Birmingham Snow Hill Station - A brief overview

GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

The Act of Parliament to allow the Birmingham & Oxford Railway Company (B&OR) to build their line from Oxford to Birmingham was passed on 3rd August 1846. The Act allowed the B&OR to utilise the London North Western Railway's (LNWR) Curzon Street facilities as its Birmingham station to be accessed via a viaduct linking from Bordesley. The B&OR's submission to Parliament was supported by the Great Western Railway Company (GWR) who subsequently purchased the company on 14th November 1846. However the LNWR, recognising the danger of the arrival of the the GWR and its intention of developing its network to the north to their own plans, therefore prevented the GWR's plans from coming to fruition. Faced with this hostility the GWR had no other alternative than to to build their own station.

The route chosen into Birmingham reflected the ambitions of the GWR to continue onwards to Wolverhampton having purchased the Birmingham, Wolverhampton & Dudley Railway at the same time as the B&OR. This resulted in the railway crossing the centre of town partly in a tunnel, built by using the cut and cover method of construction, and partly in a deep cutting. The site selected for their station being the land originally occupied by the Oppenheims Glassworks. Originally known as Birmingham Station it was later known as Great Charles Street and Livery Street before the GWR finally adopted Snow Hill as the station's name in February 1858. The station was from the outset designed to accommodate mixed gauge trackwork which incorporated both standard and broad gauge within the station layout and configuration of pointwork. This was because any services using the lines to the north of the station had to use standard gauge tracks whilst to the south-east it had to accommodate broad gauge routes.

The GWR had hoped to use the old Shrewsbury & Birmingham Railways powers to run over the Stour Valley line to Navigation Street (later New Street) but as with its original plan of sharing station facilities with the LNWR, the latter the company would have none of it and, after some astute work by the LNWR's lawyers, the GWR had no other recourse other than to build its own route to Wolverhampton. With construction of the new route commencing in 1851 the station operated as a terminus until 14th November 1854 when the new line through Hockley tunnel and on to Wolverhampton came into being. The line had been delayed because of a collapsed bridge over a road between Soho and Handsworth stations, the bridge having failed on the 26th August 1854, which was the day after which it had passed a Board of Trade inspection. The route to Wolverhampton initially served the intermediate stations of Priestfield, Bilston Central, Bradley & Moxley (opened later, June 1860), Wednesbury Central, Swan Village, West Bromwich, Handsworth & Smethwick, Soho & Winson Green, and Hockley.

The station's opening was marked by the arrival in October 1852 of a broad gauge special train hauled by Daniel Gooch's Lord of the Isles locomotive. The initial building could not be described as being grand being a temporary timber structure which was to remain in place for another thirteen years until 1871 when the station was finally rebuilt. The temporary structure wasn't wasted by the frugal GWR as it was removed and reused at Didcot. The Great Western did however build in 1863 the ornate Great Western Hotel which fronted Colmore Row and which did provide an indication of the company's intent. The rebuilding of the station coincided with the full conversion of the mixed gauge trackwork to standard gauge (or narrow gauge as the GWR liked to describe it) in 1869. The layout of both the temporary station and the 1871 rebuild were essentially the same insofar that the through lines from Paddington to the Wolverhampton passed through the centre of the station served by two platforms. Services from the north terminating at Snow Hill were accommodated by bay platforms located at the northern end of both the up and down platforms. At the southern end of the station sidings were located which later were covered by the hotel and the roofing of the cutting in 1872.

The 1871 rebuild was a much larger station but was still constrained by Snow Hill and Livery Street on either side and Great Charles Street at its northern end. The new station had a huge arched roof, with a simple wooden overhead bridge linking the two platforms in the centre of the platforms. Its design however was still not as grand or imposing as that built by the LNWR at New Street station. Access to the station for passengers arriving by road transport was provided via large station yards off both Snow Hill and Livery Street. Passengers wishing to transport their horse-drawn vehicles could do so as both the up and down platforms had carriage landings built adjacent to both yards. At the Wolverhampton end of the station, adjacent to Great Charles Street, a locomotive turntable was erected to facilitate the servicing of locomotives - Tyseley shed not being built for another thirty years. The signal boxes controlling the station were located at either end of the station with the South Signal Box being located between the rear of the hotel and the down platform and the North Signal Box being sited adjacent to Great Charles Street bridge on the up line. In 1872 the deep cutting running from Snow Hill station to Temple Row was covered over with the Great Western Arcade built over the top.

The rebuilding of the third station commenced in 1906, which included incorporating a new pedestrian access from Colmore Row into the new booking hall, and was completed in 1912. The access was formed by creating a new entrance as part of the Great Western Hotel's facade, the hotel being taken out of public use and used as office accommodation. It was said that the noise and smoke of the trains passing underneath resulted in the hotel not being popular with guests. This time the GWR took up the challenge of competing with the now enlarged New Street station. The rebuilt station had a large booking hall with an arched glass roof and the platforms contained stylish buildings containing lavish waiting and refreshments rooms with oak bars of a standard worthy of many top hotels of the time. The GWR did not seek to enlarge the station by purchasing adjacent property as the LNWR did when they had enlarged New Street some twenty-five years earlier. This is probably because the GWR had, during the first decade of the new century, embarked on a major capital spending programme in building new lines, cutoffs to shorten journey times and new facilities such as Snow Hill station and money would have been very tight. Therefore the GWR resolved their need to expand the number of platforms and to provide more facilities not by widening the station but by extending the station beyond Great Charles Street which had for fifty years marked the northern limits of the station.

The new layout adopted in the 1906 design utilised two island platforms, one for the each direction of travel, thereby allowing two through lines, one line on either side of the island platform. The two island platforms were separated by four roads, two up and two down with the centre roads allowing traffic to pass directly through the station without affecting the trains standing at the platforms. In addition, by creating platforms up to 1197 feet long, the platforms could accommodate two trains at the same time with trains arriving or departing from one half of the platform via scissor crossovers in the centre of the station. The GWR therefore adopted the practice of allocating a separate number to each half of the four through platforms. The through platforms were numbered: 1 & 2; 5 & 6; 7 & 8 and 11 and 12. At the Wolverhampton end of the station the previous configuration of a pair of bay platforms for each direction was continued and these were numbered 3 & 4 on the down side and 9 & 10 for the up bay platforms. The slope of the site from Colmore Row was utilised by employing the area beneath the station at Great Charles Street to be used to provide a parcels depot accessed via a driveway. Parcels and other goods being sent by passenger service were moved to each island platform via lifts located at the buffer stops of the bay platforms.

The line towards Hockley was widened to four tracks to accommodate the increase in traffic. This option was not available to the south as the widening of Snow Hill tunnel would be very expensive requiring major land clearance. To accommodate the extra local traffic generated by the opening of the North Warwickshire line and the route to the South West, a new station, Moor Street, was built at the opposite end of the tunnel. During the 1960s the rebuilding of New Street station and the electrification of the West Coast mainline saw Snow Hill being used to accommodate the diverted traffic to London and Wolverhampton. However, once New Street was complete and the new electric services were operational the announcement that Snow Hill would be closed was made. All services were switched to Birmingham New Street and Moor Street. Express services were diverted to New Street from 1967. Local services north from Snow Hill to Wolverhampton Low Level railway station continued with four trains per day to Langley Green via Smethwick West using Class 122 units (nicknamed bubble cars) were the last to run and ended in March 1972.

Robert Ferris

For a definitive history of Snow Hill station visitors should read Derek Harrison's book Salute to Snow Hill which whilst out of print is readily available in second hand book shops and libraries.