Birmingham New Street Station: lnwrbns_str407

An aerial view from the Queens Hotel of the West end of New Street station with Queens Drive behind and Navigation Street bridge to the right on 19th March 1961. The full brake coaches and van are standing in the 'Coffee House Bay' which was located behind the original Platform 3n, now Platform 6, and was opened on 10th August 1891 to provide additional platform accommodation. Its worth noting that the contents of the van are being unloaded on to a horse-drawn cart despite this being the decade of the Beatles, man first landing on the moon and the birth of Concorde.

Richard Foster recounts in Volume 2 of his four-book series Birmingham New Street - The Story of a Great Station, that the nickname 'Coffee House Bay' came from the adjacent coffee tavern. Richard states that coffee taverns were frequently found in LNWR stations and were provided by the LNWR for their staff. The motivation behind the provision of these facilities was as much to do with keeping staff away from passenger refreshment rooms and out of public houses as it did for providing hot drinks at reasonable prices.

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