Tyseley Locomotive Works Open Day

Tyseley Locomotive Works in South Birmingham held a couple of of their open days at the weekend which included an impressive display of locomotives (including some good diesels) and some running steam. Its always interesting to visit their sheds and see the progress of the various new build locomotives as well as enjoy a bit of live steam. You can see my photos here.

Tyseley Locomotive Works Open Day

Birmingham has a kind-of railway museum, really a locomotive works that has a few open days a year, and on Saturday i finally got around to going to one of them. Well i say "finally" but i have been to one of the open days before back in the mid-1980s, i was a child back then and everything at the adjacent Tyseley MPD was in BR blue and grey...

Nowadays i am a lot bigger and the trains at the MPD are in London Midland and Cross Country livery. The open day was great fun and included plenty of iconic motive power including City of Truro (the first locomotive to exceed 100mph of course) which was great to see. Personally though i enjoyed seeing the "modern image" locomotives more such as the Class 86 though these are coming up to 50 years old now so can hardly be considered that modern surely? Anyway you can see my photos here.

Erdington rails

Usually i go out of Birmingham to do some train photography, i certainly have never done a proper photo shoot at my nearest station Erdington before mostly because it is usually a commuter station with a parade of 323 EMUs and little else. However this morning i saw on RTT that there were a few different workings going through the station so went along to take some photos. I've never seen a HST go through Erdington before and also never seen a Rail Head Treatment Train in operation until now. You can see the photos i took here.

Marston Green

Marston Green is a village in Solihull near to the NEC and Birmingham Airport and was part of the parish of Bickenhill which dates from the time of Edward the Confessor. The village itself is listed in the Domesday Book as Merestone but probably dates from before the Norman conquest. Merestone was divided into two in the 12th century, Marston Culy and Wavers Marston. The former changing its name to Marston Green by the early 19th century.

Marston Green lies between two brooks (Low Brook and Hatchford Brook which flow into the river Cole). The village's population has been, for most of its existence, concerned with agriculture but it is now mostly populated by people who work in Birmingham and Solihull. Some agricultural land still exists around the village though much of it has been eaten up by post-war developments including the airport. The village saw a great deal of residential growth in early 20th centuries. A station on the LMS' London-Birmingham line was opened in 1838, this and new roads helped make Marston Green accessible and appeal to workers in the city though interestingly it was not until the 1920s that new house building was begun in earnest.

A Canadian Airforce base was located in Marston Green during the Second World War. Post-war the site was used to build a maternity hospital catering for the east side of Birmingham (even though the hospital wasn't actually in Birmingham). Thousands of babies were born there, until maternity services were moved to Heartlands Hospital, including the author. The hospital was demolished in 1999 with houses now built on the site.

Until boundary changes in the early 1970s Marston Green was part of Warwickshire but is now part of the Solihull Metropolitan Borough.

'Parishes: Bickenhill.' A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 4, Hemlingford Hundred. Ed. L F Salzman. London: Victoria County History, 1947. 34-39. British History Online. Web. 9 March 2015. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/warks/vol4/pp34-39.

Dargue W., 'Marston Green, Marston Culy/ Marston Culey, Wavers Marston', A History of Birmingham Places and Placenames from A to Y. http://billdargue.jimdo.com/placenames-gazetteer-a-to-y/places-m/marston-green/ [accessed 11/03/15]

The Gower Branch Canal

The Gower Branch Canal is a short canal that links the old and new Birmingham Main Lines. The half mile long canal branches off the Birmingham New Main Line at Albion Junction.

The other end of the canal connects to the Birmingham Old Main Line at Brades Hall Junction via a triple "staircase" lock or 3 locks close together anyway.

The canal was built in 1836 and allowed boats coming (or going to) the Netherton Canal to get to the old main line without a long detour. I visited the canal (walking it's entire length didn't take long!) back in 2010, you can see my photos here.

Upgrading the towpath

The canal towpath in Erdington is being upgraded. Hopefully the new tarmac will be more pleasant to walk on after heavy rain than the old track!

Waterbus

The waterbus runs a circuit in Birmingham at the heart of the canal network.

Upgrading the towpath

The canal near my house is having its towpath upgraded (which is a good thing as it becomes a quagmire after a bit of rain).

Bridge over Charles

The bridge over Great Charles Street in Birmingham.

Towpath sparrow

A busy sparrow on the towpath of the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal in Erdington.

Honeywell building

Its real name i can't recall but to me its always been the Honeywell building as they owned it in the 1970s when i could see it from my bedroom window!

King's Norton Stop Lock

The only guillotine gate stop lock on the canal network, in the olden days when canals were owned by different companies they didn't want their rivals taking their water hence stop locks like this on the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal.

The new Metro

One of the new trains of the Midlands Metro being bought in now ahead of the extension to New Street which is under construction. I must get around to travelling on the Metro one of these days.