Tag: New Street

November 24th – I’ve been starting early and working late a lot lately, and the tiredness is showing, so apologies for limited subject matter. Things should improve next week.

I found myself returning from a meeting late with time to kill at New Street, and the air of quiet, almost reverent dislocation that sets in there at about 8pm continues to enthral and captivate me. This station swallows large numbers of people and hides them from each other, so even when quite busy, the station appears deserted in places.

This was really feeding my Late Night Feelings vibe: the forced perspective of platforms, the train waiting for the red light to turn green. The solitary lady, perfectly framed by the identifier for platform 8, her face lit in the gloom by the light of her phone.

And then, 45 weary minutes on, Walsall, desolate and beautiful in the same way.

What is it about me and stations at night?

November 9th – Passing through New Street on a drizzly, cold November evening, I caught the lights and signals of New Street mingling with the city skyline, centre stage the brilliant Brutalist gem, Alpha Tower.

One of the joys of winter is seeing this view, the signals, the reassurance of light, warmth, machinery safely in control and life above going on as normal.

Birmingham is glorious in it’s beauty sometimes.

September 30th – The rest of Birmingham, from Snow Hill to Soho, from Victoria Square to the Bull Ring, was carrying on regardless, as it tends to do – the architecture as ever was a joy, as were the crowded streets and very changeable weather. 

Birmingham has progressed massively in my lifetime. But I still adore it. It’s a wonderful place. 

Birmingham – please never stop changing.

January 27th – Awful day. Horrible commute in rain and a headwind, loads to do then I had to nip into Birmingham. Coming back, New Street was rammed, the train back was awful and I just wanted to be home.

The top photo really illustrates the hogwash on ‘Grand Central’ – or the ‘remodelled’ New Street. The platforms are still cramped. It’s still very, very dark down there. The new cladding only covers bits that can be seen from the street. And nothing has been done to alleviate the terrible train congestion that dogs the station.

Climbing off at Walsall, I was expecting a following wind, which didn’t show up. But Walsall Station, splendid in it’s isolation, was as haunting as ever.

Those Late Night Feelings again.

December 16th – New Street, mid morning. These are not photos of the station pre-upgrade, but afterwards. Some of it may be improved later, but nothing shows the  shallowness of the turd-polish this project really was than this view; just a little away from a main route through the station, bare 60s concrete, dirty 80s cladding and ugly, dark structures. 

New Street looks stunning in press photos from the concourse, and from the streets nearby; but use it and you soon realise that the Emperor has no clothes and the station is still failing, still unpleasant and still unfit for purpose.

You can’t polish a turd, as the saying goes, but they have rolled this one in glitter.

November 30th – New Street again, but early morning feelings rather than late night ones. Seven in the morning, steady rain, not yet clear of the night before.

Something about the light, machinery, wet urban surfaces, overhead wires and signals spoke quietly of urban strength, reassurance, safety, control. Alpha Tower in the distance stood as a fixing to location.

My feelings towards this place are ambivalent these days. But this morning, on the darkest and most miserable of days, something beautiful happened and it took my breath away.

It’s what Birmingham does, and I suspect has always done.

November 27th – Passing through New Street mid day, I was again struck by the contrast between the media hype of a reborn station, and the grim, badly maintained reality of the place itself. Those brick arches are probably the oldest remainder of the original station, and it wouldn’t surprise me were they to be Victorian. They should be made a feature, but they are decaying, stained and lie mostly unnoticed. Even some of the lights above them have given up.

Closer to the central area of the same platform, a gap in the above-platform construction lets the rain and wind howl in, concentrated and focussed by the angles and surfaces. No shiny cladding here, as it’s not outward facing. Just original 60s concrete and cheap white cladding.

A notice on the platform says ‘Mind the gap’ – the credibility gap is more hazardous.

November 19th – The Queen herself today travelled to Birmingham (by train, which won’t have been delayed and will have had a working toilet) to open a station that hadn’t closed and has merely been subject to having a retail opportunity badly assembled on top, and is still unfinished.

Brenda won’t have had to walk up a static escalator, or pull a pushchair up the stairs. She won’t have seen the dingy, grim end of platforms where the 1980s access bridge hasn’t even been granted a clean down.

Someone once said that Royalty must think everywhere smells of fresh paint. In Birmingham tonight, on a late journey from home, the overpowering smell was more reminiscent of the farmyard.

Oh, and Phil – we do speak English. Chances are Shakespeare would sound more like our tongue than the fabricated received English of the Windsors (and spousal attachments).

November 5th – Off to Telford, and another wet, warm commute. That wonderful autumn has come to a very soggy, miserable end. I stood on New Street watching the people, signals and trains as the drizzle softened the light. I must have spent hundreds of hours waiting here over the years. This station is in my blood like the traffic fumes and air of the city, and although I hate the state of it, and what’s been done to it, I still love the place.

I find as I get older my relationship with urban spaces is getting more and more complicated. These are still my places, but I feel much more ambivalent about them now. I’m not sure I like it.

October 23rd – Unusually, I’ve passed through Birmingham New Street Station a lot this week. It doesn’t really get any easier, and although it’s home, and something I’m fond of, it’s still difficult: down on the platforms it’s still 1970, and all the posh lights and fascias can’t change the fact that even in the nicest weather it’s dark, dingy, cold and often wet.

I often look at folk on the other platforms, and wonder where they’re headed, and if they’re as ambivalent about this place as I am…