Birmingham New Street Station: lnwrbns_str1857a

Close up of image 'lnwrbns_str1857' showing the Western face of New Street No 3 signal cabin and some of its 17 levers controlling the points and signals to the Western half of the station. The rods connecting the levers to the signals and points are clearly visible running down the side of the footbridge whilst fixed to the bottom beam of the footbridge to their right is a signal controlling access from one of the centre roads to the Eastern section of platform 2. The platform numbering adopted by the LNWR from the beginning referred to the platform as a total entity therefore Platform 1 which two bays each with two platform faces plus the through platform were all denoted as Platform 1. Platform 2, the island platform had two through platforms, one on each side and they too were just denoted as platform 2. This confusing and illogical numbering system remained in existing for over ninety years before it was changed by British Railways in 1948. The new system was sequential, by numbering the platforms No 1 to 11 starting at in the South Staffordshire bay as No 1 and finishing at platform 11 next to the fish sidings near Station Street with the Stour Valley bay denoted as '1A'.

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