So why Birmingham and why Severn Valley Railway? Simply, the railway was on my list of ones to visit, and the Gala just happened to be close to my birthday - so why not visit. I knew Worcester was a population centre close to SVR, but on my list of places I didn't have anything else listed as being of interest to visit there. I considered doing a day trip to SVR and back from London - but it was a minimum of 3 hours in each direction and on a Sunday, the trains don't run early so I'd miss a lot of the action. I didn't look at the trip properly until the Tuesday or Wednesday beforehand (similar to recent other trips - are you seeing a pattern here?). Then somehow I found Birmingham wasn't that much further away and had much better train links. Once Birmingham was apparent in the equation, it all fell into place rather easily - Birmingham was definitely a place I wanted to visit, mostly if for no other reason than it was the city I'd picked out as my "Plan B" late last year in the event I decided I couldn't make London work. This was pre-job - I started giving some thought to what would I do if I could only get jobs where I couldn't earn enough in London to also save to travel (London is an expensive place to live!), so going somewhere else seemed reasonable. Birmingham was chosen for the following reasons alone - I looked at a map and saw it was fairly central in the UK, a place where you could easily get to most other places in the UK in a few hours in every direction; it was a large city, so good job prospects; it wasn't hugely far away from London, so visiting Jeremy & Rachel or London in general wouldn't be a problem; it had its own International airport, so I could easily fly overseas from there; but also it would take just as long to travel to Luton and Stanstead airports from Birmingham as it does from London, giving more practical choice for flights overseas. All of these things combined made Birmingham a better prospect than say Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow or Edinburgh. Other than that, I knew nothing else about the place at all so I was interested to see it for myself.
Three weekends for my Birthday. We had Belgium for the weekend before, and going out in London/drinks for my actual birthday. So what of the 3rd weekend? Well it was a trip away to Birmingham, and to the Severn Valley Railway for their Autumn Gala - after all, my birthday had to figure in steam trains somewhere, didn't it? So why Birmingham and why Severn Valley Railway? Simply, the railway was on my list of ones to visit, and the Gala just happened to be close to my birthday - so why not visit. I knew Worcester was a population centre close to SVR, but on my list of places I didn't have anything else listed as being of interest to visit there. I considered doing a day trip to SVR and back from London - but it was a minimum of 3 hours in each direction and on a Sunday, the trains don't run early so I'd miss a lot of the action. I didn't look at the trip properly until the Tuesday or Wednesday beforehand (similar to recent other trips - are you seeing a pattern here?). Then somehow I found Birmingham wasn't that much further away and had much better train links. Once Birmingham was apparent in the equation, it all fell into place rather easily - Birmingham was definitely a place I wanted to visit, mostly if for no other reason than it was the city I'd picked out as my "Plan B" late last year in the event I decided I couldn't make London work. This was pre-job - I started giving some thought to what would I do if I could only get jobs where I couldn't earn enough in London to also save to travel (London is an expensive place to live!), so going somewhere else seemed reasonable. Birmingham was chosen for the following reasons alone - I looked at a map and saw it was fairly central in the UK, a place where you could easily get to most other places in the UK in a few hours in every direction; it was a large city, so good job prospects; it wasn't hugely far away from London, so visiting Jeremy & Rachel or London in general wouldn't be a problem; it had its own International airport, so I could easily fly overseas from there; but also it would take just as long to travel to Luton and Stanstead airports from Birmingham as it does from London, giving more practical choice for flights overseas. All of these things combined made Birmingham a better prospect than say Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow or Edinburgh. Other than that, I knew nothing else about the place at all so I was interested to see it for myself. Day 1 - Travelling to Birmingham; City of Birmingham The day had a late start, since I allowed for a late Friday night for my IT Manager's birthday drinks - not that I did have a huge night out but it was pricewise better to do it that way as well - in fact it was really cheap to travel by train between London and Birmingham (or "Brum", as the city is known). The is at least 3 train companies running between them, with two from Euston - London Midland, and Virgin West Coast. London Midland was a little bit cheaper, but would take longer so I opted for Virgin - plus despite the fact people seem to prefer the London Midland trains, I actually prefer the Virgin Pendolino's which feel much more like a proper long distance train to me. Due to depart at 12:23pm, we did leave about 15 minutes late but still arrived earlier than the London Midland train I would have otherwise caught! upon arrival at Birmingham New Street, I walked a few blocks to the inner city hotel I was staying at, which I had found through Booking.com and had a last minute deal on. It wasn't the flashest of hotels - by that I mean it would have been flash in its heyday, but it hadn't really updated since then; but it had a charm of its own and certainly wasn't like the one in Brussels! I stayed long enough to drop my bag off, and then headed out. There was one thing I wanted to do above all others while in Birmingham, and that was see the City of Birmingham. The City of Birmingham is a locomotive, funnily enough - an LMS Duchess, the same type that I rode behind up to Carlisle and back at the end of January. There are only 3 of these neat Duchess Class engines left - one in streamlined form, Duchess of Hamilton at the National Railway Museum in York, which I'd seen; Duchess of Sutherland, which I'd ridden behind; and the other is City of Birmingham, preserved in its namesake city in the "Thinktank" Science Museum. So I went and visited the museum, as Science museums are quite cool in the UK in general and well worth visiting. Of course, I started with seeing the locomotive, which is displayed rather well and you can walk into the cab area to lave a look also. There are other examples of engines (engines as opposed to locomotives/trains) and vehicles from the Industrial Revolution until the present day - Birmingham was a very important centre during the Industrial Revolution, in fact perhaps even the key city at the beginning of all of it. There was more than that though - a whole floor practically devoted to the wonders of the human body and the technology to heal and mend it, as well as augment it; a section on animals, including the real skeleton of a Giant Deer complete with huge impressive moose-like antlers; and on the top floor, a Planetarium with other space-based exhibits. Entrance to the Planetarium was free, but you had to get a ticket for a show when you paid to get in as space was limited and demand was high. I had a ticket for the 4pm show, and when it started and I saw that it was about starsigns in the sky I didn't think much of it as I'd seen planetarium shows like it before or even better, plus it was being narrated by someone with a very monotonal American accent. However it didn't take long to suddenly realise that in actual fact this was a show about the Northern Hemisphere sky - not the Southern Hemisphere like I'd seen so many times before. It talked about how the Big Dipper and the Great Bear were the same thing, and how you could use the Big Dipper to point at Polaris, the Northern Star, and then started drawing out the different star signs in the sky as the sun passed them in the course of the earths orbit of the sun, and how that then correlates with astrology, and how because of the earth's wobble since astrology was invented the star sign dates don't match up with what you see in the during that time now. I'd heard these things many times before, but it never quite resonated the same and I now realised why - a lot of the stars simply can't be seen from the Southern Hemisphere, or at least if you can, its upside down. Quite informative - but not the most spectacular show. After the show, I was pretty much done with the museum so wandered around the city for a bit and found some spectacular red brick and terracotta buildings, including the Hospital - a lot of the city streets of Birmingham have these wonderful ornate Victorian buildings in this style and its quite different, certainly I haven't stumbled across anything like it in London. Then I headed to the Bullring, a big mall complex in the city centre where I knew I'd find an Ed's Easy Diner to have dinner at. I've had a bit of a thing for Ed's ever since me, Jeremy and Rachel went to one for dessert and I found they did Oreo shakes. They are an American-style diner sorts, and they do burgers and hot dogs and a few other things for mains. I got the "Burger of the Month" - an odd combination of beef meat patty, lamb meat balls, jalapenos, cheese and a few other things called "Great Balls of Fire". It was very tasty, when it finally came - I think they took too long as they offered me a refill of my lemonade glass on top of the normal refill you get. After that, was naturally an Oreo shake - using the birthday voucher I had for joining up with their club scheme. The great thing about their shakes is you get the shake in a glass, about the same size as you do at Denny's but then you also get the metal container which the milkshake was mixed in and which has another glassful's worth of milkshake in it. So you effectively get 2 Oreo Shakes, although this time there seemed to be extra and I managed to get 2 and a half which was extra awesome since I seemingly can never get enough of the Oreo Shakes! After dinner I was feeling a little bit exhausted (and full) so went back to the Hotel and laid up for the rest of the night, but also made use of the bath for a soak for a while - because why not? The bigger day of the two by far, and the day of the main event - visiting the Severn Valley Railway Spring Gala event. This heritage railway is one of Britain's more notable railways, and to get there I had to catch a train and travel for an hour to Kidderminster. But it was by no means an early start - for some reason, the first train from Birmingham to Kidderminster didn't leave until 9.26am. I did spend about 20 minutes between leaving the hotel and heading to Birmingham Moor Street station detouring through the city a little bit, ending up finding more red brick & terracotta buildings near where the other ones I'd seen the day before were. Not long after I arrived at Moor Street station than they announced the train might be late, or cancelled - the driver hadn't shown up for work. I was not going to arrive for the beginning of the gala anyway but I had planned on what I was doing initially when I got there, which depended on catching the right trains. In the event, the train to Kidderminster was late and not cancelled - and I arrived at Kidderminster in time to buy my all-day ticket and jump on the train that was about to leave without having a chance to get out my camera. There are railway galas all the time in Britain it seems, especially at the moment - there's one every other weekend. I could go to them all - but I wouldn't be able to get up to much else, and so I have to "pick my battles". The Mid-Hants Gala had been a good one to go to, because the variety of locomotives was good - this particular Gala didn't sound like it had the most appealing line up of locomotives to me, but it sure had the numbers - 11 steam locos in steam, 4 of them guest engines from other railways, and the mix was big and small engines. The headline guest locomotive was a WW2-era War Department 2-8-0, the last of its particular variant. Its a very austere looking engine, not surprising for a loco built during wartime in a hurry to work freight and troop trains in the UK & Europe and its not really my thing, nor were lots of the other engines but in the end the variety of different locomotives was quite neat. There are intermediate stations along the line which you can hop off at and get on another train as your ticket lets you train hop all day if you want, and I travelled the length of the line to Bridgnorth on two different trains and then slowly worked my way back to Kidderminster. The line is quite long - 26km - and as I discovered, the Severn Valley Railway really has its act together. They have a varied, scenic line; lots of different interesting things at the intermediate stations, including Cafe's or even Pubs (not an either-or situation either - Bridgnorth, the other end of the line has both a Cafe and a Pub) which were doing a roaring trade all weekend and must have earned an absolute bomb, even though their prices were quite reasonable; the train running was slick and was always on time, even with lots more trains than usual running; and the thing which got me most was the wonderful museum at Highley, mid way along the line. Not only do they have this huge, spacious building with some of the locomotives they don't use or aren't being fixed up on display (and looking spic-and-span at that too, except for the Black Five which was looking purposely sooty and used) but it has a number of shops, a big exhibition space currently depicting the SVR's first 50th years (including a mock pub, with a TV on the wall playing a video describing how the railway began with a meeting of like minded indivuduals at a pub) and upstairs was a cafe which then went out on to a huge balcony which faced the railway and gave great views of the line and surrounding area. So much so that over the course of about 2 hours I camped out at this museum, taking in the view and the passing trains when there was one to see from this upstairs balcony and in between looking around the museum space. No railway in NZ has anything like this museum, let alone all the other facilities the SVR has - the closest approximation to the museum in NZ terms would be Pleasant Point's Keanes Crossing at the present time. With such a great railway setup on a scenic line, the trains were in the end the icing on the cake. Not just the locomotives themselves either be they the running ones or the ones parked up on display, or under overhaul in the shed at Bridgnorth (which included "Taw Valley", the original Harry Potter engine that Chris Columbus rejected for the film as looking 'too modern') or the new builds nearing completion (a replica of "Catch