Birmingham New Street Station: lnwrbns_str1861

View of New Street station looking from the LNWR parcels office which was located at the East end of platform 3, circa 1880s. The station is some twenty-five years old at the time this photograph was taken and there has been some significant changes to the layout since it was first opened in 1854. The platforms have been extended, the footbridge rebuilt with solid sides and with a signal box, No 3, built centrally on top, and ramps to a subway connecting all platforms have been provided at the East end of the platforms. The glazing in the roof is still very clean despite the smoke and soot from countless locomotives over more than twenty-five years.

In the original station this part of the station was reserved both for carriage sidings and for the off-loading of road vehicles being carried by rail. It was not uncommon for the rich to travel by train with their own road carriages being loaded on trucks behind the train's rolling stock. The LNWR's eccentric platform numbering system at New Street resulted in the platforms being numbered from left to right, platform 3 with one face to the tracks, platform 2 with two faces - one either side, and platform 1 which had one face to a through line and two double bays, one either side of the passenger bridge meaning that it could handle five trains in one go, six if the through track had a train at either end. Confused? See image 'lnwrbns_str426' for an 1854 plan of the original layout.

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