Weekend Variety No 2

Sutton's Superb Station

The fbbs arrived at and departerd from Sutton Coldfield station en route to/from John's funeral. Quite often, suburban stations are now reduced to a few bus shelters and not much else. But most on the line from Birmingham New Street to Lichfield Trant Valley are still staffed Monday to Saturday, at least for the morning.

Sutton Coldfield has very respectable office hours.

There are also ticket machines on both platforms.

There are FOUR entrances and none of them has a gateline!

Obvious ways in are through the main station building and from the car patk. Less obvu inious unless you are "in the know" is an entrance which is probably the quickest from the town centre. The route takes you past thr Station Hotel ...

... and in though a side door at the up platform level.

Here we can see the steps access from ticket hall and, on the right the fully glazed lift shaft.

On the down platform there is a ramp plus a lift shaft.

The lifts have been clevery contructed to be an addition rather than involving a massive rebuild.

In both cases the lift exit takes you under the ramp or stairs to get to the platform.

The sign above the gaps guides you to Platform 2 but not, oddly, to an exit.

It does, indeed, lead to the exit via the booking hall because that's how the fbbs were able to expedite their egress!

Then there is the fourth entrance which has somewhat baffled the old man.

It is shown on the official but not always helpful diagram, next to ...

"Newspaper and General". fbb thinks the pathway starts near the side entrance, but it does look a but spooky.

 Nw

It appear as a white line on "Streetmap" ...

... and appears once again in the non spooky real world to the south of the station on Park Road (the cream one)..

The "Newspaper and General" os now a trendy (?) bagel and coffee shop located in a fine old bit of LNWR station building.

Looks quite attractive!

The owners have provided their own departure screen.

More tomorrow.

Poor Press Presentations (Again)

When did Sotrail start operating trains like these?

Obviously written for a Swindon paper desperate for news. It refers to ambitious but aspirational plans to develop new stations and services all over the GWR network. It seems unlikely that any of them will be at or near Swindon. fbb supposes that, if abd when these improvements happen, there may be a few new travel opportunities from Swindon?

Try Try Again

The last attempt to beat the record failed by a small number of seconds. So, to celebrate 200 years of railway in thr UK, another attempt seems worth while.

How did you do with this ...

Puzzle Picture

If fbb reveals that Hasagawa is a Japanese (?) make of plastic kits, you might expect the topic of this headline to be an aircraft model.

But it's a Mini!

 Coming Soon 

More non-looping Superloops

from Mr Khan

 Next Variety blog : Monday 3rd Feb