It reopened in 1987 thanks to the local transport executive's persistence and is now a key gateway into Birmingham. It's smaller than it used to be, and undeniably uglier, but it's the best they could manage given that the original station was completely demolished. What a marvelous waste of everyone's time and money.
There's something sneakily charming about its ugliness, like a dog that has a protruding tooth or a cat with a mangy ear. It's perfunctory but it is practical; it does the job. There are some escalators (in one direction) and some toilets on the platforms.
The former tram platform is still there (excuse the elbow). Bringing it back into use for heavy rail would be a great idea, everyone knows that, which is why there's no money to do it and it's still vacant years later. Snow Hill feels underappreciated and unloved.
The opposite is true of Moor Street, one hop on the Cross-City Line later. It's long been the position of this blog that Chiltern Railways is Tory. It just is. There's something about its entire network, its entire existence, that says it doesn't mind what they get up to in their own homes but do they have to rub it in our faces? (One of its stations is called Denham Golf Club for pity's sake). It's a vibe I've picked up as I've taken their trains over the last six years.
Back in 2013, I didn't know this, and so the nineteenth century cosplay was delightful. It was like being in the golden age of steam, only without the steam! Now, with my prejudice against Chiltern Railways fully installed, it makes me grumpy. It's not "beautifully preserved", it's "the good old days" in station form, a flashback to the 1950s when England was great. Moor Street would've absolutely voted Leave.
This is grossly unfair of course. Moor Street works as a station; it's bright and airy, it's well-maintained, it's got ticket gates and electronic next train signs and PA systems. It's been brought up to date without smashing the old station to pieces. If more stations had done the same the network would be a much more pleasing place to visit. I'm just a miserable old sod. This is what twelve years does to you, kids. Be warned.
Last time I was here I got a picture under the basic sign outside the front. This time I used the full expanse of my arms to manage a shot under the tastefully minimal gold writing along the side of the building.
Of course, there's a fourth mainline station coming to Birmingham city centre - the biggest one of all: Curzon Street. It's alongside Moor Street, though it won't interchange with it directly; similarly there are actually tracks to New Street running between both stations, but they won't get platforms or anything.
I negotiated the barriers, diversions and general chaos that comes when you're building a tram extension next to a massive new station and ended up at Eastside City Park. It's a pleasing strip of proper greenery in the middle of town, a nice place to wander and gather your thoughts among manicured lawns and hedges.
Or rather, it would be, if the length of it wasn't currently dominated by one of the largest building sites in the United Kingdom. Curzon Street is absolutely huge. The diagrams around the worksite give you a clue to it:
A long tongue, stretching from the Middleway to the Queensway, swallowing up entire streets and disappearing them underneath tracks and platforms. The railway will arrive here on concrete viaducts above the city and they're crawling closer and closer to the front, gleaming white, the future pushing its way into Birmingham.
In the middle of it all is the original Curzon Street station, opened in 1838 and closed again less than twenty years later, already overwhelmed by traffic. For nearly two centuries it's been looking for a purpose - it was a goods station for a while, then it sat empty in front of a parcel depot - until the new Curzon Street turned up on its doorstep and it became part of the plans.
What the plans are is strangely vague: there will be a new square here and it might be part of the entrance building to the HS2 station, or offices, or something? It's Grade I listed and a huge heritage asset so everyone's keen to give it some purpose but at the same time... what do you do with it. In the renders it clings to the underside of the station, overwhelmed, at an angle to the viaducts and ignored.
I have, somewhere in my soul, given up on HS2. I can't follow it any more, what's getting built, what isn't, when it's going to open, which bits will open. At present it seems to be an embarrassment to everyone and I'm not sure I'll ever get to ride it. I wandered around the site, thrilled that such a huge station was coming to life, and at the same time, wondering when it'll be done.
And bloody hell it's needed because New Street isn't any good at all. I've tried, over the past six years, to keep my cards close to my chest about Birmingham's main station. After all, it sees millions of users every year, and it doesn't get hopelessly snarled up. Nobody died. And it's just had that big expensive make over, too! Network Rail deserves some kind of award for simply managing to rebuild it without causing chaos.
