LMS Route: Rugby to Wolverhampton

LMS Route: Birmingham New Street to Harborne

Harborne Junction: lnwrhj2211

View of the junction between the Harborne branch's single line and the Stour Valley's double tracked main line seen in 1949. Harborne Junction signal cabin can be seen on the right whilst the Harborne Home signal which protected the main line is on the extreme right. The brick built hut alongside the signal is a Permanent Way cabin used by the gang maintaining the track for storing equipment and for their mess facilities. The siding on the extreme left which runs parallel to the factory wall is the same line seen to be terminating at buffer stops adjacent to the lines for Soho East Junction in image 'lnwrhj2197'. To its right is the wall separating the railway from the Birmingham Canal Navigations waterway. Gordon Snelgrove writes, 'Birmingham Canal Navigations' is usually shortened, even today, to 'BCN'. Specifically, the New Main Line, built by Thomas Telford, some 20 years before the arrival of any of the railways, as an upgrade to James Brindley Old Main Line. The new main line was a 'quantum' leap in canal design at the time, being far wider, and with far fewer twists and turns, than the old main line and featuring tow paths on both sides of the canal, thereby avoiding the problem of getting the lines from the horses pulling the canal boats, in opposite directions, crossed'.

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