The Forgotten Glory of Birmingham Snow Hill Station & Its Modern Revival

Рет қаралды 16,419

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 46

@crossleydd42 3 ай бұрын

I recall, in early 1962, taking a train from Southampton to Snow Hill via Reading. I fell asleep on the train before and after Reading and when I woke up, I was facing the back of the train rather than the front. After panicking and thinking I was going South again, I found out that the train reversed at Reading! I remember how impressive Snow Hill Station was.

@JohnGillespie-s5n Ай бұрын

I remember the old snow hill, kings, castles, halls, and the seemingly incessant freight trains l took part in the walk through to moor street before it was officially reopened in 1987. Fantastic.

@hurrah1eqe892 3 ай бұрын

I must say, It’s a little bit jarring that the voiceover doesn’t match the imagery. Talking about early 20th century opulence whilst seeing/reading about it’s closure in the 60s

@MinegateTransport 3 ай бұрын

I think this channel has become an AI one, I’m not longer subscribed, these scripts sound very basic and generated.

@trainspire59 3 ай бұрын

Yh I agree. Tho I do see that the background vid is from a vid that was taken down for some reason for some reason so maybe that has something to do with it?

@PLuMUK54 3 ай бұрын

In the early 1960s, my parents took me on many day trips from Snow Hill. I would get 2 pennies each trip to use at the station - I would get a 1d bar of Cadbury Chocolate from the machine on the platform, and 1d would then be spent on making a metal name tag on a, to me, huge machine. On 1 visit, we watched the filming of a scene from Crossroads. The poor actor had to run down the stairs to try to catch his girlfriend before her train left. He went back and forth up the stairs for about 7 or 8 trains before the director was satisfied. I always preferred Snow Hill to New Street.

@ashleydoak9357 3 ай бұрын

What an absolute pleasure watching this thank you 😊 Sorry that some are taking negatively towards this. Don't put yourself down for trying something new 😊😊

@madcarew5168 3 ай бұрын

Arco Rewinds!!! And "The Cornishman" for holidays.

@bobm198 3 ай бұрын

The iconic platform 7 sign now hangs in The Engine House at Highley on the SVR, I own it!

@neilgodwin6531 3 ай бұрын

Fascinating story, illustrates the absolute disaster of Britain's railways in the late 20th century. Just down the road, a similar story, the fine Victorian station at Bromsgrove barely remained open, despite passenger numbers travelling to Birmingham or Worcester for work and leisure remaining healthy. Services were cut, the waiting room and ticket office demolished, leaving passengers to arrive at the unmanned station and be forced to wait for the train in cold, wet in winter, or possibly in uncomfortably hot and sunny weather in summer. After a campaign over many years, we eventually got a new station and two extra platforms, but the old station could have been preserved, saving so much money. The nation that gave the world the railways destroyed its own heritage

@martyn6792 3 ай бұрын

These videos are interesting with some great stills showing the elegance of the original station

@alanfbrookes9771 3 ай бұрын

I wish you had taken the trouble to synchronise the pictures and the narrative. It's as though they were put together completely independent of each other. The narrative is okay, but over and over again what is being said bears no relationship at all to what is on the screen. You start with just a mention of the first station, then go on to the seconds station, whilst showing photos of the third station. Then, when you're talking about the finish of the 1906 station you're showing the 1870s station. Whilst telling of the delights of the 1906 station you show a mishmash of photos from all eras, mostly of the station in dereliction. The station didn't gradually fall into disuse because of the electrification of New Street. Whilst the electrification was under way, many trains were diverted from New Street to Snow Hill, and Snow Hill was busier than ever. Then, when the electrification was complete, British Railways diverted all the trains from Snow Hill to New Street or Moor Street. They would have torn the building down there and then but for the steps they had to take to close the local service between Snow Hill and Wolverhampton (Low Level), both of which they had every intention of closing from the start. The use of the station didn't slow down, it was intentionally cut off completely. By the way, the current station is exactly the same size as the previous ....it's on the same site, which it fills.

@trainspire59 3 ай бұрын

It’s because the video is from a previous video that got taken down and it had no narrative. So infact the narrative and video was made separately.

@mikebailey783 3 ай бұрын

Some comments here are decrying the synchronisation between imagery and vo, but let's take a moment to appreciate the fact that it's a real voiceover, and not the grindingly offputting text-to-speech synth voice tracks that so many channels are lazily using these days.

