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.

Pub Walks

 

Climb the footbridge at Berkswell and you get a pretty standard view of a railway station.  Tracks, a car park, gantries.  Turn to the left though and you can see the future.

One day this will be the Balsall Common Viaduct, a blade of white and grey concrete scything through the countryside and carrying HS2 trains to Birmingham.  The high-speed railway project continues, quietly, avoiding controversy, avoiding attention, a massive construction project that is cutting a diagonal across England.  When it's finished, we'll all be convinced it was always a great idea and we were actually always for it and complaining it doesn't go to more places.  Right now, it's a series of cranes and exposed earthworks that point to a brave new world.

Berkswell is actually closer to the village of Balsall Common, something which clearly irritates the local who wrote the Wikipedia page ("Even though the station is situated in the far larger community of Balsall Common, there are currently no plans to revert its name back to the more accurate ‘Berkswell & Balsall Common’).  British railway station names are a special magic, dear, and actually telling you where they are is probably about eighth on their list of priorities.

They did have a point, mind, because stepping out of the station brought me immediately into Balsall Common.  A long road of executive houses, two stories, each one subtly different enough to its neighbour to make it exclusive.  Wide stretches of driveway and carefully tended lawns, some of them with the must have 21st century addition, automatic gates with a video keypad.

It brought me to a pleasingly dense village centre.  My main beef with country living can be summarised as where do you get a pint of milk?  You're making a cup of tea, you've run out of milk; can you get somewhere in ten minutes to buy a replacement carton?  Usually the answer is a village store where the prices are hiked and the opening hours are erratic, which is why I prefer city living, but Balsall Common had a Tesco Express, as well as a Costa and a Domino's.  There were local businesses too, a pharmacy, an estate agent, a smattering of restaurants and takeaways - yet it was still unmistakably a village.  This was perhaps the halfway house between town and country I'd been looking for.

I followed the A452 north for a while.  Somewhere, behind the trees and the houses, construction work for HS2 continued, but I couldn't see any sign of it, and the traffic noise drowned out any digging.  I ducked down a side street lined with Victorian villas and thick hedges that overhung the pavement until the houses gave up completely and I was striding down the centre of a country lane.

There were two possible routes from Berkswell to my next station, Hampton-in-Arden: one to the east of the railway line and one to the west.  The one to the east had more appeal for me at first.  It was the one that would shadow the HS2 works, and would have avoided Balsall Heath entirely for a completely rural walk.  However, looking at the maps, I became anxious that footpaths and back roads would be severed by the construction.  I didn't fancy walking three miles to find myself in a dead end and having to turn back.

The western route wasn't quite so exciting but I swiftly fell for it.  Walking across fields and through trees, totally alone, the only accompaniment the sound of birds and the rustle of leaves.  I fell into a gleeful stupor, lost to my thoughts, lost in the landscape.

It wasn't anything special.  There weren't mountains or epic water features.  It was quiet, gentle.  The land rose and fell without drama.  It was still, unmistakably, undeniably, beautiful, a swathe of spring that I was happily trekking through.

My reverie was interrupted by a police helicopter swinging overhead.  We were still close to Birmingham Airport, and the motorways, and the city; this wasn't anywhere near as isolated as my fantasies told me.  The helicopter swooped once, then back again, then back again, and I suddenly realised that I was a man all alone in a field and that might be exactly what they were looking for.  They were barking into their radios - we've found the pervert sarge - and I was blithely strolling.  I tried to make the top of my head look as innocent as possible and finally it vanished from sight.

I cut across the backs of farm houses, long lawns scattered with plastic children's toys, and then behind a row of holiday cottages.  Each had a glass conservatory on the back and a mean fence with barbed wire and gravel on the path to give away intruders; an unpleasantly cynical spot.  A couple of stiles, a walk through some stinging nettles that decided to scrape every inch of my naked shins, then I was approaching a golf club.

I had built up a small fantasy about this part of the walk.  My Ordnance Survey had shown a large lake on the edge of the golf club, with a public footpath running down one side.  I imagined the ruddy-faced golfers, furious at me wandering onto their hallowed patch, while I produced the map and shouted "right of way!" at them.  I pictured them impotently cursing - perhaps throwing their silly little golfing tam o'shanters on the floor in frustration - while I strolled alongside the lake, smug.

