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
The station was opened as the terminus of a Great Western Railway broad gauge line in 1854, the station being designed by Brunel. This remained High Wycombe's station until 1864 when a new through station was opened. The original station building became a goods shed [1] and has now been listed and preserved.
The current station layout dates from a rebuilding by the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway in 1906 [2]. The station has two staggered platforms, it once had four through lines but the central lines were lifted in 1989-90 [3]. There is a bay platform for services terminating from London Marylebone (and until recently the parliamentary Chiltern Railways service from London Paddington). Originally access between the platforms was via a subway but this was replaced by a footbridge in 2015.
High Wycombe was once the terminus (though later the line was extended to Aylesbury) of the Wycombe Railway from Maidenhead, though this line was closed in 1970. The station is managed by Chiltern Railways.
Chiltern 165 032 arrives with a London bound service
Walsall is a stop on the Chase Line in the West Midlands between Bloxwich and Bescot Stadium.
LNWR 350 370 departs
Information
Type:
National Rail (Chase Line)
Station code:
WSL
Opened:
1849
Platforms:
3
The first station in Walsall was Bescot Bridge in 1837 built near Bescot Stadium station, but in 1849 a proper city centre station was built in Walsall by the South Staffordshire Railway on a route to Dudley. Further routes and lines were added to Walsall over the following decades.
The current station buildings date from the late 1970s when the old station was demolished as part of a major retail regeneration project. The Saddlers Centre shopping mall has been built atop the station and is where the main entrance and concourse is. Another entrance is via station street.
Nowadays Walsall, which is managed by West Midlands Railway, is host to services on the Chase Line between Birmingham New Street and Rugeley Trent Valley and services between Walsall and Wolverhampton (via New Street).
