Birmingham New Street Station: lnwrbns_str419

Looking from the buffer stops of Fish Sidings towards the West end of New Street station on 2nd April 1964 as the demolition of the station commences. The fish sidings were built behind the original Platform 6 in the vee between Station Street and Hill Street, as seen in image 'lnwrbns_str1869a', and as part of the 1885 extension to serve the nearby Birmingham Fish Market. Not surprisingly for some eighty years this part of the station was well known for the strong smell of fish that would pervade the area. The ability of the railways to transport fish rapidly and carried in refrigerated vans opened up this important food source to the inland inhabitants of Great Britain and at a cost that was within reach of the average working man's pocket. According to Stephen Mourton and Bob Pixton in Part One of their two volume pictorial history Birmingham to Bristol - Portrait of a Famous Midland Route, Fish vans arrived from Hull, Aberdeen and Fleetwood and a fish train worked forward to Worcester and Gloucester.

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