NETWORK Rail has unveiled the first section of the future Birmingham New Street Gateway station – rather earlier than had been expected.

The gleaming component is just 200 square metres in size, and made of mirror-polished stainless steel. It has been made so that decisions can be made about the best materials for the complete structure, which was designed by Foreign Office Architects and is due to be opened in 2015.

The mock-up consists of 54 panels of 2mm-thick stainless steel, mounted four metres from the ground. It was built at the Network Rail logistics site at Bordesley, which will also be used to transport material to and from the station by rail rather than road when construction starts.

Andrew Skidmore of Network Rail said: “Coming face to face with the stunning design for New Street you can’t help but be excited by what the Gateway project will deliver.  It is at the heart of our plans to restore pride in Britain’s stations and by 2015, passengers will have the station they deserve and Birmingham will have another landmark building to be proud of.”

Birmingham New Street Gateway will have a concourse more than three times the size of the present one, topped by an atrium, but the problems of the station's confined site mean that the area occupied by the platforms below cannot be enlarged significantly.

The work will be carried out in two stages. Phase 1 will see a new concourse opening on the site of a former car park next to the present station in 2012. After that, the present concourse will be demolished as the start of Phase 2, which will take a further three years to complete.

New Street was last modernised in the later 1960s as part of the BR London Midland electrification of the West Coast Main Line, when the origjnal structure dating from 1854 was demolished. 40 million people use the station every year, which is more than twice the number for which the 1960s modernisation was designed. This figure is expected to increase further in the years ahead.