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The reason the operators were so close together was that each operator had access to both her own board and the boards each side. Women worked the day shift, men took over for the night shift. Years ago, I served on a committee where the chairman was a night telephone operator so meetings always...

Some calls can be genuine but how do you know? Yesterday I had a phone call 'This is an urgent call about your gas bill. Press any key to hear the message.' I just put the phone down. However, later I did go online to pay my gas bill. Before you ask I do not authorise a direct debit on my gas...

All this work costs money and is included in the cost we hear of HS2. No credit is ever given for these non railway benefits to the environment.

Lyn, If you find the report, perhaps you should send a copy to the city planning office. I don't know if they still have an archaeologist in the planning department checking these things or perhaps that is a job that has gone.

A variation on Park and Ride

Although there is no parking, there will be the Kiss and Rides driving in, parking all over the place and driving out. At my local station this is a problem at 4.0pm with the schoolkids getting off the train and again 5.30-6.30pm with the workers coming home..

There used to be an open air carpark between Stannier House (don't know if that is still its name since it ceased to be railway offices) and the entrance to the tunnel. I often used the carpark on Saturday afternoons after 3.30pm when the attendant went off duty so I could park for free. One day...

The sorting office now know as the Mailbox did have a tunnel to New Street Station but that was for the little electric tugs pulling the trailers carrying the mailbags that you used to see coming up the ramps onto the platforms at the station. These ramps have all been taken away. The tunnel...

I was surprised to see Ind Coope on a Birmingham pub so I did a bit of research and find that they had a number of pubs in Birmingham and they list the Shakespeare Inn, Great Colmore Street as owned in 1901. Are we sure that this photo is of the Lower Temple Street pub?

I missed the first 20 minutes of the programme but was able to see it again by going on to My5 on the internet

Remember Count Curly Wee in the Birmingham Mail. My mother used to read it to me. This would be around 1950. I might have cut them out and stuck them in a scrapbook

I have heard a story recently that the German bombers during the war used the Birmingham & Gloucester Railway as their guide intending to bomb Longbridge. However they were using out of date maps which showed the Cofton Tunnel still in place so they continued to follow the tracks and mistook the...

There was a maternity home in Lordswood Road. I think it is the building known as Dore House which is now a care home.

I noticed on the Walsall trolleybuses, and it is a long time since I was on a Walsall trollybus, that the rope only reached to the top of the stairs, presumably to ensure that the conductor had to have direct visual contact with the platform rather than relying on the mirror.

I always thought London were really antiquated with bell ropes even on the Routemasters long after Midland Red. London's Gibson ticket machines looked like something barely out of the Bell Punch days.

This was why the three bus routes operated jointly with West Bromwich Corporation were numbered 220, 221 and 252

I remember them as uppercase but one letter above the other on the left side of the destination blinds to show the garage to which the bus was allocated, SN being Sutton, BD Bearwood. OY Oldbury, DH Digbeth, DY Dudley etc.

Pugin's St Chad's Cathedral is more usually compared with the cathedrals and churches of Germany rather than the Gothic Notre Dame Paris. Because of the restrictions on the site it had to be constructed in brick rather than stone. The second tower and spire was a later addition by Pugin's son...

I have seen that advert several times. I would love that option but what comes to mind immediately is the old phrase 'If it looks too good to be true, then it probably is'. There is no way that the train operators could justify a promotional scheme such as that as the principle of promos is that...

Interesting that Ash and Lacy were in Deritend and Great Bridge whereas I knew of them in Smethwick. I invited Fane Vernon, MD of the company to be the guest speaker at a formal dinner in 1978 when I was president of Birmingham Junior Chamber of Commerce.