Another example of the rebirth of local rail travel, Five Ways station
originally operated between 1885 - 1944 on the Midland Railway's Birmingham West Suburban
Railway. As with all but two of the stations on this line, it reopened in 1978 as part of
the 'flagship' Birmingham Cross-City Line. The station building itself, as is apparent from
the above picture taken in September 2003 from Islington Row Middleway, is not the original
but one built for the aforementioned reopening of the line for local services between Lichfield and Redditch. From a historical perspective the
station is also interesting as it was the point at which the long-defunct line to the Midland
Railway's Central Goods Station left the mainline (to be totally accurate, originally the
line from Five Ways to New Street didn't exist and the goods line was the passenger line to a
terminus at Granville Street), traces of which can be seen below. |
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Above-left we are on the Birmingham platform of Five Ways station looking
towards the tunnel that leads to New Street Station: Islington Row Middleway runs from
right-to-left just beyond the station footbridge. Above-right we are in the same spot but
this time looking back towards University station or, until its closure in 1925, Church Road
station which was originally next along the line heading South from Birmingham City Centre.
The line to Central Goods, and indeed the original trackbed for the West Suburban Line can be
discerned to the centre-left of the photograph apparently climbing a steep gradient. This is
somewhat misleading as the main line itself is rising at this point from New Street also. |
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Above-left we see the view from the Islington Row Middleway bridge looking
South. This is a good shot (even though I do say so myself) in that it shows the station and
Cross-City Line to the far right, the trackbed of the Central Goods line centre, and the
Birmingham-Worcester canal to the left. Above-right we are on the trackbed of the Central
Goods line looking South towards the point where the lines converged just before the St James
Road bridge which you can see in the distance. |
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Above we are in the same position as the previous shot but this time looking towards
the City Centre with the current station to our left. The gradient from the level of the
cross-city line is quite steep at this point and one could imagine heavily-laden goods trains
with a full head of steam struggling towards Central Goods. The Islington Row Middleway bridge
ahead was not the original overbridge at this spot but the product of the redesigning of
Birmingham City Centre during the 1960s when the large dual-carriageway ring-road system was
introduced: as can be seen in the 1890 map earlier, the road was originally named Islington
Row and was of much less magnitude. For more on the Central Goods line see the pages for
Granville Street Station and
Central Goods. |
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MAP |
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