Notes On Camp

With the new stations of the Wolverhampton-Walsall line behind me (the WolWal Line?  Wolvall?) I shifted from one side of New Street to the other.  It was in a state of low-level chaos; a problem with the lines going south had caused a huge backlog of delays and cancellations.  Dejected passengers lined the platforms waiting for trains that wouldn't come.  My own, tiny, local train was delayed by twenty minutes, and as it passed the losers standing by I sank down in my seat so it wouldn't look like I was revelling in my good fortune.

We rose up out of the tunnel, giving us a great view of the HS2 station slowly coming together at Curzon Street.  That exact same day Heidi Alexander had stood up and announced that everything would be late and expensive and also, not as good as it was meant to be, and I looked at that vast swathe of concrete and workmen and trucks and diggers and wondered exactly when I'd be able to stand outside it and take a sign selfie.  If, indeed, I could still stand at that point.  Perhaps my carer will take the picture for me.

The train pulled onto the Camp Hill Line, Birmingham's newest suburban route.  I wondered how the people in the houses lining the track felt about this sudden uptick in noise; a rarely used freight line transformed into a commuter line.  I bet there's a lot less nude sunbathing in the back gardens now.

The most distinctive part of Moseley Village station isn't anything to do with what's been built; that's all distinctly perfunctory.  Metal walls, orange lampposts, all the same playbook.  The thing that draws your eye is the entrance to the tunnel beyond the platforms.

Is it just me or is there something vaguely... vulva-like about that?  It's the keystone at the top, poking over the splayed curves of the tunnel.  It's a little bit dirty.  Obviously I'm no expert in this matter but you don't have to be Sigmund Freud to see the symbolism of a train sliding into that.  

I politely averted my eyes and went up the stairs to the newly laid out plaza on top.  It's a large, bare stretch of block paving that's been clearly designed as an event space.  I could see the shadows of artisan soap makers, organic candle stalls and expensive streetfood yet to come scattered across the pavement.  It's certainly a cut above Willenhall's cycle lane and zebra crossing.

It quickly became obvious why Moseley Village got the full town square treatment.  It turned out this place was posh.  Right outside the station was an M&S Food Hall, and it very much continued on that theme.  Restaurants and beauty salons cascaded down the hill towards the main road.  Estate agents with expensive listings.  An old church high on a mound above us.  At the junction, a dual carriageway had a vague air of boulevard with tall trees and benches to relax on.  The original station here, closed during the war, had been called simply Moseley; you could hear the letters from the residents' associations demanding that Village suffix to show they were a cut above.

This sounds like reverse snobbery, and it is a bit, but it didn't stop me finding Moseley charming.  It was certainly an improvement on the grim industrial backstreets of Darleston.  I turned up a hill, where a pub poster advertised a forthcoming appearance from drag queen Harley La Rue.  Where Class Meets Sass it promised, which I puzzled over for a while until I realised my Southern accent was standing in the way of the rhyme (Where Clarse Meets Sass).  I wonder where the dividing line is for that long A.  Perhaps the Watford Gap.

The road gently rose up the hill and I realised once again that I should really check out the gradient lines on the OS Map before I plan these journeys.  It went up and up, past lines of neat villas and new shiny cars parked close to the kerb.  The Moseley Dovecot, a remnant of a great house that was once in the area, stood behind a fence on a patch of green.

I passed a Jewish primary school and a cul de sac of identical terraced homes that was choked with cars.  A builder's yard and then, on a whitewashed wall, a picture of an eggman raising his hat to passers by; beneath him, the road sign had been adorned with the Prince symbol.  I couldn't decide which was more incongruous.

Blocks of flats now intruded on the street, new and old, while the big mansions had multiple buzzers and concreted fronts.  A funeral home had a large stained glass window presiding over passers by, and I found myself humming Slumber Inc without even thinking about it.  I am nothing if not predictable.

At a curve in the road my second station appeared, Kings Heath (no, there isn't an apostrophe; yes, it is annoying).  There are only three new stations on the Camp Hill line; it terminates at Kings Norton, an already existing station that lacks an apostrophe.  It's amazing that this new, exciting transport link in England's second largest city is three stations and two trains an hour in each direction but there it is; we settle for what we can get.  

