Tag: New Street

January 16th – As much as I’m growing to loathe the results of the renovation of New Street Station in Birmingham, the process is still fascinating me. One of the things I like about it is how normal conventions of public buildings are broken. There is serious civil engineering going on at the same time as huge numbers of people and trains pass through this humming interchange..

Odd things happen.

Personnel appear from hidden doorways and gaps. There are odd noises and bangs. Occasionally, you get sprayed with water, or dust. Lifts and stairs appear, and then are boarded up again. cables dangle and tangle above the headspaces, and snake and race through the girders and scaffold.

One of the things you see here you don’t elsewhere is engineering graffiti. Surveyors measure. Sparkies test. Cladders clad. All of them leave their marks and datums scribbled on walls, floors and hoardings. Sometimes, they make sense. Often, they’re just mysterious glyphs, whose purpose is only known to those with the skill. I love how they ebb and flow with the focus of the work.

Spotting them is something to do while you wait…

January 7th – ‘New’ New Street Station concourse this morning. The Christmas tree erected here at an annoying, but rather apposite list way back in December is still up.

This is pretty crap, really. Couldn’t they schedule engineering work to take it down?

Only 50% of my train services today were cancelled or delayed, so there was some solace. On Monday, it was 75%.

December 5th – It wasn’t a great day for train travel in the Midlands (or the rest of the country, for that matter). Signal failures led to horrid delays getting to work, and storm damage mainly caused by falling trees stopped lines to Walsall and Lichfield during the afternoon and evening, so I cycled home from Brum and gave the trains a miss completely.

I noted that Notwork Fail have this year put up a lush, artificial Christmas Tree in the ‘New’ New Street.

It’s irritatingly not straight, buy very apposite.

November 21st – At the other end of the day, it was even colder. But the air had developed that hard, glassy-clear quality that it only really develops in winter; when even sounds seem sharper. I noticed as I hopped between stations that the view of the mid-renovation New Street Station, Bullring and Smallbrook from the access bridge was quite stunning, so I stopped to photograph it a while.

Quite surprised I wasn’t collared by the ever-present security as I took these, to be honest…

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.

October 9th – A casual observer might think I had a downer on the project to renovate and upgrade New Street Station in Birmingham. I haven’t particularly, but in my opinion the design leaves much to be desired, both functionally and aesthetically. A good example of the aesthetic horror of the design is the polished stainless steel cladding being erected on the Stephenson Place facade. Unsealed, and hanging from girder work erected on the surface of the old Pallisades centre, again, it stinks of bodge and bad taste. The mirror surface looks tatty to me; adjacent sheets  don’t always meet perfectly and where the sheets are pinned, the surface is often distorted and looks dented and cheap. 

Compared to the iconic and stunning Selfridges building, this looks like something dreamt up on a bad Saturday in the pub by a crazed Meccano fan. I dread to think what the rest of it will look like when complete…

September 10th – This just in from the ‘You’re having a bloody laugh’ department. A I noted last week, security at the bike parking facilities in the ‘new’ New Street Station is notoriously bad. Daily, the tally of thefts and vandalism increases. Notwork Fail, in their wisdom, stonewall any criticism or constructive comment.

Today, I noted they’ve been pro-active. They have pasted up a life-size photo of a copper on the hoarding behind the racks. 

This has to be a joke. Fellow cyclists, Network Rail are taking the piss.

(Sorry about the poor quality close-up, taking photos at New Street is frowned upon)

August 29th – The bike parking at New Street Station is still rubbish. Theoretically covered by CCTV, thefts are rife and stripped bike carcasses appear every day. If you need to park bikes in Brum, don’t park here. If you do, learn to lock your bike properly. What’s happening here is that thieves are stealing bikes who have one wheel locked by undoing it, then nicking a compatible wheel from another bike, and riding the composite off into the sunset.

New Street’s bike facilities are a disgrace.

Learn to lock your bike properly.

May 20th – A small result. The bike racks at Birmingham New Street Station – relocated to a dark corner on the the opening of the new concourse – were formerly only bolted to the ground and could easily be disassembled by thieves to steal users steeds. I noticed this morning that the ordinary nuts securing the Sheffield frames had been replaced with shear nuts, which are nigh-on impossible to remove. For added security, they’ve been bonded on with thread lock adhesive. This makes them much more secure.

I hope Network Rail have learned something from the bad publicity here. It ain’t rocket science really, is it?

May 9th – I went to Leicester today. This involved catching a train from Platform 12 at New Street. Platform 12 is rapidly becoming the platform nine and three quarters of the New Street, new start project. It’s the bête noire of the whole place – hard to get to by lift and without yet any of the benefits of the rebuild. To get to it using lifts involves a complicated route that would challenge Mario the plumber, but main access is from the still open old access bridge, which feels oddly end-of-days now. The advertising hoardings have gone, sections of false ceiling are missing and huge hanks of data cable hang in the exposed rafters. It’s grubby, dark, and people move cautiously and quickly past boarded up doorways, sheets of polythene and purposeful technicians in hi-viz.

Oddly, the cafes are still open here, due to the new units not being ready in the revamped side, but the pub is stripped. There’s lots of noise here, the death rattle of a once bustling place, being changed forever.