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Snow Hill Station

hi viv...im afraid that enough warnings should have been heeded since the late 50s about the destruction of perfectly good historical buildings that can never be replaced....the cold truth is and always will be if they get in the way then they go....lessons have not been learnt


lyn
 
Oh how I remember this. I worked in Constitution Hill (I was a temp for some time) and used to go into town to pick up my cheque on a Wednesday. then we would go and spend. Sometimes we went into Lewis's from this entrance and sometimes to Rackhams juice bar (or whatever it was called) for a fresh orange juice or, if we felt well off, a fresh fruit salad. Oh to be 18 again!
 
Every time I see a photo like this it always brings home to me the craftsmen and skills needed to build it. Not just the construction and creative aspects, but the more behind the scenes people like engineers. Seeing the miles of copper wiring piled up gives a hint of how much must have been involved. Viv.
 
On your way to work (for some) pretty well everything that you see, that is not natural, has a drawing made for it somewhere. Even larger gardens probably have a landscape drawing possibly. In addition to this there are drawings and engineering calculations for the manufacture of the machinery to make it all. An army of bods beavering away on all of this....not so many now I think. Whenever you see old places like this being demolished...I always think anyway...not bad...whatever they did worked. Why would a Chineese vase have great value and yet these works can be reduced to scrap and landfill. Look at it. It was something of beauty and elegance.
 
Well it is 40 years ago tomorrow (Saturday 04 March 1972) that the last trains ran out of Snow Hill and the station closed forever. I was on the very last timetabled train out of the station - 17:50 I think it was. I can't remember how much a return ticket to Wolverhampton L.L. was then but it was not a great deal - 30p if I recall correctly.

It was a sad end to a GWR main line and station. It lingered on as a car park for nearly 5 years but it was finally demolished in 1977. The present Snow Hill isn't a patch on the lovely old GWR station perhaps marginally better than New Street but not a lot better.

We can only imagine if the old station had survived and had been restored when a new station was required in 1987. What a magnificent sight it would be now.
 
Hi

Yes once again the unravelling of those terrible Beeching days come back to haunt us.
At the time the GWR 4 track system was the best route to London.
How on earth the 2 Track system to London was chosen. An now the debate over HS2
goes on. Cannot believe they want to drop it into the Old Lawley Street depot via the
most complex Junction systems.
Still who am I a golden set of tracks torn up all those years ago.
Strangely Chiltern Railways run pary of the old net work into Marylabone often
helping out when the sytem via Rugby is down.

Mike Jenks
 
I wonder if high speed rail is required in GB. I would have thought that plain ordinary low tech...but reliable... would do the job nicely. All of the highways in NA are only 60MPH max so why does the rail have to go at high speed especially on a small island. Make it low speed and more of and reliable above everything. So it takes some minutes more to get there...so what. It will make the world seem bigger...a good thing. Lower tech also means cheaper and just as comfortable.

See all of the beauty in your own back yard. If it is not there...make it so.
 
hi

yep it seems odd with the shape of the UK and most major cities within a 100 miles why we need to have all
this hassle over say an extra 20 or 30 minutes.
Most modern systems can cope with our present Layouts.

Mike Jenks
 
I don't think the argument is about saving 30 minutes or so between Birmingham and London. I think it is more to do with the time saved between Manchester or Leeds and the north of England to London. And keeping Scotland in the Union. I had been a fan of Chiltern from Snow Hill to London until they put the fares up before we got the improvements. My taxi driver thought it was odd the first time I asked for Moor Street Station in order to catch the fast Chiltern trains. Chiltern are using mark 3 rolling stock with seats that line up with windows rather than with window pillars as on Virgin Pendolinos. The Chiltern fast trains are former Wrexham and Shropshire trains and I was sorry t0o see that service to London finish February last year/
 
If you made it slower then Scotland would seem further away....so what. Most of the travel is over shorter distances and this and low fares is where the priority should be surely and standardised equipment would make for easier maintenance and less of it. An hour longer over the long distances matters nothing. In fact why go at all when computer and cell phone contact is instantaneous. To visit family the hour means nothing. Take your time and enjoy the ride.
Keep things simple; keep things standard and small improvements over time will make it perfect as near as does'nt matter.
 
Agree, think we've moved away from enjoying the journey - that's physically and metaphorically Pity we've got ourslves into the position of feeling we have to cram as much as possible into every 24 hours. This is just another example of that. Viv.
 
We are starting to go off topic as HS2 is discussed on other threads but I would mention that at a lecture I attended at Birmingham University about HS2 two years ago we were told that at present rates of growth if we did not build HS2 we would need two new motorways between London and Birmingham in 25 years time. I remeber the outcry at building the M40 through the Vale of Belvoir.
 
I have a vague recollection of making a luggage tag in a machine at Snow Hill? It was soft aluminium strip a bit like Dymo.
My Brother used to love train-spotting, and had some little books of numbers, were they "I-Spy" or something like that?

rosie.
 
I remember those well Rosie. Used to love stamping out my name when we were waiting for a train to go on holiday! They were a bit like this. Judy


images
 
It may be prudent to remember that although Beeching produced the famous/infamous report, it was not he that implemented same...

The blame for line and station closures, if indeed there is any, lies with another party. But curiously he never gets any stick???
 
Neville Philpott said:
It may be prudent to remember that although Beeching produced the famous/infamous report, it was not he that implemented same...

The blame for line and station closures, if indeed there is any, lies with another party. But curiously he never gets any stick???
Click to expand...

Surely you can't mean the respected Minister of Transport, who sold his sheres in Marples Ridgeway, the roads construction company, to his wife so as not to be accused of a conflict of interest when he awarded the contract to build the M1 to the company
 
Beeching was an commercially minded idiot who did not consider the whole picture, while Marples was just a cheap little crook.
 
rosie said:
I have a vague recollection of making a luggage tag in a machine at Snow Hill? It was soft aluminium strip a bit like Dymo.
My Brother used to love train-spotting, and had some little books of numbers, were they "I-Spy" or something like that?

rosie.
Click to expand...

I think the number books would be Ian Allen's " The A B C of British Railways Locomotives " rosie.
 
mikejee said:
Beeching was an commercially minded idiot who did not consider the whole picture, while Marples was just a cheap little crook.
Click to expand...

Very gently put, wasn't Marples the one who did a disappearing act for tax evasion or something?
 
When i used to go spotting at Snow Hill in the 1950's, we used to stamp the names of engines we had seen on the engraving machine

and take them home as souvenirs. Thinking about it now it seems silly and a waste of pocket money pennies, and an odd way of

raising revenue.
 
Hi

It must of been you in the way then. It was a Mecca for us. For just a penny
you were free. Happy days

Mike Jenks 1950 to now
 
The machines were for making personalised luggage tags and I had seen them all over the country (or perhaps it was only on GWR/WR stations as I do not remember one at New Street).
 
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