Canals & Railways

Georgian Birmingham was isolated by distance from the sea and lack of navigable rivers: the nearest river ports were twenty miles away at Bewdley, Burton, Stratford. Canals brought essential fuel and materials to the town more cheaply than packhorse trains, and took its products to seaports. Flyboats carried passengers in comparative comfort. Railways were much faster and more efficient. Intended primarily for long-distance freight haulage, they became very popular with travellers despite early discomfort. In and about Birmingham rail and water systems worked well together, trains for long hauls, boats on the multiplicity of canals for short. All the main lines were in use by 1844, when the Tame Valley and Birmingham & Warwick Junction Canals provided a bypass of the congested town cuts. With short arms and private basins, the total length of canals in Birmingham by the end of last century was about 38 miles.

Like the cuts, the railways took advantage of the gentle gradients of river valleys, even though multiple bridging was required. The nearness of canal and rail made transhipment of cargo, at wharves also accessible to horse-wagons, simple. By the end of World War One there were 55 miles of main lines and five of sidings.

Curzon Street Station, 1838 terminus of both London to Birmingham and Grand Junction (Liverpool to Birmingham) was quite unsuitable: until Albert Street had been specially made-too late-the access to it from the town centre was difficult. The Derby line used Curzon Street for three years, but high rent and obstruction obliged the Company to build its own terminus in Lawley Street in 1842. Three decades later the Rea was over-built to provide marshalling yards and a goods depot behind it. In 1842 also the Gloucester line crossed Bordesley and turned parallel to the London line, terminating at Curzon Street. Three years later the Gloucester and Derby lines, components of the newly-formed Midland Company, were joined by a short line over Landor Street.

At its opening in 1854 Navigation Street Station (later called New Street) served the London North- Western (1846 amalgamation of the London and Liverpool lines) and the Midland by extension from Curzon Street, and the new Stour Valley line to the north-west. There were four long platforms reached by tunnels at each end. Curzon Street continued to take passengers for the following four decades, but was mostly concerned with goods traffic. Yards extended back to Lawley Street behind high walls, and more were added off Grosvenor Street, reached by Birmingham's only level crossing.

Snow Hill Station was built because the LNW refused to let the broad-gauge Oxford line into New Street. Intending to join the Grand Junction, crossing the London line at level near Montagu Street, the Oxford Co. had almost completed a massive viaduct from Bordesley: it still stands in part, a costly monument to railway rivalry. The Great Western acquired the Oxford, and built the Birmingham Wolverhampton & Dudley line as a rival and parallel line to the Stour Valley. The Oxford's viaduct across the Rea, 58 blue-brick arches, is Birmingham's greatest railway structure. The lines into and out of Snow Hill were tripled, able to take both broad and narrow gauge trains. The first station was built between 1851 and '58, it was improved in 1871, and finely rebuilt in terra-cotta and glazed brick in 1909. Three years later an arch was cut through the Great Western Hotel (1879) to a new concourse. When broad gauge was abandoned in the Nineties, the Oxford line was quadrupled as far south as Olton.

An independent Company built the Harborne line of 1874 to serve commuters in the developing suburbs of Rotton Park and Harborne: it joined the Stour Valley line at Dudley Road. The Midland opened the Birmingham & South-West Suburban line two years later, with five stations in as many miles, both to cater for local travellers and to provide a better route to the town centre: the Midland Station was completed in 1885 with four curving platforms and a bay, south of New Street. Between the two stations a public footbridge spanned Queen Street, thenceforth Queen's Drive. New Street was enlarged to three platforms and four bays. Midland Goods Yards were laid out off Suffolk Street.

The North Warwickshire line, approved in a Bill of 1894, was not built because the cost of property purchase and demolition across Sparkbrook would have been prohibitive. A later order for a branch from the GW at Tyseley was taken up by that Co., and in 1907 the line was open for goods traffic. Passenger services began by the next year, steam railcars being used. Snow Hill was the congested terminus until Moor Street was opened in 1909: a new viaduct was built from Oxford Street, carrying four lines. The goods yard, on the site of the old Public Offices, was opened in 1914. By then large marshalling yards and goods depots had been built at Lawley Street, Bordesley, Suffolk Street, Hockley, Gib Heath, Monument Lane, Winson Green, and Aston (actually in Duddeston). From Hockley on the BWD a line was laid to the Soho Canal Branch, where arms were cut between sidings to create Hockley Port. The gas works in Nechells had its own system of branch lines, and Windsor Street works was well served by rail and canal. From the 1880's Birmingham Corporation built large public works depots with stabling beside canals-at Montagu, Sheepcote, Holliday, and Saltley High Streets, Camp Hill, Winson Green and Golden Hillock: thither road-making materials were brought, and night-soil and refuse were boated away to farms and boundary tips.

In 1934 the passenger service ended on the Harborne line. Several suburban stations closed in 1940 and more later. The Gloucester line is inaccessible north of Kings Norton. The BWD cutting is a weedy waste, and the Harborne line a walkway. Lapal Tunnel is closed and buried, the Dudley Branch Canal's line a grassed strip. Old and New Wharves north and south of Broad Street are infilled and overbuilt, as is the Newhall Branch. Most of the short arms and basins are dry if not levelled. Birmingham's canals rarely carry anything by pleasure craft, most of the railway yards are disused if not vanished under new buildings. But the Rapid Transit Rail Route, using the existing South-West Suburban and Sutton Coldfield lines and new or rebuilt stations, seems to be flourishing: and there are faint hopes of a similar service through Snow Hill on the Oxford and BWD routes.