The fact of the matter is: New Street is too big and has too many services. Having a central hub for England's railways sounds like a great idea, and indeed, if that's what New Street was it'd probably work. If this was the spot where you'd change from a Plymouth train to a Carlisle train and that was all it'd be brilliant.
Unfortunately, they also wedge in local services. The stopper from Rugeley via Walsall, the line from Litchfield to Redditch, the new King's Heath service when that starts up. These are trains that have no business running into New Street and sitting alongside routes to Edinburgh and London. They should be under New Street, a whole different underground level, separated from the grown-up trains. It should be like Stockholm Central, which I visited last year, with different levels for different distances: City for commuter rail, T-Centralen for metro, and then the top level for long-distance and terminating services. There shouldn't be this endless shuffle of tracks and trains and platforms to try and accommodate every kind of service known to man.
The rebuild introduced colour coded "lounges" to try and keep passengers away from the platforms and to stagger them over the whole building. Green, Red and Blue, though if you're changing trains, you need the Red one, and the Green one is sort of tucked away round the side and you can't really see it. Perhaps I'm just thick but I still haven't got to grips with which escalator leads to which lounge from the platform. I'll get off the train, head for the exit, and then get a surprise when I'm in the Blue when I need to be in the Red. At least it has places to sit.
The real "wow" element is that massive open roof, and yes, it's very pretty and floods the top of the concourse with light (none of that light actually reaches the platforms, mind). As a central space it's undeniably impressive. It's also very hot. Stupidly hot. The ceiling is made of ETFE plastic, which is clear and easy to clean, and which you might remember was previously used at Manchester Victoria. That station has a massive hole in one end where the trams and trains go in and out, meaning there's plenty of fresh air. That's not true at New Street. The trains are tucked away underneath the atrium and the entrances are all sealed with doors. The result is a station so warm they've had to put in fans to try and keep the airflow going.
The refurb was paid for by putting in a large shopping centre over the top, the "Grand Central" that gives the tram stop its (incorrect) name. It's really an extension to the Bullring and opened with a new flagship John Lewis store.
A John Lewis which is long gone. It wasn't doing too well anyway, then the pandemic came along and closed the shop forever. (The Solihull branch is still going strong). The idea is that it will converted into offices with an atrium over the top, but the website doesn't seem to be working, and I've been coming here for years and not seen any advance.
Grand Central does have a decent food court, which is handy when you're waiting for your train, and there's a Foyles that I periodically wandered round. And the toilets are clean and free. I suppose it paid for the rebuild so we should be happy.
New Street also has a large mechanical bull, a legacy of the 2022 Commonwealth Games. It's dropped onto the concourse next to Pret a Manger and while it's very interesting to look at - and the kids love it - I think most people would prefer some more chairs. It also annoys me that it's been three years and "Ozzy" is still surrounded by very temporary looking barriers.
The most notable legacy of the rebuild came in the form of the giant metal "eye" incorporating an LED video screen that overlooks the main entrance. When the plans for the station were unveiled this was shown on the renders displaying the next few train departures. "Haha" we all thought. "As if! That'll be flogged as advertising space." And yes, no sooner had the station opened than it was flashing up L'Oreal ads and dishwasher videos. For a while. The screens were turned off a few years back and now they're simply large black voids.
What they should do with them - if they're not going to turn them back into advertising space - is write the words Birmingham New Street Station across the front, because at the moment, the signage is weirdly subtle. I get discretion is very tasteful and all that but not for a railway station. There you need massive three metre high letters and a double arrow so that everyone knows it's the station. As it was, I had to take the sign picture in front of a small totem tucked into a floral arrangement.
And that was, quite literally, the end of the line. There is technically one more station on the West Midlands Rail map for me to collect: Bridgnorth, on the Severn Valley Steam Railway. However, a landslip means that station is cut off from the rest of the route and there's currently no way of reaching it by train, and as we all know, if you don't get a train there, it doesn't count.
That was the end of the map for me though. I went into the All Bar One in the station and ordered a glass of fizz to commemorate the occasion. I was experiencing a lot of strange feelings, all colliding with one another, contradicting one another. I'll put them in another blog post still to come. There needs to be a proper coda to all this.
The prosecco tasted awful by the way. I ordered a pint of lager instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment