Midlands Rail Hub, Birmingham and Beyond 

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Even though I've moved out of Birmingham now I'm extremely excited about this project, the new chords and platforms will be absolutely transformative but the scope of MRH also includes a number of upgrades on the Cross-City, Worcester-Hereford and Birmingham-Nuneaton lines, so I'm really hoping it gets delivered in full.

This desperately needs to go into Moor St asap, New St is overcrowded already

Very good video and your slower and measured voice presentation is so much better. Well done sir! Thank you.

excellent clip, especially the diagrams showing where the chords will go.

Another really interesting video. It is amazing how one new chord let alone two can be so transformative. I'm sure there must be other potential examples elsewhere that would do the same.

There is one thing that isn't mentioned in this video about Bordesley Station, if the works do go ahead then there a chance that Bordesley Station would close or the station would get relocated and the six trains per hour on the Cross City Line was being considered to be brought back IF Andy Street retained his seat as West Midlands Mayor but he lost so that six trains per hour is up in the air now. Great video

Thanks for calling out the "Cancel X and fund Y" nonsense. The Midlands Rail Hub is going to require a certain amount of investment, and then it is going to help people who want to come and visit areas around Birmingham Moor Street. But without the east part or the top part of HS2, there will be less passengers coming to Birmingham, from the North West and North East and therefore less visitors using the Midland Rail Hub. That's going to decrease future revenue from people outside the region. And if the Midland Rail Hub earns less money, Central Government are going to be more inclined to withold cash and say "not enough people use it to justify further investment". 🙄

Midlands Rail Hub is a great example of a project that delivers transformational benefits at minimal cost, by using minimal interventions to unlock existing underutilized infrastructure. But the government's position about 're-allocating funds from canceling HS2' is absurd, because the HS2 cancellation itself, negates capacity release (particularly at New Street) that was needed to deliver the full local benefits. So I can understand Andy Street's frustration about the HS2 North cancellation and determination to reverse this poor decision. The same is true in Manchester and Leeds. I have no doubt that history will record Sunak's decision as very ill informed. But I'm also reassured that Louise Haigh seems to understand trains.

I thought the main reason for the eastern chord towards water Orton was to allow the reintroduction of Sutton park line services. The lack of capacity at new st is often given as the reason for no progress abd i thiught its been said that it won't happen until they can run into moor st.

I don’t know this area at all well but let’s hope this goes ahead as it would likely make a heck of a difference. Thank you for the maps and diagrams - really useful.

Fantastic for the Midlands but areas like the northeast have to reply on northern rail 2 car 30 year old trains.

Trains could run from Moor St. to the Derby line right now by just reversing DMUs at Small Heath over the existing Bordesley connection. You don't mention the reopening of Saltley, Bromford Bridge and Castle Bromwich stations and reopening the Sutton Park line, which would be more useful than the Camp Hill line.

Thanks for the vid. Very informative as usual. Keep it up👍

I traveled Crewe to Euston in a four carriage set instead of the usual eight now I know how sardines feel, so where are all these new sets ?

I'm highly sceptical of the aims of this project. HS2 removes Euston fasts from New St in addition to the East Mids / Cardiff XC services and Hereford services to moved to Moor St by Midlands Rail Hub. But what is the added capacity freed up at New St for? 2 x Cross City line was previously accommodated and since then resignalling of New St has occurred so not those. So what else? I also doubt freight, new Camp Hill stoppers, 1 x Hereford and XC East Mids - Cardiff can all be comfortably accommodated on the Camphill line with the busy pinch point with Cross City at Kings Norton at one end and approaches to Moor St at the other creating an unrealistic reliance on adherence to timetable to keep it all running smoothly. We shall see. In essence I think the project merely shifts capacity constraints from the Gloucester line New St approaches to new problems created on the southern approaches to Moor St. What has always been the case but largely ignored by the scheme's promoters is that Worcester trains already serve Moor St (twice the frequency too) and a significant number of users from this direction choose the fast via Bromsgrove service to New St in preference to the Moor St options because that's where they need to be, it's quicker or more significantly many actually travel to the University campus / NHS centre - all made worse by these proposals by forcing a change of train. In addition to the observation made in the piece that Curzon St will now only potentially only offer minimal forward travel options, added together it's an awfully expensive way of moving around the city's railway deckchairs. The promoters need to reassess what the rationale behind the project is and be much clearer to the public what future service plans that are enabled by the freed up capacity at New St actually are.

Great Vid. What are the plans to upgrade Kings Norton?

Is there a case for opening a new station between Moseley and Bham. Seems like a large distance between the two.

I hope they plan to do something about getting in and out of Moor Street if they add the new platforms. Getting off of a Chiltern train there can be one hell of a crush sometimes, every time i've been there's only about 3 ticket barriers set to exit and unless you get down the front or go to the loos you are liable to get severely squashed. The 2 new platforms are supposedly going to be called A and B - as far as I know this would make it the only station with Lettered & Numbered platforms at the same time. Good pub quiz question I reckon.

Very interesting. I was curious how the paths into New St were available and now I know. Is there a need for an extra platform at Snow Hill because you can't terminate 4-6 trains per hour at one platform in Moor St? Also, are the 2 centre platforms at Kings Norton not available for reuse because CrossCountry run through on those tracks?

Wonder if in the interim they could run a loop Longbridge - University - New Street - Kings Norton so you could at least get 6 tph on the central ish part of Cross City Line?

And i dont think you are right about hs2, there will still be services to the north but they will have to join the wcml at Lichfield, which is far from ideal. Unless you are saying that none of the trains gojng north will be diverted via curzon st to keep the journey times down and new st will still deal with brum to the north west? I guess you could go to interchange station instead but again not the best solution.

TFW want to run more trains to Cheltenham so an extra Cardiff to Birmingham servwill be operated by. Cross-country or maybe west Midlands rail

Hi. Do you know if their are still plans to increase freight traffic through the west midlands, I am sure I read about something similar to this in Rail magazine a while back. Getting freight off the roads and onto rails seems like a no brainer to me, but I'm just an average joe looking inside from the outside so to speak.

Looks like they may have to knock down the Tesla showroom, so nothing of value will be lost! 😂

Could you explain something which has been confusing me? If hs2 now only goes to Curzon street, what the onward travel options? Does that mean people would have to walk to New street, or to Moor street? If so, that isnt fixing the capacity issue of the alresdy at capacity New Street.

So basically the whole Midlands Rail hub is two spurs diverting trains from new street to Moore street…?

The suspension on these trains are awful 😮 I could feel and hear every bump on the track! If I can notice now. How bad will they be in 20/30/40 years! This needs to be resolved! It takes to long for the doors to open! Should not have to wait 10-20 seconds for the door to open. After the train stopped!

We're not London, so these chords, as well as tram extensions down to Wolverhampton Road, and to St Andrews> Chelmsley Wood won't happen in my lifetime, construction won't start until 2045, earliest.

They can't even run the existing routes reliably. West Midlands Railways definitely needs transforming - from a clownshow into a proper rail operator.

great video! been waiting to see some youtube coverage of this.