Railnews.co.uk

AT last, we have some political progress on an electrification programme with the announcement (hastily made on the day Gordon Brown chaired a Cabinet meeting in Cardiff) that the Great Western route will be electrified to Reading, Newbury, Oxford, Bristol, Cardiff and Swansea.
  
And, for good measure, Liverpool-Manchester electrification, via Newton-le-Willows, was thrown in, too.  Many, however, including the Department for Transport in its announcement, overlooked the significance of this route-for this was the line built over Chat Moss where railway history began.    
   
Powered by George Stephenson's Rocket, Liverpool-Manchester was the original intercity line and pioneered the railway revolution Britain bequeathed to the rest of the world. 
  
And it was this line that provided the springboard for the Grand Junction Railway, opened in 1837 from Warrington through Crewe, Stafford and Wolverhampton to Birmingham, where it was joined a year later by Robert Stephenson's London and Birmingham Railway-the first main line to reach London. 
  
Later, the three lines merged to form the London and North Western Railway-today's West Coast Main Line. During the late 19th Century the LNWR became known as the 'Premier Line' and grew into the largest joint stock company in the world, an equivalent of Microsoft today.
  
Nowadays, many in the national media refer to the East Coast Main Line as Britain's premier route.  But this ignores the fact that the West Coast line joins together more major population and commercial centres than any other-London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow ... not to mention a host of other significant towns and cities, such as Milton Keynes, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Preston and Carlisle.
  
Back in the 19th Century, the Grand Junction and London and Birmingham Railways shared a common terminus in Birmingham at Curzon Street, with its classical façade replicating the majestic Doric Arch in front of the original Euston station.
   
In the early 20th Century, Curzon Street was replaced by a new station, not far away, that also accommodated Midland Railway trains on the Derby-Bristol route.  For a while this new station was called Birmingham Grand Central, but its name was later changed to that of a nearby thoroughfare-New Street.
  
However, Curzon Street remained part of railway operations, finally becoming the site of a parcels and postal distribution depot. 
  
But when the Royal Mail abandoned using trains about ten years ago the site was cleared and taken over by Birmingham City Council, which had grand designs for developing the city's Eastside (but not with a railway station-although the original station building remained as a Grade-II listed structure).
   
Not far away, at its HQ in Solihull, the transport engineering company Arup, which had proposed and then designed the Channel Tunnel Rail Link-Britain's first, and so far only, high speed line-suggested (together with Murray Rayner, designer of Birmingham's Bull Ring shopping centre) that the Curzon Street site would be ideal for a new station to replace the cramped and congested New Street station, whose concrete and subterranean 1960s' design was increasingly viewed as unattractive, unwelcoming and unsuitable for increasing numbers of passengers and trains.
  
Arup and Rayner suggested a new station-which would comprise up to 17 platforms (compared with New Street's 12) all long enough to accommodate full-length Eurostar trains-could be linked with Moor Street station on the Chiltern Line by a common entrance near to the Bull Ring and Birmingham's High Street.
   
They proposed the new station should be called Birmingham Grand Central.
   
Sadly (in my view) Birmingham City Council-which had other ideas for relieving New Street station with deep tunnels for North East-South West services, later replaced by the current Gateway scheme that neither lengthens nor increases the number of platforms-never supported the concept, envisaging instead a commercial and residential redevelopment, and a 'linear park' around Cuzon Street.  Last year the council reportedly sold the site for £10 million.
   
At the same time, the idea of a new high speed line to the north-High Speed Two (HS2)-was gaining momentum ... despite the then Transport Minister, Tom Harris, claiming (spuriously) that high speed rail was not 'green,' a notion that was quickly dismissed by Eurostar's Richard Brown in a stinging letter to The Times.
  
Then came a Government reshuffle, which side-lined Tom Harris, while Lord Andrew Adonis-who knows a thing or two about trains and railways-took his place. Very quickly, Adonis put high speed rail back on the agenda-at the top, in fact-together with electrification.
  
Earlier this year, Lord Adonis set up a series of companies that might develop new high speed lines in Britain.  But the initial emphasis is on HS2-from London to the North, with a first stage to the West Midlands.
   
Normally, when such proposals are made, the NIMBY army is on the march, finding every reason under the sun why a project should not proceed.  However, in Birmingham and the West Midlands the opposite reaction has now occurred-with everyone falling over themselves to have the new line going to their location.   
  
For example, Birmingham International Airport and the National Exhibition Centre have proposed an 'International Hub'-while many commercial interests and Birmingham City Council want high speed trains to terminate in the city centre (even though the line needs to continue northward).
  
Recent Government decisions signify that railways clearly have a long term future. 
  
But these must be properly planned for. And the problem for Birmingham is that without a suitable terminal, which the city seems to have denied by its short-sighted rejection of the Grand Central plan, I find it hard to see how high speed trains might end up in our second city.

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