At some point, the trains will go into Moor Street, where there is more capacity than the ridiculously overcrowded New Street, but before that happens Bordesley station needs to close so that new chords can be built.  The proposal to close it is already out there, though there isn't a suggestion of a replacement on the Camp Hill route once the new lines are built (the Metro's newest extension will take over the slack).  When this will happen is, as always, entirely guesswork.  

Kings Heath also has a small pedestrian space outside, though it's more of an infill between the curve and the road and the straight front of the footbridge; I can't see anyone holding a craft fair there.  

I took a seat on the platform.  There was another man there who also carried a camera.  I imagine Men Who Like Railway Stations have been swarming all over the line for the last couple of months; there are probably dozens of YouTube videos about it all in deep detail.  This is probably all old news to you.  But you get it when I write it, so tough.

The final station is the jewel, the one that everyone likes: Pineapple Road.  What a lovely, evocative, fun name.  It's the kind of whimsical station name you wouldn't think would pass muster in the boring old 21st century; after all, for most of the 20th century it was called Hazelwell.  Pineapple Road is a great fun name, one that calls to you.

It is, of course, nothing special on the ground.  If a kidnapper dumped me on a platform on the Camp Hill line and ran off with my glasses so I couldn't read the sign I wouldn't be able to tell them apart.  Two platforms, metal awnings and stairs, lifts and footbridge.  

Still, I hoped Pineapple Road, of all the stations, would offer a little bit of artistic licence.  A moment of character.  I was excited to spot some metal fretwork and I stopped for a good look.

I'm afraid to say it depicted random wild flowers.  There wasn't a single pineapple to be seen, which simply isn't on.  It's called Pineapple Road.  It's on the Camp Hill line.  It's begging for a level of flamboyant extravagance hitherto unseen in the West Midlands.  There should be small pineapples on top of every pillar, lamp post and help sign.  There should be pineapple murals and pineapple brickwork.  You shouldn't be able to move for the pineapples.  

When I win the EuroMillions on Friday (£137 million, watch this space) I will personally pay for a two metre high golden pineapple statue to be erected outside the station.  I will give the station the campery, the whimsy, the sheer delightful personality it deserves.  I will make it the destination it should be.

Small Wins

 

It's very easy, at this moment in British history, to allow yourself to become despondent about the state of the nation.  About the inability of government, media and thought leaders to advocate for change.  About the failure to deliver any world changing projects or schemes.  About the general attitude of "will this do?"

It's easy, in all of this, to miss when something good actually happens.  When there is a change that will directly improve the lives of people in the country.  

Which is why I went to the Midlands.

In the last few weeks the West Midlands Railway has acquired two new lines, long orange streaks across the map on routes that weren't previously open to passengers (at least, not in this century).  Those railway lines gifted a total of five new stations to the map.  Five new chances for travel, regeneration and opportunity.  Obviously I had to visit them.

My first port of call was Willenhall, on the new line between Wolverhampton and Walsall.  It's a former freight line that now lets you travel between two major conurbations without having to go into Birmingham city centre first.  It doesn't sound much, but that's the kind of small link that makes a big difference.  Any chance to avoid New Street is surely a plus.

Willenhall will not be confused for one of Europe's great termini.  It has two platforms, two shelters, and some seats.  There is no ticket office, but there is a ticket machine.  It's been decked out in bland grey with some splashes of corporate orange here and there.

It was already being well used when I arrived, with a dozen people disembarking with me (and one girl rushing down to the platform a full minute after the train had left; she tried to style it out, pulling her phone up and leaning on a wall, like she really wanted to hang out on a railway station for an hour).  

I went up to the road bridge, which has been gifted with a cycle lane and plenty of pedestrian space.  It turned out the town centre of Willenhall was less than a minute's walk from the new station; it could not have been more convenient.  I would've been pretty annoyed if I'd lived there in 1965 when it originally closed, removing a handy link, but there are so many reasons I'm glad I wasn't around in 1965 (grrr, Beeching!).

I didn't go into the town, instead turning right past a memorial and the library.  There was some lovely Festival of Britain font going on over the old entrance - there's a new glass one to the side, with disabled access - and the "flag of Willenhall" on a gatepost.  It was designed in 2014 and references the town's history as the home of lockmaking - it was the site of Yale's factory for decades. I am, officially, over flags in any way shape or form right now; the discourse has ground me down.  Sure, you want a flag, stick it up.  Stick up all the flags you like.  It won't make your wife come back.

