The old New Street was a slum. I think it was best put by some American acquaintances of my mother who, passing through Birmingham in 1956 and having to change trains at New Street, took the opportunity to meet her for a cup of tea in the station buffet. “What a pity Hitler didn’t do a better job!”, one of them remarked as they looked out from what I later came to know as Number 1 Refreshment Room at the sad remains of the once elegant London & North Western Railway station. A rather tactless remark, no doubt, but it contained more than an element of truth. The station’s current state of dilapidation was, it was true, largely the result of wartime bombing. The overall roof on the LNWR side had been so badly damaged that it was demolished after the war and replaced by extremely ugly canopies. On the Midland side the overall roof still remained, but it was in a dangerous condition. By the 1950s the station was run down, dirty, smelly and horrendously inconvenient for train operators, but for me it had that indefinable quality which can only be called “character”. As a young spotter, it seemed that I could spend a lifetime exploring its dark, labyrinthine reaches and indeed, in 1960 when I began to work on the station as a kitchen porter in the employ of British Transport Hotels and Catering, I discovered whole new areas whose existence I had never previously suspected. The new station which replaced it in the 1960s was in many ways an improvement but, nevertheless, it was a horrible place, not “fit for humans now”, as John Betjeman might have said.
The station had officially opened on 1st June 1854 although, as we shall see, it had been in operation for some time before that. In June 1954, to celebrate its centenary, British Railways organised an exhibition at the station, of which the star attraction was Stanier ‘Coronation’ 4-6-2 No.46235 City of Birmingham, accompanied by two preserved engines, LNWR 2-4-0 No.790 Hardwicke and Midland 2-4-0 No.158A. At that time Stanier Pacifics were banned at New Street because of clearance problems in the approach tunnels, so the protruding ‘bits and pieces’ of No.46235 had to be dismantled and then reassembled when the locomotive was in place. Sadly, I missed this memorable event because I did not start spotting until the August of that year and it wasn’t until late in the autumn that my parents allowed me to make my first unaccompanied expedition to New Street. From then on, it became one of my most frequent venues.
But before we examine the working of the station in
