me present this Climate and Health related suggestion:
'Let's keep more patients out of hospital' by:
- Supporting active travel - walking, running and cycling/wheeling (helmet on!). Therefore,
- Will the Board actively ask and lobby and then maintain the pressure for the nearby cycle-walkway to be brought up to the same standard as the sections in South Staffordshire and Wolverhampton?
- This is the UK's Top and easily the most important, 20 Kms Black Country Cycle-Walkway, only 500 metres from the Trust's HQ front door!
- On our doorstep but, it is grossly under-used because of its shocking state of disrepair and danger to health.
- Further on towards Himley, the adjacent landfill site to the cycle-walkway is open and available but a danger to health from the venting of a cocktail of poisonous gases.
It is a paradise for the quad bikers and dirt bikers brigade. But the rest of us are banished because of their trashing of the UK's Top and longest urban-rural-urban cycle-walkway.
Please reply and give me your own thoughts on these ways of getting better health and keeping us all out of hospital by physical activity; AND, breathing clean, unpoisoned air from your nearby landfill site when being more active.
Tuesday, 18 August 2026
In response to David Viner
That's great David - thanks for letting me know. I would like to see Stuart's reply, please. Who is Sam Henry?
Do you have any influence in getting an NCR number for the route from Fens Pool Avenue to NW Wolverhampton, David?
How important is Sustrans these days in getting NCR recognition? I dislike their long winded new name and prefer the snappy 'Sustrans'! Who is their best person to lobby?
Should we have a Facebook page, do you think?
With three railway names over the 20 Kms, are you happy with a generic name, like Black Country Cycle-Walkway? Or, Black Country Greenway, which Chris (Barnett) likes? Or, your own name and others chipping in with ideas/names?
Please could anyone try and engage with Beccy Marston, Active Travel Commissioner, at Beccy.Marston@wmca.org.uk
- Himley Environmental Ltd allows public access from the cycle-walkway and other public rights of way (PROW) to a landfill site venting off a cocktail of poisonous gases - and right next to our cycle-walkway!
- Anti social behaviour and criminal activity on the Dudley section of the cycle-walkway. I complained to the Police over these people's threats and intimidating behaviour towards me.
- The trashing of nature on the other side of our route from the landfill/sewage site in Pensnett/Gornal. The destruction and negligence is worse than ever from what I saw on Sunday!
- On Chris's fine circular cycleway which starts and finishes in Brierley Hill to take in what I consider to be the UK's Top cycleway for its location and potential to cut GHG emissions
Keep in touch everyone, please and all the best.
to Cllr Claire Darke
Dear Claire - and copied to friend Stuart and to the even bigger bosses, Ed Cox and Richard Parker for them to put me right, please. I'm longing to go to my grave having been corrected after these last forty years of writing and speaking about manic Metro mania.
Thanks for letting me see these stunning slides that took my breath away for their brave, controversial, dynamic, brilliant news of great things promised but never delivered for Wolverhampton but nothing for the 5 Kms in Dudley which really are the absolute pits out of the over 20 Kms total length!
Stuart is Director of Black Country Transport, the top man, so he must be on an enormous salary. He has been in that job for at least the last ten years during which he has met me three times for discussion (got nowhere for me but triumphs for him) and he has had many emails from me since about 2013/14! My disagreement with the good Stuart has been over the idiocy of him being in full agreement with everyone else, in turning TWO mainline railways (and bus travel sidelined) into tramways. The full fun is recorded here:
and, the shorter (so just read this!):
I've also done many idiotic things in my 78 years. But they only affected me, nearly killed me on occasions but, I've never been responsible for turning a principal, mainline railway
into a piddling little shuttle tramway on two tiny sections totalling 6.7 Kms which then mucks up the whole thing between London and Edinburgh - only costing a little matter of over a billion pounds before the full 10.7 Kms is finally opened to trams - but, we don't know when. This century when it was meant to be the last one?!
Keep on getting standards raised with all your great work over many years, Claire.
Best wishes
Tim
Thursday, 13 August 2026
Five Scandals Always Overlooked by ...
FIVE SCANDALS ALWAYS OVERLOOKED by every council leader over 50 years and two WMCA Mayors since 2017 - and every MP!
Yesterday, I missed out from my list of three scandals, a fourth! The deteriorating, disgraceful slum of a canal tunnel which is the Netherton Tunnel towpaths - one closed and the other becoming unusable. Becoming unusable, even for crazy outdoor adventurers like Chris and me because of its unlit, flooded potholed state, only made a little safer by an ancient rickety rail to prevent a slip into the murky waters!
This is my cycling and walking in the Black Country list of destruction and negligence, of incompetence and corruption by the authorities. My sad conclusion on the 50th anniversary of my moving to the Black Country in 1976 :
Perhaps, one of the first two railways in the UK turned into an official footpath in the 70s or 80s but never improved/modernised and, certainly, never maintained. Now a dirt bikers paradise to trash and destroy - exactly as is happening.
Himley Environmental Ltd (HEL - how appropriate) allows public access from the cycle-walkway and other public rights of way (PROW) to a landfill site venting off a cocktail of poisonous gases - and right next to our cycle-walkway!
Anti social behaviour and criminal activity on the Dudley section of the cycle-walkway. I complained to the Police over these people's threats and intimidating behaviour towards me.
The trashing of nature on the other side of our route from the landfill/sewage site in Pensnett/Gornal. The destruction and negligence is worse than ever from what I saw on Sunday!
The deteriorating, disgraceful slum of a canal tunnel which is the Netherton Tunnel towpaths - one closed and the other becoming unusable. Becoming unusable, even for crazy outdoor adventurers like Chris and me because of its unlit, flooded potholed state, only made a little safer by an ancient rickety rail to prevent a slip into the murky waters!
Netherton Canal Tunnel must be included as part of our ‘Cycle Circular’ which takes in the UK’s Top cycle-walkway through the Black Country and South Staffordshire.
A round table, major get together is very necessary, I think. Before Covid we had one at Dudley's Lister Road depot over the Pensnett Railway Walk - but nothing came of it. It was such a well attended meeting by officers, too. The senior officer moved on to another authority and things got worse, in fact!
Beccy, may we discuss active travel matters with you, please at 16 Summer Lane (or wherever) and with Richard Parker, too? A full hour would be needed, please. Richard must be involved because of the serious health and safety/security implications from the above scandals.
TIM WELLER 3 August 2026
Wednesday, 12 August 2026
Ukrainians welcome; Small boat people go home!
If you are fleeing the Russian enemy attacks on Ukraine, you are welcome; fleeing countries who have been under the cosh of Western nations military wars and our wars on nature to bring Climate devastation to them, can damn well GO HOME!
Our English Channel and North Sea moat was effective, for a time, to ensure there was no way we Brits took our fair share of these awful people thinking that we can give them, yet again, a better life. We had already been all over the world for 500 years to give them the British blessings, culture, virtues and values they always lacked. And now they come here. Will it never end?
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