Thanks for posting those photos Ragga...it really takes me back since there are not many photos of the front of the station and the Queen's Hotel. Basically,New Street Station, although my work place, I entered my office through the white arch every working day for the 18months I worked there. ....it was also a playground of sorts for me. I could basically go anywhere on the station in 1957 when I started working there. I remember going down to see Duchesses and the Castles , very often at Platform One getting ready for their journeys with a team of workers making sure everything was in order. I wish I had had a camera to record those moments.
Of course, I was older than when I went to Lawrence's College just up the road in Corporation Street in the early l950's. I loved the blazing fires in the Waiting Rooms that usually blazed on all day for no one to appreciate. Someone had a job in the winter to keep the fires going and they did that job well. It was really great to spend a lunch hour with your sandwiches and a book in front of one of these fires in the winter. The usual battles occurred in the office about how long the windows should remain open and even then there was an awful incinerator just below our office windows which didn't deter the fresh air brigade....so escaping to any Waiting Room with a blazing fire in the grate in the middle of Winter was very welcome during the cold winter months at lunchtime.