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This is a fascinating story. I find it frustrating because I must have travelled literally hundreds of times on the 5 and 107 bus services before they were diverted away from Loveday Street in the 1950s, and I should have some memory of that building on the corner of Lower Loveday Street and...

That photo is a real monster panorama. Lots to drool over on that, even if most of the old stuff has gone.The 'Eagle and Tun' on the far left of the picture has been closed for at least four years now. I did go in just once before and had a half of Guinness - nothing else I fancied there. The...

Thanks, Thylacine, for the link to the 'Tramway and Railway World' issue from 1908. I can remember going through copies in the Birmingham Central Reference Library from 1949. After I moved to London and settled down I started using the Patent Office Library in Holborn in the mid 1960s. Once you...

Carl Chinn's book "Brum Undaunted" gives a good summary of the German air raids on Birmingham. He quotes a lady's claim that she saw a plane fly over Birches Green on the first day of the war, heard two bangs and later saw two craters in Rookery Park. He adds that this is not supported in...

Reluctant as I am to interrupt the incredible dialogue between our Midland Red stars, (after all, two's company; three's a crowd) I would just like to add a piece about an early member of the Startin Family. CAPITAL HOUSE IN NEWHALL STREET. November 29th, 1802. — To be Let, a very good House...

Hello Liz, The history of the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company Ltd. is not very well recorded. The Birmingham Wagon Company Ltd was registered on 20 March 1855 to acquire a firm founded the previous year, and it seems that this company adopted the full title just quoted in November...

I can remember being taken in a party round Miller Street depot in the very early 1950s. The big brick building on the corner of Miller Street and Moorsom Street never had any trams in it. It had a big door on the corner without tram tracks, and inside was used mainly for storing breakdown...

I certainly find all this early history fascinating, but I appreciated that not everybody does. What I think is important that this research and discussion continues and gets put down on record. Sooner or later I think the internet will be mightier than the pen (or the book). So long as it...

The Wythall Museum's a very friendly place, too. I have very warm memories of meeting Lloyd and others on my birthday party outing there two years ago. I think the others enjoyed themselves, too. Peter Walker

My goodness, we are learning an awful lot on this thread. It is amazing what discussion can do to sort out facts. This is one of the strengths of this forum. Keep up the good work! Peter Walker.

Shortie, It was nice to meet you earlier today at the Black Eagle. This was the other reference that I was talking about - excerpts from J A Langford ‘Century of Birmingham Life, 1741-1841’: "In 1752 we read that the weighing machine was bought by the Overseers, and that the profit was to be...

Brummie 60, Sorry can't tell you where the name Cooksey came from, but I can tell you that Cooksey Road, Small Heath was adopted by the Corporation in 1878, and first appeared in the Kelly's Directory for that year. Part of it still exists, running about 500 yards west of Golden Hillock Road...

You're not the only having trouble. I find it best to put a copy of any picture I want to use on the desktop and then (hopefully) remember to put it back where it came from after you've finished copying it. Otherwise the desktop soon gets cluttered. Peter.

Thanks for the picture Mike. It is one of only two I know of which show a horse tram in Victoria Square. The original horse tram route in Birmingham ran through from Carters Green, West Bromwich via Hockley to Colmore Row, continuing via Paradise Street and Suffolk Street to the Bristol Road...

Yes, the Grand Theatre was in Corporation Street, facing the Old Square. It was designed by the prominent Briningham architect W H Ward, and built at the time that Corporation Street was laid out, and opened on 14 November 1883, when it was known as the 'New Theatre'. Apart from the stalls it...

Dek, The railway runs south of Hillside Road, in other words behind (and below) the buildings in your last picture. It would curve under the first or second span of the M6 viaduct from the right, and continue behind the buildings and cross Slade Road to continue climbing to Gravelly Hill...

One outstanding source of railway film that deserves mention is the British Transport Film Unit, which was set up after the nationalisation of the railways partly to promote business but also to raise people's spirits in that very hard time of austerity. Most of the films were documentary in...

Those smashing pictures are a fabulous record of the remains of the old with the start of the new. They are a great help to people like me who saw little of Birmingham between 1960 and 2000, and who find it hard to relate past with present. But it is still very fascinating. The first two...

I've just looked out an old OS map and a modern street atlas. The parapet, bottom left in your dad's picture, is indeed the edge roof of the Ansells buildings fronting on to Upper Portland Street. Park Road ran roughly where the Expressway is today, but at a slightly different angle, as it...

That's my old school in the background (middle and right) - Aston Grammar. Aston Expressway in the dip from left to right, an insulting remnant of Victoria Road disappearing lower right towards Lichfield Road. The Victorian house fronts on the right are in what is left of Albert Road, with bits...