The road twisted and turned, past a church tower and a half-dozen pubs - some open, some not.  Drinking culture has changed so much in the last couple of centuries as we've realised that (a) getting lashed on your lunch break probably isn't a good thing and (b) getting lashed in general isn't great for your health and certainly won't give you washboard abs.  It's sad seeing these former pleasure palaces laden with "for sale" signs but Britain is changing.  It's a new world, and that world involves protein shakes and gyms.  And also, let's be honest, quite a lot of cocaine.  It's a world I'll quietly absent myself from, and I'll be over here, resting a pint glass on my beer gut.

As I walked, it became clear that Willenhall was crying out for a fast, direct link into the city.  There were the occasional signs of regeneration - blocks of flats, new town houses - but mostly what I saw was post-industrial collapse.  Empty buildings.  Debris.  Sadness.  Small homes with peeling paint and grass growing out of their roofs.  

I passed The Meat Shop - a woman was emerging with a bulging white carrier bag, filled with who knew what - and a bus stop with a pair of giggling sixth formers flirting with one another.  TLC Bargains had a slogan of SMACK WHACK BANG and an astonishing Instagram account featuring "the Black Country Del Boy".  Please do check out the video where he extols the virtues of a spice grinder while wearing a pair of fake breasts.  I don't know why.

I turned right at the Sikh Gurdwara, as always enjoying the little bit of exoticism that had crashed landed into boring old England, and descended past a delicious-smelling McDonalds (it was lunchtime after all) towards the railway bridge.  The Robin Hood pub, judging by the cards on the back of the bench in the window, was hosting a birthday party.  Two elderly people came round from the car park, peered inside, then went in.  

The A454 quickly followed, passing over my head while the railway had gone underneath (there was a canal a bit further on, too; a rare one-two-three of transport).  In a layby, a truck driver sat in his cab and ate his lunch; a second van backed into the space next to him and the driver similarly pulled out a sandwich.  I was leaving the residential streets behind and moving into the industrial.

A company proudly celebrating its 29th anniversary with a special badge on the side of its unit - that's not how anniversaries work - and an ad for Darlaston Gym Boxing hung on a green fence.  At the traffic lights, a crane towered over my head, as I turned left to follow the long brick wall of the Imperial Works.  Once a nuts and bolt factory, it had become home to various engineering businesses over the years, but now seemed derelict.

It was obvious to me how Darlaston station would help this area.  It was thick with industry - trucks were constantly passing me or reversing - but there was still a lot of blank, vacant space that was crying out for a rebuild.  Offices, homes - you could slip them in here now, with a canal view and a local station.  It needed a bit of ambition and a lot of money but it could be done.

I avoided being run over by a self-drive hire van - they were still getting used to the controls, clearly, and were very apologetic as they lurched out of a side entrance - and passed a rack of traffic trapped in a four-way roadwork.  There were so many different businesses around, so many names I'd never heard of, doing work I'd never know about.  Receiving deliveries of who knew what, processing invoices from other small anonymous companies, making a nice little profit that bought the owner a decent car and paid for a Christmas party.  

Houses returned with a crash: a sudden block of old people flats and a row of 1970s houses.  One of them had torn up their lawn to replace it with a large, fake stone fountain, about two metres high.  Sadly the water wasn't turned on, otherwise I'd have nipped over to drop in a few coins and make a wish.

The new station isn't on Station Street; road changes have left this as a cut-through lined with a terrace on one side and garages on the other.  At the end, there was a vast self-storage unit.  The only business that seems to be expanding everywhere is storage, as we own more and more things but live in smaller and smaller homes.  

On top of the railway bridge I got a glimpse of the station below.  The embankments were still scarred from construction, bare and yet to be turfed, while a team of men with a tanker and a hose were doing some pumping on the newly laid drain - not a great sign, let's be honest.  They blocked the way for me to get a decent sign picture with their equipment so I'm afraid this is the best you'll get.  It does say Darlaston, I promise.

Actually getting into the station involved a walk up a long road that provided access to the neighbouring cemetery.  I got the feeling that TfWM didn't expect many people to walk to this stop, a suspicion confirmed when I rounded the corner and saw an acre of bare tarmac laid out for parking.  It was, I'd say, about 10% full, but it was early days.  I'm sure in a few months you'll find it hard to get a spot.

Like its brother at Willenhall, Darlaston station is no looker.  It gets the job done.  There are lifts to get you over the tracks, seats, a roof to hold off the rain.

