Station to Station - Curzon Street and New Street, Birmingham

You can’t miss it if you are approaching Birmingham New Street on the line from Derby. As can be seen from the photograph, it currently sits in splendid isolation, a substantial, heavyweight chunk of stone. So square and simple, from a distance, it made me think of a child’s construct using giant building blocks.

Now a Grade One listed building, Curzon Street station opened in 1838. It was the terminus of the London Birmingham and Grand Junction railways, with trains to London, Manchester and Liverpool. By 1854, it had already been superseded by Birmingham New Street, which was nearer to the city centre and most services diverted there immediately.

I still find New Street a depressing station to enter by train, in spite of recent investment. Narrow platforms on a cramped site in a tunnel, with just narrow bands of daylight piercing the relative gloom at each end. The revitalised concourse above and the Grand Central complex truly take it to another level, however, as well as equipping it with a great name to link with the past. It offers such a contrast with the station’s subterranean depths. Airy, spacious and, it seemed that it was buzzing all day as a rendezvous hot-spot. It’s a show-piece of bright lights and activity with an interesting range of eateries and their attendant aromas - what a transformation since my last visit.

Curzon Street, on the other hand, shuffled along for decades, providing local services to Sutton Coalfield and some excursion trains up to 1893, and then survived as a goods station until 1966. There have been various plans for it since, but it is now to be incorporated into the redevelopment of the area as the terminus for HS2. This will give the planners a challenge to emulate New Street which I’m sure they will relish as the dramatic and extensive reconstruction of the central city area continues.