Tag: odd

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.

March 23rd – Even the snow was odd today. I’ve never seen it like this before – at about 4pm it was a very fine flake, long and thin, like a tiny rod about 4-6mm long. So insubstantial, that the merest touch or breath melted it. I suppose it must be the way the water vapour and air currents formed it, but is was fascinating and beautiful.

March 13th – Anyone know the number of a good plumber? On the southeastern side of Tyseley Station, there’s a train wash, where trains from the nearby depot are cleaned after daily service. When I passed this morning, there appeared to be something of a malfunction. Water (I assume it was water) was issuing from a pipe joint on the control cabin right onto the track.

Looks like a split pipe. I wonder how long it had been going on? It was fixed by my return, 7 hours later.

January 28th – Birmingham New Street Station is undergoing huge alterations at the moment, and is overrun buy people involved in the reconstruction. Sometimes, they almost seem to match in number the passengers; they emerge from hatches and previously unnoticed doorways, often surveying, taking measurements or gazing at ceilings. There’s clearly a lot of thought going on.

I keep noticing these tiny target symbols in odd locations about the station. About 20mm square, they have a precision cross-hair on them and a unique number , and they’re printed on reflective material. They’re vital to operations here, but I suspect few ever notice them.

They’re measurement datums. A theodolite – either placed in position by an engineer, or permanently sited in an out of the way spot – will focus on this target, and accurate geometrical measurements can be made, indicating if the target, or the wall it’s attached to, has moved, or to precisely locate some other measurement. Automatic systems will do this across multiple visible datums repeatedly, unattended, and alert engineers if there’s any change.

I suspect this is part of an automatic monitoring system as it’s above normal working, and therefore, crowd height, just to the left of the telephone kiosk roof.

Civil engineering is getting more and more sophisticated.

January 6th – I have absolutely no idea what to make of this. Reader and top friend of the Brownhills Blog Rose Burnell had tipped me off the previous day that there was a CV pinned to a board outside the tyre sales place on Co-op  corner in Brownhills. I checked it out, and she was quite right. I’m not sure the sign was thought out enough, but ten out of ten for optimism. 

Sign of the times, or a brave punt for a new job in an increasingly hard world? I’ve no idea, but best of luck, my friend. 

I wish you the very best of luck.

November 9th – I’m fascinated by this bit of structural joinery at Blake Street Station. It’s nothing more than the wooden frame supporting the access steps to the Birmingham bound platform, but the way they’re erected is a work of art. At the base, they’re chocked level with two pairs  of perfectly cut reverse acting wedges. You don’t see that very often these days. I’d be interested to know how old this assembly is – had it been crated today, it would be a steel framework with jacking bolts, so it must be at least 2 or 3 decades old. The precision of the wedges makes me smile every time I see them. That was a joiner who understood his art.

October 25th – A much better day. The weather has cleared as we’re apparently moving to a cold snap. The air was clear and sharp, and only the odd patch of drizzle persisted as I left work. I had stuff to do in Birmingham and wanted to visit the Night Market in Walsall later in the evening, and at teatime found myself at Snow Hill Station heading for my favourite coffee shop for food and a cuppa.

Snow Hill was rebuilt in the 1980’s, and today I spotted a feature I’ve never noticed before, that has me completely baffled. I’ve used this station hundreds of times, yet never noticed this. Much of the concourse are is tiled in old-style plain, but highly glazed ceramic tiles. On the wall opposite the steps from platforms 1 and 2 is an inset detail of a cat. I could find no other instance of the is decoration, and have no idea why it’s there, about 18 inches off the floor. Is it a reference to a station cat of times past, or some other piece of whimsy? Any ideas?

February 26th – It was a day of discarded objects, but this was odd. A single, high quality aluminium crutch, in the scrub on the inaccessible side of the canal near the aqueduct on the Anglesey Branch in Brownhills. I don’t know how it came to be there, or why. It’s vaguely unsettling. One possible explanation is that a miracle was performed here, whilst the participants were walking on water. Yeah, that’ll be it…

May 21st – NCN 5 – the cycle track from the former cement works canal bridge near Pelsall Road to the the old level crossing at Engine Lane. This is either alcoholic OCD or too much time on someone’s hands. It’s a bit odd, because if you remove the cans, they’re replaced soon after. I don’t know either. Brownhills never has operated in the conventional space-time continuum.