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There was talk of a passenger service to Aldridge, but that plan has yet to progress, and may not do so. Castle Bromwich Station belongs to the new group of suggestions for opening, however.

The line to Sutton Park that crosses over the Sutton to Lichfield line will be closed for engineering work over Easter as will the Cross City Line. Part of the work to be undertaken will be the replacement of the rail bridge. There are two bridges here a metal railway bridge and a brick footpath...

There has been a thread on the canal page regarding transport of night soil by boat to various canal wharves for distribution by the farmers. Birmingham, it seems, adopted a progressive approach from the early 1850's towards the transport of sewage. That began with the making of interception...

Lawley Street was the terminus of the Birmingham & Derby Junction Railway and from that early start formed part of the growing Midland Railway network of railways that extended to Bristol, London, Leeds, and Carlisle. They had a locomotive roundhouse on the Lawley Street Goods Station site which...

I understand that the ticket platform was called Edgbaston first and indeed LNWR staff records refer to it as Edgbaston

It is important to separate night soil from the dried sludge of the filter beds. I have often come across the movement of night soil by corporation boats and such, as noted, can appear in minutes. The development of a sewer system for the filter beds was a later development. Saltley was a...

May be this is a topic which needs to be revised as so much history can be lost when new developments are made on previously industrial sites. When Brindley Place was made little seems to have been done to look at the foundations of the former Brasshouse there, for example.

The HS 2 archeology team have been successful in uncovering many features of past life along the route from Birmingham to London. It will be of interest to see what will be revealed on the line to Crewe. As to the locomotive shed which is now buried again, will it ever be seen again, I wonder.

I think the post regarding the Wren archive deserves clarification. MS 20 is the Richard Fowler Collection of Birmingham Library Archives. I looked at the valuable canal records in that collection over time from the 1990s. In those days access was on the 7th Floor for the many informative...

My understanding as to rubbish, night soil was that it was tipped into the hold of a canal boat (narrowboat) at the various depots near the canal. Night soil from the hold to be placed on the fields was removed in the same way. Salvage depot procedure did change over time where incinerated dust...

I did try to visualise the arrangements as they were at the time of the accident and the location of the two signalmen (police) huts. One was at the Station side at the south end of the tunnel and the other to the north was at the ticket platform. By this date, the Shrewsbury and Birmingham...

I think Heath Robinson is not the correct term if this report is read throughout and does mention that the needle telegraph system was in use at the North and South Tunnels. The issue was with what happened in the North Tunnel. That form of signaling was considered an important innovation at the...

Mike Gee's post of December 6th shows the Grand Central Station, or New Street Station. On Thursday 10th December 1857 a 3rd class train left after mid-day for Liverpool. The signalman at the South end of the tunnel gave the right of way, but then later allowed a pilot engine to go to what was...

There was more than one Blue Pulman set of units and it was part of the development of higher speed passenger services using internal combustion rather than electricity. Some were Western Region and others were Midland Region. None were preserved.

The tunnel was opened in 1852 by the Great Western Railway as part of its London Paddington to Birkenhead Woodside main line. It was built using the cut-and-cover method as far as Temple Row, and then a deep cutting to Snow Hill. In 1872 the cutting from Temple Row to Snow Hill was roofed over...

Monument Lane Station was opened in 1854 for passenger trains but was known as Edgbaston from 1853 when it was not advertised for trains. However, apart from providing a need for passengers to access or egress the platforms, there was also the need to serve as a "ticket platform". The need to...

It has to be remembered that the greater Lawley Street site includes the depot that deals with paper waste and has changed names and ownership over time, the queuing system for vehicles to pick up containers, etc, the Freightliner depot (presently an American company) and a cement terminal. Part...

Whilst the first image shows a train of what may be oil tanks, but could be tanks for the Albright & Wilson factory and a diesel locomotive at the head of the train, not a diesel multiple unit. Also the Oldbury Railway (the branch on the right) was made from Langley Green towards Oldbury and...

As to Farmers Bridge Junction, there have been recent discussions on the Canal Forum site. The choice of calling the junction by the Indoor Arena as Farmers Bridge is not the best and is one devised in relatively modern time. Distance tables refer to the Junction as Deep Cutting when looking...

Taking goods by narrowboat from Birmingham was limited to what could be packed into the hold of one or a pair of boats and would have also needed transshipment for carriage across the Mersey to Liverpool Docks. Carriage by train may have been a more practical option. The LNWR, in 1854 provided a...