Coventry Arena, on the line between Coventry and Nuneaton, is one of the newest railway stations on the network opening in January 2016 next to the Ricoh Arena in Coventry.
Although the station was officially opened to serve the stadium there have been problems with overcrowding. The station is now closed for an hour before and after any events and there is usually insufficient rolling stock on the line to meet demand. Indeed there are posters on the platform that tell spectators to drive to events at the stadium instead! Hopefully these are just temporary problems.
The station is a standard unmanned station with bus shelters and a ticket machine. Access between the two platforms is via an underpass.
Farnborough is a stop on the South Western Main Line in Hampshire betwen Brookwood and Fleet. It is the town's main station and is officially called Farnborough (Main) to distinguish it from the nearby Farnborough North though this suffix is not used on signage.
Information
Type:
National Rail
(South Western Main Line)
Station code:
FNB
Opened:
1838
Platforms:
2
The station was opened by the London & Southampton Railway in 1838, later becoming a London & South Western Railway station. Originally the station had just two lines through it with an island platform inbetween. When the line was quadrupled in the early 1900s new platforms were added on the outer lines and the original island platform removed. The demolition of the original platform means there is a wide gap between the two through lines.
The station is served by four trains an hour in both directions by South Western Railway.
SWR 444 004 passes through
Station frontage
View down the platform towards London
Two SWR 450s pause at Farnborough on a South bound service
Tame Bridge Parkway is a park and ride station in Sandwell, West Midlands between Hamstead and Bescot Stadium.
Information
Type:
National Rail
(Chase Line)
Station code:
TAB
Opened:
1990
Platforms:
2
The station was opened as Tame Bridge in 1990 by British Rail. The Parkway part of the name was added in 1997 [1]. The station takes it's name from the nearby river Tame plus the Tame Valley Canal which crosses the railway line just South of the platform ends on the Grand Junction Aqueduct (the line originally being built by the Grand Junction Railway).
The station has a staffed booking office and spaces for over two hundred and thirty cars in the adjacent car park. The station is managed by West Midlands Railway and there are four trains an hour in both directions operated by West Midlands Railway and London Northwestern Railway.
Birmingham Moor Street is Birmingham's second busiest railway station, situated on the Snow Hill lines between Bordesley and Birmingham Snow Hill.
Chiltern 68 015 and 168 110 at the two bay platforms
Information
Type:
National Rail (Snow Hill Lines)
Station code:
BMO
Opened:
1908
Platforms:
4
Birmingham Moor Street was built by the Great Western Railway to relieve pressure on Birmingham Snow Hill. Local GWR services from the South terminated at Moor Street instead, the other side of the Snow Hill tunnels. Moor Street became a terminus in 1968 with the closure of Snow Hill and the tunnels.
Moor Street itself became run down and depreciated during the 1970s and was under threat of closure itself, being the poor relation compared to Birmingham New Streetwhich is a short walk away. There is no direct rail connection between the two stations though Moor Street was built on top of the LNWR lines running into New Street. The large goods yard at Moor Street was closed in 1972. [1]
Birmingham Snow Hill (and the tunnels) reopened in the mid-1980s. Two new through platforms were built at Moor Street for these lines (and the three original terminating platforms closed). A new entrance built and canopies of the at-the-time common style of corrugated metal (as still used at stations like University). [2]
With Network South East running through services from London Marylebone to Moor Street in the early 1990s the station began to thrive again. To cope with demand, two of the terminus bay platforms were restored to service and the whole station was renovated in the early 2000s by Chiltern Railways (who manage the station) and the Birmingham Alliance. Moor Street could be further expanded in the 2020s under plans to improve West Midlands rail, with two extra bay platforms being built and services to Kings Norton and Tamworth added to the station. Moor Street will be next to the new HS2 terminus Birmingham Curzon Street.
Moor Street was restored as a GWR station using the style common in the interwar period. The original station building has been the base around which everything else has been rebuilt with the 1980s entrance demolished and new canopies and signage matching the period. Moor Street was used to represent an early 1970s London Marylebone in the BBC spy drama "The Game", the station needing little redressing.
One feature of the old station not restored were the locomotive traversers used on the original terminus lines. These allowed locomotives to be switched to an adjacent track taking up less space than a traditional cross-over [3].
Yardley Wood is one of the stops on the Shakespeare (or North Warwickshire) Line out of Snow Hill. It was opened by the GWR in 1908 as Yardley Wood Platform. By the First World War the Platform part of the name had been dropped [1]. Unlike some of the other stations on this line Yardley Wood never had goods facilities and is remarkably unchanged from its earliest days.
When built Yardley Wood was built in a very rural area with few houses nearby though now is a suburb in the South East of Birmingham (though is not to be confused with Yardley in the East of the city).
Despite still having the original (and decent sized) main station building still being in place on the up platform the ticket office is on another building at road level.
A LM Class 172 pauses on a service to Whitlocks End
Main station building
Shelter on the down platform
Looking down towards Stratford
[1] Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith, Stratford-upon-Avon to Birmingham Moor St (Middleton Press, 2006) p. 79
