Tag: Station

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.

July 23rd -By the time of my return, the sun was shining hazily, and things seemed to be drying out a bit. It was still threatening, but the ride home was dry and uneventful. At Nuneaton, the light was interesting, and highlighted the exaggerated perspective of the railway and it’s architecture. I love the accentuated vanishing point, the repetition and recursion. The forest of overhead metalwork – every member in that mess of stanchion, gantry and wire does something. 

For a quite simple idea, the railway is incredibly complex and deeply fascinating.

July 16th – I noticed something today that’s puzzling me. I doubt many others have ever registered it, and even fewer probably care, but it appeals to my sense of lost history. I noticed today that Tyseley Station once had a lift, or at least, the evidence points to it.

I noticed some time ago there was a tower attached to the station building, contemporary with the rest of the structure, that had no apparent door or way in. It’s a few metres taller than the main building, and is about the size of a lift shaft, but there’s no evidence of it in the booking hall, where the tiles and fittings look original and undisturbed from new.

Down at track level on platforms 1 & 2, there is a low, bricked up doorway with a modern door built in. The platform island ramps down to it. It’s the only access to the tower I can see.

At pavement level, three sides of the tower are plain, and blank (the terracotta paint is covering graffiti, note the continuous texture of the brickwork underneath) – the other side of the tower can be seen in this image series from last week.

I do hope some passing railway buff can help with this. Was it a lift? If so, why? What did it convey? Who used it?

It’s an odd little mystery all of it’s own.

July 10th – Slowly, but surely, the temporary mast at Sutton Coldfield is being dismantled. I explained a month ago how a crane was fixed to the upper stages, and the structure was dropped carefully, piece by piece. 

Today I noticed the DAB antenna were in the process of being stripped. These are the spiky structures clustered around the main mast in one spot, for about a 6th of the total height. If you look carefully at the bottom picture, you can see where cables, once connected to the elements are now hanging free.

It was a dull, overcast day, and I was hoping to catch a team at work up there, but have still yet to see one. 

This is remarkable, painstaking work by very, very uniquely skilled people.

July 9th – One of the best things about sunny weather is it makes yo pay attention to shadows, and the way sunlight passes through things you might not ordinarily notice. Today, leaving Tyseley station, I noticed the supporting steelwork for the old glass canopy on the station front. There can be no doubt that when it was erected, this station was in a prosperous area, and was a grand affair. These days, the heavy, hand-wrought and hot riveted scrollwork is incongruous on a down at heel, suburban station. 

It speaks of a better past, and is rather gorgeous.

June 27th – I came home in a rainstorm. It was drizzling steadily as I left Leicester, and it was steady, too, at Nuneaton. By Lichfield Trent Vally, is was heavy, and driven by an evil wind. I battled home without waterproof trousers, I was soaked, the traffic was horrid. Summer this year seems elusive…

June 27th – a third day at Leicester, and another day admiring the flowers at South Wigston. I’m not sure if that’s a thistle (it wasn’t spiky) or a type of cornflower. Even the dandelions going to seed are pretty. Nothing has done more to make me look closely at the margins, the unwanted, the wasteland, than this place. Beautiful.