Me Who Can" and a 3MT tank engine) but the carriage rakes being used as well. Some of the trains were long - 8 coaches long - but there was a wide variety of rakes which surprised me, as mostly I've only seen in person or in pictures British Railway Mk1 carriages in maroon, or sometimes in the Southern Green livery some wore. At Bluebell I rode in genuine Southern carriages, but Mid-Hants was BR Mk1's - here though, they had a rake of LNER teak bogie coaches and another long rake of LMS carriages as well as a GWR set, as well as a BR Mk1 set (which was in "Blood and Custard", probably the best looking of the Mk1 carriage liveries!). Needless to say I had the opportunity to ride in them all, with the GWR carriages not seeming too different to the BR Mk1's; the LNER set were nice with their somewhat Art Deco decor, although seemed a tad dingy despite the large windows; and I managed to score myself a 1st Class compartment all to myself in the LMS carriages, which was very ornate and comfortable. After arriving back into Kidderminster having thoroughly enjoyed my day, it was time to head back to Birmingham even though trains were still running on the SVR. Back in Birmingham, I got off at the Snow Hill station and walked across central Birmingham to New Street Station, grabbing some dinner to have on the train on the way and then awaited my Virgin West Coast train back to London. This train was absolutely full, and the trip was done in darkness and otherwise unremarkable - except for some football fans who were having a few beers and were discussing with each other the merits or otherwise of this team and that team. One of them particularly seemed to have a dislike of Arsene Wenger, which I found a little bit amusing - complaining that Arsenal fans were smug, and how he hates that the entire football world sees Mr Wenger looking like he's thinking and thinks "Ooh he's got a plan", arguing that he thought Mr Wenger didn't even think about strategy much anymore. His friends agreed saying they thought it was basically second nature to Arsene so he just did it automatically and didn't have to analyse it, which got the original guy worked up because thats not what he meant. He tried to win the argument my saying "Just because Wenger did some clever stuff years ago everyone thinks he's all that. I'm sure Jesus was the same, he did a couple of magic tricks turning water into wine and then everyone was all like 'Oh he's the Son of God and he can do everything' ". I'm not sure comparing Wenger to Jesus was quite the best way to get his point across somehow, but it sure was funny! A thoroughly enjoyable trip and although I might have approached it initially as "can't think of anything else better to do so might as well", I am super glad I made the effort. Birmingham is very nice - maybe not nice enough to entice me to shift there from London now that I'm settled, but if I wasn't settled I'd be giving some serious thought to moving there I would think. Besides, SVR is fairly close and I have discovered Tyseley, where one of the main line excursion operators is based is on Birmingham's outskirts - I would not want for steam trains there! I didn't quite understand how much of a gem Severn Valley Railway was until I saw it for myself - definitely a railway amongst railways. I certainly will be back, not the least for which is the Autumn Gala where they've already announced the headline locomotive - 70000 "Britannia", the big green engine from the Mid Hants Gala which would be impressive on the SVR, and the fact that it sounds like they are going to do night running as well which would be quite the sight. "Taw Valley" should hopefully be finished by then too, and the prospect of it teaming up with SVR classmate "Sir Keith Park" is also an exciting sounding possibility. I do feel like I need to visit the North Yorkshire Moors Railway now too, to compare it with the SVR. No doubt Birmingham will be visited a few more times yet, it seems an interesting place and the locals are friendly enough - I do quite like the particular "Brummie" accent too, its like one of the nicer English accents with a healthy dose of Scottish. Iit has occurred to me that some of the same qualities which made Birmingham a suitable "Plan B" location also make it a suitable staging point or layover place for other trips around Britain - the kinds of ones where from London after work you'd either arrive at your destination too late or can't make it there that night, but if you left the following morning it would be midday before you got there. Birmingham would prove to be a good place to layover for the night, meaning you could get to where you need to go the next morning much earlier - Northern Wales is a good example of this. Mind you, it wouldn't be the only city in the region like that. Things to keep in mind!
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A Kiwi out travelling in the UK and surrounding countries Archives
August 2019
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