LMS Route: Rugby to Wolverhampton

LMS Route: Birmingham New Street to Lichfield

LMS Route: Birmingham New Street to Soho and Perry Barr

Curzon Street Goods Station: lnwrcs2152

View of one of former GJR station's waiting rooms now being used as a store for high value metals. The LNWR and its successor the LMS provided warehouse storage facilities of expensive metals to Birmingham's manufacturer's who could call off their requirement on a 'as required' basis. This meant that having a common supply reduced the amount needed to be held by each company thereby reducing the amount of cash held in stock. What is not known is whether the railway company financially supported the whole scheme and recouped its costs through charges to the companies or whether this was metal owned by wholesale merchants who paid the railway company for storage. In addition to copper ingots seen stacked neatly in the photograph above, ships' plates, brass and copper engine tubes, boilers, telephone wire, wagon wheel bosses, lamps, bales of copper scrap, cases of tin plate and barrels of brass filings. In 1914 the value of metal then in store at Curzon Street amounted to over £250,000 - at pre-World War One prices.

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