From concrete bunker to temple of light, New Street station is reborn

It may not be the most complex city centre rail project in the UK – that honour probably goes to London’s Crossrail scheme – but the modernisation of Birmingham’s New Street station could take the prize for the most logistically challenging. The scheme, now nearing completion, has involved revamping a 1960s station and building a new shopping centre above it, while at the same time keeping passengers and trains moving.

Birmingham New Street is the UK’s eighth busiest railway station and the busiest outside London. More than 34 million people used the station last year. That’s around half the number of passengers at Heathrow. It’s also one of the UK’s busiest interchange stations with over five million travellers changing trains annually. New Street is busy and getting busier and on a number of occasions in the recent past crowd control measures have been required to prevent a crush on...

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