Darlaston station won't change the world.  But it will improve a little part of it.  Get your wins where you can.

Closing Remarks

When it came to 2025 on the blog, the main phrase is "completion".  I completed the Amsterdam metro map, two years after almost doing it.  I completed the Stockholm metro map, one year after actually visiting every station but forgetting to take a picture at one, so that was more a way of satisfying my particular brand of OCD.  And finally, after six whole years, I finished the West Midlands Railway map. 

That last one is pretty bittersweet.  A lot of the enthusiasm for it was wrecked by Covid.  A period of not being able to travel anywhere, at all, meant that I got out of the habit of going round the rails.  I got out of the habit of leaving the house, to be frank, and I've still not properly recovered.  It became hard work.  It wasn't helped by the West Midlands not being Britain's most scenic area; it's difficult to motivate yourself to travel two hours to pootle around the back of industrial estates overlooked by gasholders and motorway flyovers.  There were undoubtably highlights - I will go on at length about Coventry to anyone who asks me - but I'm glad it's over.  

I will still have to go back.  The Severn Valley Railway reopened its line, following the landslip that cut off the end, so Bridgnorth is once again collectable.  What I'm really waiting for is the two new lines to open - the Camp Hill and Wolverhampton-Walsall routes - but they seem to be existing in a strange limbo state where they're sort of finished, but also not finished.

The highlight of the year was obviously my trip to Helsinki, which was great fun, and makes me wish I could travel all over Europe visiting stations.  I can't, of course, but I can dream, and I do have a spreadsheet all ready with how to do it.  If funds are available in 2026, I have two potential cities in mind, but really, if an eccentric billionaire wants to send me to Istanbul or Beijing or Sydney I'll happily do it.

The question is: what happens next?  I have a couple of ideas going forward.  One is hyper-local: a revisit of Merseyrail's stations and their surroundings in a bit more depth.  I started this blog in 2007 and some of those early entries are really basic, not exploring the local area, not really doing much in fact.  I thought that maybe it'd be interesting to have another look and see what's changed.  Not least my decrepit old face.  Unfortunately I did run this idea past one person and he responded very much in the negative, so that's sat in the back of my head.

My other thought was the Tyne and Wear Metro.  This is one of the few Metros in the UK and, apart from a little pootle about it when I stayed in Newcastle, I've not really touched it.  It's sixty stations, it's a lot of big city but also great scenery, and it would enable me to visit both Horden, which opened during lockdown and still remains unvisited, and the newly opened Ashington line.

What puts me off is that four hour trip across the north every time.  It'd be tiring and, as I discovered heading to Birmingham every time, it can get boring taking the same train over and over.  I'm in two minds.

I'd love to continue with this blog.  It's kept me going in many ways over the years and I love having a project on the go; the last six months without one have felt a little bit empty.  Obviously I'd love to go all over the UK, visit every station, go to every nook and cranny, but that's both impractical and expensive.  That'd involve hotels and passes and a level of commitment that'd be a struggle.  A boy can dream, eh?

As usual, I thank you for reading.  It's an increasingly dwindling readership in the 21st century, with most people doing videos or going over to other projects, but I am at heart a writer, and I can't sit there in front of a camera and push my ugly mug at you.  Thanks again.

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. 

The Bitter End

There are a lot of stations on the West Midlands Railway map.  One hundred and seventy, by my count, if you include the tram stops and the ones that don't actually get a railway service (I'm looking at you, Wedgewood).  It's a big old mass of orange that splays across the centre of England.

 

In 2019, I decided I was going to visit them all.  

 

I'd already been to some of them.  Crewe, Macclesfield and the like; the ones that overlapped with the Northern map.  And one day in 2013, I went to the three stations at the heart of Birmingham: Snow Hill, Moor Street, and New Street.  I didn't need to go back.  I'd already collected them.  But I didn't feel like I could, in all conscience, say I'd finished the West Midlands Railway map unless I went back.

 

 

So here I was: older, fatter, greyer.  Stood outside Birmingham Snow Hill taking a picture.

 

Snow Hill is one of those stations that closed in the Seventies for reasons that feel unfathomable today.  A mainline station at the head of an underground tunnel is something most big cities would kill for in 2025: a Victorian Crossrail.  British Rail did close it, though, and in true Birmingham style, it now sits underneath a multi-storey car park.

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.