Virtually every part of this little playlet I'd concocted was incorrect.  The golf club didn't turn its back on walkers round the lake; in fact, it encouraged them.  There were fishing spots built into the banks and numerous signs encouraging people to use their facilities.  The gentle, lonely, waterside stroll, meanwhile?  Absolute nonsense.  I'd seen fewer pedestrians on the A452.  There were dog walkers, hikers, elderly couples out for an afternoon stroll.

And the fishermen! Every other spot was occupied by a single man with a vast array of very expensive looking equipment.  Rods in various shapes and lengths.  Nets and tents and wagons.  Mysterious electronic devices.  These weren't fishermen, they were fishermen, taking their sport incredibly seriously and spending accordingly.  It was a weekday afternoon and yet they'd all carved out time and energy to sit by a lake.  I didn't see a single fish, by the way.

I followed a young couple with a pitbull who were unashamedly smoking a joint until I found a spot I could overtake them and get out of their oversweet wake.  I crossed a small wooden bridge and emerged from the woods to see Hampton-in-Arden in the distance.  It wasn't quite the shining city on the hill, but it was much welcome.

By this point I was starting to flag.  It had been a long, active day, in roasting heat with very little cover.  I could feel my skin prickling and burning, and in the next few days it would turn a lovely shade of brown.  My knees were starting to complain - I may not be young - and I was down to my last bottle of water.  It didn't matter though, because there was a pub.  A little country pub.

I crossed a field of random horsey material - jumps, barrels, and a white plastic chair for the overseer to watch from - then walked down a narrow alleyway to the fringes of Hampton-in-Arden.  I was, it turned out, at the bottom of the hill, and the village was at the top.  With a sigh, I hauled my flagging carcass up the slope, pausing to rest on the odd wall, thinking about that pub.  That pub.

Hampton-in-Arden looked exactly how a village called Hampton-in-Arden should look.  Rustic weatherbeaten cottages.  Painted plaster exteriors.  A quiet church surrounded by trees and a silent graveyard.  A coffee shop, closed, but promising sweet treats and locally sourced produce.  It was English to an embarrassing degree.

I headed for the pub.

I will admit, I was slightly put off by the blackboard outside.  Next right - Ibiza-style garden.  That wasn't why I was here.  An Ibiza-style garden would wreck my English fantasia.  I didn't want to have teenagers "largin' it" and drinking fishbowl cocktails while pounding Eurobeats shook the foundations.  I consoled myself with the thought that I didn't want to sit outside anyway; I wanted to be inside with a nice cool pint.  I worked my way round the building to the entrance.

The Ibiza-style garden turned out to be some plastic grass with garden chairs on it; if that's what Ibiza's like I'm not sure why Pete Tong keeps going back.  There were a couple of ladies sat on the chairs, vaping, while indeterminate music played.  I tried the door.  It was locked.

"It don't open until five, love," one of the women called.

NO! screamed my brain.  NO NO NO!  That pub had kept me going,  I had two hours until my pre-booked train home.  I was going to spend it getting lightly toasted in a genteel English pub.  This ruined everything.  

I smiled at the woman.  "Oh really?  Thank you."  Inside my brain said burn in hell, harlot.

Hampton-in-Arden was dead to me after that.  It could be as charming and pretty as it liked; having one pub and not having it open in the day meant it was basically a cultural desert and deserved to be bombed into a crater.  

Oh look, a characterful war memorial on a picturesque village green surrounded by trees.  Go shove it up your hoop.

I grumpily stalked to the railway station.  Instead of loitering on the platform until my scheduled train I'd buy a ticket into Birmingham; at least I could find something to occupy me at New Street for a couple of hours.  (A pub, perhaps).  Fortunately, Hampton-in-Arden's station wasn't especially pretty.

I headed down to the platform and drank my bottle of water.  It tasted like ashes in my mouth.  It could've been a lovely beer and instead it was water.  I hated it.  I hated this village.

I may have a problem.