Wires to Bromsgrove

[Edwin_m]

Ahh that makes sense. It also minimises the amount of OLE required. The only snag I see is that down expresses, probably running at max line speed, will have to make the sharpest turn to take the left hand track. I'll have a look next week.

I believe the tracks had to be slued across over quite a long distance to avoid a speed restriction on the resulting "dogleg".  For this reason one of the new platforms couldn't be opened until the old station had been demolished and one of the tracks moved onto where the platform had been. 

[TheSignalEngineer]

That's what I had heard as well, which does rather beg the question quite how are they going to square the circle as the current signalling presumably can't keep being patched up forever.  Of course if Birmingham could secure just a fraction of the money being spent in London we'd have an underground Cross City station beneath New Street with tunnel from Five Ways to Duddeston by now, which might just help reduce some of the pressure.

The original Cross City proposal that I worked on just after the 1968 Transport Act set up the PTEs was for a new line from Five Ways to Spaghetti Junction. I think that was probably as much pie-in-the-sky as the Woodgate Valley Expressway, which was to come from the M5 J3 at Quinton along the Woodgate Valley then follow Bourn brook until it reached the railway near what is now University station. From there it was going to be on stilts over the railway and canal right through to join the Inner Ring Road at the old Central Goods Depot, now the site of the Axis building.

 

To my mind the biggest lost opportunity was the re-development of the Bull Ring. From my office in The Rotunda I watched a row of bored piles put in alongside the Midland Tunnel. What should have been done was to open out the tunnels to provide extra length for the station giving better flexibility at the pointwork, extra platforms and an airport style pedestrian link to Moor Street and the future HS2 station.

[wombatofludham]

To my mind the biggest lost opportunity was the re-development of the Bull Ring. From my office in The Rotunda I watched a row of bored piles put in alongside the Midland Tunnel. What should have been done was to open out the tunnels to provide extra length for the station giving better flexibility at the pointwork, extra platforms and an airport style pedestrian link to Moor Street and the future HS2 station.

 

Would that be the Transmark office in the Rotunda by any chance?

[jamie92208]

The original Cross City proposal that I worked on just after the 1968 Transport Act set up the PTEs was for a new line from Five Ways to Spaghetti Junction. I think that was probably as much pie-in-the-sky as the Woodgate Valley Expressway, which was to come from the M5 J3 at Quinton along the Woodgate Valley then follow Bourn brook until it reached the railway near what is now University station. From there it was going to be on stilts over the railway and canal right through to join the Inner Ring Road at the old Central Goods Depot, now the site of the Axis building.

 

To my mind the biggest lost opportunity was the re-development of the Bull Ring. From my office in The Rotunda I watched a row of bored piles put in alongside the Midland Tunnel. What should have been done was to open out the tunnels to provide extra length for the station giving better flexibility at the pointwork, extra platforms and an airport style pedestrian link to Moor Street and the future HS2 station.

 

I remember seeing a comment about that lost opportunity in one of the magazines at the time.  Similar to the lost opportunity to join up the two Bradford stations either in 1960 or recently when the area between them was demolished and redeveloped. 

 

Jamie

[TheSignalEngineer]

Would that be the Transmark office in the Rotunda by any chance?

West Midlands Signalling Projects Group, later to become Signalling Control UK/Westinghouse Signals/Invensys Rail

[John_Miles]

Nothing ventured nothing lost? Could  this be DaFT's motto?

[John_Miles]

I travel most Tuesdays on the Cardiff Nottingham service - both ways. The up train goes straight through Bromsgrove. The down train takes the loop behind the platform at speed.

[TheSignalEngineer]

With the usual caveats about the current quality of NR rendering of files to images on screen

 

90mph from the bottom of the bank through the Down Gloucester platform and 40mph on the Down Bromsgrove Station Loop (middle road).

 

Note there is also still a neck shown at the south end of the Up Bromsgrove Loop presumably to hold a loco which comes to assist a train up the bank.

 

[caradoc]

Thanks for posting the Sectional Appendix diagram. What a contrast from the days of one platform only at Bromsgrove !

[28XX]

So back to the plot. Here are two shots of OB111 Hewell Lane at the Southern end of Barnt Green station.

 

 

OB109 at the northern end of Blackwell village. The best angle I could get without trespassing.