Tag: Birmingham

November 14th – I spotted this interesting – if slightly bizarre – fixie locked to the railings outside Moor Street Station. That’s actually a really nice frame, and is quite old, although I think something’s been done to the bottom bracket looking at the dark marks on the frame. I didn’t look at the time, as I never noticed. I wished I had. 

That’s a great set of wheels, and quite a high gear ratio, but the chain needs an oil and retension.

What’s with the ball-crushing saddle angle? And the oh-shit! brake lever is front-acting, but mounted left handed, USA style. Note the way narrow bars, too. 

This is the steed of a serious hipster. Fascinating.

October 30th – I spotted this yesterday, but it’s surprisingly hard to photograph. Growing from the thinnest of fissures in a capstone 20ft above Park Street in Birmingham, a small shrub. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s bearing the most beautiful red berries. It’s way out of reach beyond the platform fence of Moor Street Station, where the line crosses the street below. Here, the parapets and abutments of the bridge ramble and cross, and this small plant is clearly thriving, unseen, unchecked and unappreciated, presumably seeded by the local birdlife.

Give nature half a chance and it’s in like Flynn. Wonderful.

October 28th – The shift from BST to GMT and the earlier fall of darkness is always depressing, but it did allow me to catch a great sunset sky over Birmingham on my way home tonight. The inclement weather had left the door open for the cold, and it felt like winter out there, cold, dark and intemperate.

Better get used to it quickly, I guess…

October 28th – The dire storms predicted and anticipated never reached the Midlands, although they caused fatalities and damage down in London. This led to many trains being cancelled, and knock-on effects being felt across the rail network. Moor Street Station, usually brilliantly run by Chiltern Trains, slipped up. When I turned up to catch my train, the whole passenger information system – including the displays on the platforms – was showing a message of total cancellations, with no local services listed. I was just about to turn tail and head down to Tyseley by bike, when a Stourbridge train rolled in. It turned out, local trains were running fairly normally, and the delays were only on London bound services.

Why on earth you’d choose not to point that out on the main information screens I have no idea – I bet more local passengers pass this way in a week than London ones. 

I guess this is what happens when a London-centric company gets to run faraway stations: only the London view matters.

October 10th – In Birmingham late, and the autumn has brought the night back, actually with some shock to me at the time. I emerged from a function to find the city at its very best; light, hard surfaces, wet paving and exaggerated perspective. I only had minutes until my train left, and grabbed quick shots around the Cathedral area. My train turned out to be late, so taking my life in my hands, I took some on the platforms of a darkened New Street Station, where a combination of ongoing construction and desertion make the environment fascinating.

I love playing with photography at night, and there’s no better place than at the city sliding into its own wonderful nocturne.

September 27th – Returning to Birmingham from the somewhat disappointing Cycle Show at the NEC, I was reminded whilst walking a relatively short distance through the city centre that there really is a cycling boom going on; you’d never have seen cycles in such numbers around the place as you do now. And these are real machines, as opposed to the pristine new stuff that I’d seen that morning. Bikes of all ages, types and sizes, from BMX to fixies, all carrying the patina of their owners – the stickers, modifications, adjustments and dirt that go to making a bike your very own.

It’s good to see. 

September 11th – A very peculiar day. I had something important to do in the morning, and was expecting to be out of action for the rest of the day. As it happened, the morning didn’t take quite the toll I expected it to and I went to work. Staying late, I came back home as darkness fell. I can’t really put my finger on it, but I’m really taking a serious dislike to the ‘new’ New Street Station. The platform access is now at the one end, and the space down there is restricted and made claustrophobic by the ever-changing hoardings. Passenger information screens are not positioned in useful points anymore, and the cramped lifts, already scuffed and grubby decor in the upper concourse all stink of compromise and bodge.

This is not a transport hub undergoing a Lepidoptera style emergence from the cocoon of renovation, but a desperate attempt to polish a turd that should have been flushed years ago.