Coda

When I finished the Northern Rail map, nearly nine years ago, people would say to me "so what are you doing next?".  I would reply, "nothing".

This wasn't any kind of fakery.  I genuinely thought I'd stop there.  Any other rail map would be too difficult or boring was my thought.  ScotRail and (as it was then) Arriva Trains Wales?  The distances were too huge, the services too rare.  TransPennine Express was covered.  East Midlands Trains had mostly been done too, apart from the ends which were way too far to go.  And as for the West Midlands...

Here was my thought process: my nearest big terminus to me is Lime Street.  There's only one service from Liverpool to Birmingham.  Any time I wanted to complete the map, that'd be the route I'd have to take.  

That seemed really boring to me.

Then, of course, I completed the Metrolink map (though I've still not been back for the Trafford Centre line since it opened).  I loved collecting stations.  I loved visiting new places.  Maybe I should do the West Midlands after all...?

Six years later, and I've finally finished the map.  I've crisscrossed the whole region, town, country, north, south.  So many towpaths.

It's been... ok.

I loved doing the Northern map.  The West Midlands?  Not so much.  Part of it was the lack of variety.  Northern Rail whips between landscapes and cultures.  The Bradford-Ilkley line, for example, slides from city sprawl to village to moorside and back to town.  Middlesbrough to Saltburn is industry, grime, poverty - but also seaside walks and beaches.  Ormskirk to Preston is literally four stations, but that's market town, canalside halt, historic village, major city.

In the West Midlands, each stretch was almost a singularly of a type.  Suburb.  Country.  City.  There wasn't the change of pace, the difference in worlds, the shift of architecture and style.  

Much of the West Midlands looked the same and - this is where I get the hate mail - much of it wasn't very pretty.  I'm not a chocolate box person; I like brutality, muscle, harshness in my landscapes.  I like a city made of concrete.  I like post-industrial landscapes too, the abandoned factories, the expanses of former mineworks, the poignancy of communities pulling themselves back together and redefining who they are.

Birmingham and Wolverhampton, the two cities at the core of the West Midlands Railway map, are not pleasant places to visit.  They're not pleasant places to wander.  So much of what I saw was tired.  Buildings were grimy and perfunctory.  They lacked ambition and style.  Function rules.

(I do accept that post-austerity, post-pandemic, post-Brexit, the United Kingdom is tired. Brum had the misfortune of showing itself to me when the whole country is in a fug). 

There were so many roads, too, roads everywhere, roads slicing through neighbourhoods and redefining them.  I remember leaving Erdington, walking alongside a park, thinking it was pretty, then turning a corner and seeing a motorway bridge.  From there I was under the viaduct in a netherworld of nothing, a space that was ignored.  So many times I'd find these voids in the city.  Holes below the roads, places for pedestrians that no pedestrian wanted to use.

Birmingham sacrificed everything for the car and it's suffered as a result.  It's become a series of A roads between factories and also, somewhere in the background, there are people too.  No industrial district is pretty; head down by the docks in Liverpool, or go for a walk round Trafford Park in Manchester, or, for that matter, any trading estate in any town.  What the Midlands seems to do though is put these front and centre.  They're the priority and they're what my memories are as I sit here typing.  

So many times I'd step out of a railway station and find myself on a dual carriageway.  On a road that had been curtailed so that it didn't interfere with the dual carriageway.  I'd step out and see grey metal fencing.  I'd turn a corner and there would be more brick factories, the windows obscured with metal bars, a forecourt of chipped concrete covered in cars.  I'd be the only pedestrian alongside a vein of traffic.  I wasn't important.

Things are changing.  The city has shifted its priorities.  The centre is slowly rediscovering its walkability and is downgrading those expressways.  The tram is a boon, of course, and can only get better.  Stations are getting redeveloped with car parks and plazas to encourage park and ride.  They're still struggling at TfWM - look at their original plans for Perry Barr station, until the public made their voices heard - but they're doing their best.  I look at the future of transport in the West Midlands with optimism, as Birmingham and Wolverhampton get new railway lines and stations.  I hope it encourages newer development around hubs that's friendlier, nicer, more green and pleasant.  

There have been real highlights for me.  I absolutely adored Coventry.  Lichfield was such an unexpected delight I returned there with the BF a couple of months later - yep, still great.   I fell hard for Church Stretton; same for the Malverns.  Walking through The Lakes was a great stroll, and Bournville is as pretty as everyone says it is.  The Soho Road intrigued me, and getting the lone train that serves Polesworth (06:48, weekday mornings) is something few people can say they've done.  Walking underneath Spaghetti Junction was thrilling.  Some of the suburban walks were interesting, and for all my sarcasm about the number of towpaths I walked down, they never failed to relax me.  And I got to see Acorn Antiques!

I'm glad I roamed all over the West Midlands.  I feel a great deal of satisfaction at completing the map, as I always do.  I'll definitely return at some point, when the new tram line and the new railway lines and stations are opened.  Maybe one day I'll return on HS2.  

What does this mean for the blog though?  Well, there's another foreign jaunt coming up, to collect a metro in another country.  That's next.  Then I have a vague idea about doing something closer to home.  And maybe something a long way away.  I'm not giving up station collecting.  This is my outlet, the way I get my exploration kicks.  The number of readers has plummeted over the years - nobody reads any more, and Twitter's death means I get fewer shares - but thank you for sticking with me.  I appreciate every comment, every reskeet, and especially every Ko-fi donation.  The idea that people will give me money for this nonsense still astonishes me.    

Thanks again.

Scott

P.S.  I really did get bored of passing through the same old stations on the same old journey every time.  I never want to see the platforms at Penkridge again.