Railway history found in hedge

Our photo shows local resident Steve holding onto a piece of random iron serving as a hedge post alongside his drive near the site of the old railway.

Apparently somebody who knows what they are talking about (and how often do you trip over one of them these days?) has identified it as a section of the kind of track that was used on the old Great Western Railway broad gauge (7 foot instead of the now standard 4foot 81/2inches) track,

The question is – what is this bit of track doing in Steve's hedge?

There is a nice little article about broad gauge here, and this seems to indicate that the broad gauge line itself (eventually abandoned in the 1890s) never got any further North than Wolverhampton.

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