@sarto7bellys 3 ай бұрын

I remember as a kid in the early 60's taking a short cut through Snow Hill to go to the Eye Hospital somewhere in Edmund Street (I think I'm 68 so it's a bit fuzzy) I seem to remember that there was what we called a 'rubber road' in the staion and some sort of advertising glass / window that would change the advert if you pressed a button on the frame and there was a fellow with tin legs sitting in a wheelchar playing a trumpet on the pavement as we came out through the side exit in Livery Street

@markcf83 3 ай бұрын

Edmund Street isn't that far from Snow Hill so it's possible you could be right.

@kristinajendesen7111 3 ай бұрын

So sad. My brother used to spot there in the 50s. I only remember the shell as a car park though with some platforms still in situ.

@sparky1105 3 ай бұрын

I subscribed to this channel a few years ago but I'm afraid that I've just unsubscribed. These videos aren't new but you've just added voiceovers to old videos and the narrative is well out of sync with the subtitles so it's very confusing. The videos were best left as they were. Sorry!

@ashleyjiscool 3 ай бұрын

He used to put effort in his videos, now he is just doing copy’s of old videos with ai voiceover.

@jammin023 3 ай бұрын

Yeah it's pretty bad. I don't normally criticise videos where someone has made an effort, but this clearly wasn't even watched before uploading.

@MinegateTransport 3 ай бұрын

@@sparky1105 fully agree, quite obvious the scripts are AI generated, and potentially so is the voiceover. Same tone and jarring way of describing the subjects.

@althejazzman 3 ай бұрын

Well done on trying to make some short documentaries but it's confusing to read a story on screen whilst hearing a different story in voiceover. The pictures don't need words if you're saying the right words.

@alanclarke4646 2 ай бұрын

The modern Snow Hill is an ugly concrete and glass structure. When I travel to/from Birmingham, I always use Moor Street, it's by far the nicest station on the network

@richardsymonds5159 2 ай бұрын

Should never have closed - the new one is at best 'functional' but in my opinion down right ugly compared to the one it replaced!

@adammoss5284 2 ай бұрын

GWR fitted out to standards of quality and not a price point that is for sure.

@lynnmorton7544 3 ай бұрын

Did the station get bombed during WW2?

@keithg1xfl 3 ай бұрын

I never Really understood WHY they Closed Snow Hill, They would have Done Better to Close New Street, Snow Hill was a MUCH Better station Than New Street. New street is Very Much the Poor relation Of Snow Hill (As Was) even with it's so Called Improvements, A 21st Century Building Over Victorian Track Work

@peterwilliamallen1063 3 ай бұрын

The reason Snow Hill Station Closed and Birmingham New Street was rebuilt and stayed open was that the West Coast Mainline of which Birmingham New Street was a part of was totaly rebuilt and Electrified in the late 1960's and was connected to all parts of the country and became a part of the new Electrified Railway on the West Coast main line, at this time Birmingham Snow Hill and Moor Street had been transfered from the Western Region of British Rail to the London Midland Region of British Rail and as the Wolverhamton Low Level to Birmingham Snow Hill and London Paddington had been run down and duplicated the line from Birmingham New Street to London Euston which was faster than the old Great Western Route from Snow Hill to Paddington British Rail decided to close the line from Wolverhampton Low Level through Snow Hill to Birmingham Moor street and demolished Wolverhampton Low Level and Birmingham Snow Hill which became a NCP City Car park for a while and turn the rest of the route into a kind of Branch line singling the line in places and ruuning a service from Birmingham New Street to London Paddington every 2 hours which in the end finnished running as every one used the Euston Electric Services being much faster. When Birmingham New Street was rebuilt in the 1960's with the Birmingham Shopping Centre over it they replaced all the track work and it was far superior to the run down Birmingham Snow Hill Station and even more so now New Street has been totaly modernised with the new Grand Central Shopping Centre above it, but New Street will soon take second placve when Birmingham Curzon Street HS2 Station opens. in the late 1980's Centro and the West Midlands County decided to rebuild Birmingham Snow Hill and reinstate the track through the tunnel to Moor Street Station and to Smethwick Gaulton Bridge connecting on to the Stourbridge and Kidderminster line, but due to the Midland Metro the line to Wolverhampton Low Level was never reinstated, but then Birmingham Moor Street was rebuilt and Chiltern Trains took over the line from Birmingham Snow Hill to London Marelebone reintroducing express train services once again from a Modrn New Birmingham Snow Hill and Moor Street Stations back to London Marelebone and totaly modrnising and redoubling the old Great Western Route, but not only that but it is on the cards to again rebuild Snow Hill Station some time in the future, so that is why Birmingham New Street Station was kept and not Birmingham Snow Hill

