RAILWAYS

A coal wharf was later made at Athole Street. By 1842 the line was fully in use between Birmingham and Bristol, as was the Derby line to Lawley Street, so that Bordesleians could now travel by rail to all the main estuary ports of England. Ten years later New Street Station came into use, and the Gloucester line's viaduct had to be raised to permit its diversion thither across the Rea valley. The extra height was gained by building another set of brick arches on top of the original ones over Lawley Street.

In 1847 work began on the Oxford to Birmingham Railway: it crossed then paralleled the Warwick Canal across Bordesley and went beneath the Gloucester line near Camp Hill top lock. The great blue-brick viaduct across the Rea from Sandy Lane was completed in two years, and the first trains ran into the temporary terminus on Snow Hill in 1852. Three years later Bordesley Station was opened. A loop line was made from the Oxford to the Gloucester line at Lawden Road, a long approach ramp being necessary because of their different levels. In 1863 the Oxford Company was taken over by the Great Western, and Small Heath & Sparkbrook Station was opened to serve the new Birmingham Small Arms Works. Sidings and a goods station north of Coventry Road, approached by ramp from Upper Trinity Street, were held up by a great arched wall. The Great Western was a broad-gauge railway: while running its own wide trains the Company was obliged to cater for those of others by providing a third rail between its two.

Bordesley Junction marshalling yard was built in the 1880s between the Oxford line and the canal with coal and timber wharves. By 1892 the Great Western had accepted that the battle of the gauges was lost, and its wide lines were converted: this has left greater spaces between up and down lines than is usual on other railways. In 1897-8 pig and cattle markets were built off Montagu Street, with sidings from the London Line. From 1905 work went ahead on the Great Western line from Stratford to New Street.

The present steel viaduct was built over the canal and Sandy Lane: from Meriden Street off Digbeth a new brick viaduct branched off to Moor Street Station, completed in 1915 but opened five years earlier. The new lines left the Oxford cutting at Tyseley. In contrast to the pick-and-shovel methods of the first railway builders, 11 'steam navvies' and 23 locomotives were used to make the cuttings and banks. A large warehouse was built at Bordesley Junction during the First World War. Soon after its acquisition of the Oxford line the Great Western had sought a more direct link to New Street than that provided by the Midland line from Lawden Road: a loop from Bordesley Goods Station to the London/Derby line west of Lawley Street was almost completed before being abandoned.

The lines and some of the seven bridges have gone, but great blue-brick arches still loom over factories beside the loop. Bordesley's last lines were branches from the Oxford line to War One factories on little Hay farmland east of Oldknow Road, long since taken up, and the narrow lines from the Tyseley Destructor: clinker was dumped from these over the Spark-Cole confluence meadows, building them up to the level of the railway embankment and creating spectacular gorges for the streams. This was in the 1930s, when local railways were beginning to decline due to road haulage competition: at peak 27 lines were in use between Bolton Road and the canal, and 23 fanned out across Camp Hill Goods Yard.