@robtyman4281 3 ай бұрын

@@peterwilliamallen1063...a spectacular waste of infrastructure; and the trashing of a great railway legacy the Victorians left us. Such a stupid decision, not to mention an act of vandalism. They used the excuse that Snow Hill couldn't be electrified - this was total rubbish. It could; but the then national government had already decided that Birmingham only needed one large station. And they weren't going to budge from this, despite the fact that the old Snow Hill was an all round better station. Better designed, better track layout... allowing for fast through trains. ......which could have been HS2 trains heading north..... until the last Tory government messed up the project completely. But going back..... They could have easily electrified the route through Snow Hill, but the political decision to axe it and keep New Street had been made. No amount of evidence to the contrary was going to sway the then Transport Secretary (Marples), or successive ones, right up until 1977 - when the old Snow Hill closed for good. It was a true demonstration of total inflexibility, and the most stubborn of attitudes. An attitude that did enormous damage to our railways. We're all still feeling the impact of these decisions, more than 60 years on. And no doubt will do so for many more decades. Only the British could make such a monumental cock-up with railways, and yet defend this mistake (knowing it's wrong) repeatedly for the next 30 years. Hmm, reminds me of some other more recent monumental mistake.....🤔🤨

@alanfbrookes9771 3 ай бұрын

Just check the railway map. There is absolutely no way all the New Street traffic could have been transferred to Snow Hill. The rails just aren't there. How would you get trains from the Derby line to the Bristol Line through Snow Hill? And what about the local trains to Lichfield, Redditch, Walsall, Coventry, etc.? A 21st Century building over Victorian trackwork? They tore up ALL the track at Snow Hill and replaced it with brand new track with a different track layout. There's no Victorian trackwork there at all.

@alanfbrookes9771 3 ай бұрын

@@peterwilliamallen1063 British Railways totally misunderstood its role in society, and didn't forsee the rise in rail travel that has been happening in recent years. Railway enthusiasts warned them about all this at the time, but the Ministry of Transport was bent on removing 2/3 of the network and closing down as many local stations as they could. It was the time of the road lobby, and they just concentrated all development on replacing trains with buses and lorries. I cannot see Curzon Street becoming more important than New Street. Curzon Street lost its passenger services during the middle 19th century, except for the odd extras to Sutton Coldfield, and New Street was built because it was more conveniently located for the City Centre, and allowed through trains from London to the North, and from the North East to the South West. New Street has become the centre of the British railway hub: Curzon St., at its very best, will just be the end of a fast branch line from Euston, which doesn't even connect with HS1, which runs into St. Pancras. Passengers from the Continent will not want to lug all the bags along Euston Road to get from St. Pancras to Euston, and, if they do, why would they take an HS2 train to Birmingham, and then have to lug their baggage across Brum to New Street, when they could take directs trains from Euston to Manchester, Liverpool, Holyhead, Glasgow, etc., instead of having to change stations at Birmingham?

@mattpotter8725 3 ай бұрын

Good video, but the first and I expect the only time I've ever heard the mess that is Birmingham New Street and the inefficient way trains have to traverse other lines to get in and out of it as an elegant and efficient dance!!! It's just nothing of the sort and should have been sorted out from the start (although everything in this country at that time, and maybe still today, had to be done on the cheap.

@michaelkelly2708 Ай бұрын

Tartarian structures, i don't think they rebuilt this, they are lieing about His story History, Tartaria and the mudfloods KZbin ❤️😊

@rogercufflin3232 22 күн бұрын

The original Snow Hill lovely compared to todays tatty station. Why did they close it, surly the 2nd biggest city should have more than 1 main station. It could of served local services

@Glenn1967ful 3 ай бұрын

I could add, rebuilt stations in the West Midlands are some of the most dismal in the country. OK the redevelopment of New St has been welcome as this was one of the worst stations in the country, but the new Snow Hill is a miserable looking place with no sense of occasion, esp as there are expresses to London again. Also Stafford must rate as one of the most depressing and ugly stations in the country.