Two

 

Long before I started my way down the Midland Metro tram line, I casually mentioned it as a concept in the DMs to a venerable blogger who shall remain nameless.  "Seriously, don't start on it," they warned.  I replied that I could handle it.

"I have no doubt that you can, but that doesn't mean that you should."

Those words came to mind as I got off the tram at Black Lake.  I'd been travelling all morning, and I thought I must be near the end by now.  It came as a shock to realise that I was on the cusp of Zones 2 and 3.  There were still loads of stops to go and, to be frank, it was a little difficult differentiating between them.  Black Lake did at least have a stretch of canal for me to cross and a bit of greenery, but I was soon on a main road with a factory, as I had been for an awful lot of the day.

I nipped across the road and returned to the side of the tram tracks.  There was a footpath following them to my next stop, which was a bit of a cheat, but I didn't fancy going ridiculously out of my way to walk along a busy dual carriageway.  At least this way it was a little scenic.

The path took me under road bridges, some old and made of brick, some newer and concrete.  Very soon I'd reached the next stop and I dutifully took up a spot on the platform.  After a few moments, I remembered the sign picture, and I ran up the steps to snap it before the tram arrived.  This is getting to be a nasty habit.

The full name of the stop is Dudley Street Guns Village; this being an area that was traditionally associated with the armament trade.  It's not very 21st century to boast about that kind of thing.  I understand when developers want to give their new developments a heritage sheen and call them "the Custard Factory" or "Miller's Quay" because of some tenuous link to a long-closed industry, but naming it after a profession devoted to murder is a bit much.  Certainly the local school thought so, and changed its name in 2017, noting that some websites blocked it from searches.  If this blog is even more unpopular than usual, it's because I wrote "Guns Village" in it, and not because nobody cares about a middle aged man looking at tram stops.

Dartmouth Street signalled the edge of West Bromwich town centre.

I decided to detour to the High Street, just for a look, as the next stop was very close indeed.  I walked down a typical Victorian terrace, ending up on a corner where a ghost sign promoted the Independent Order of the Rechabites.  These were a Victorian religious sect who believed in temperance and who gradually moved into financial services, operating as a mutual building society.  They're no longer a religious force in the UK, but still have a few adherents in Australia.

Their advert could, in some ways, be seen as provocative, because on the opposite corner was Society House, the former HQ of the West Bromwich Building Society.  This one was founded by Methodists, and still exists today, though its gloriously 1970s headquarters is now vacant.

The plan is apparently to turn the building into 100 apartments, though there didn't seem to be much work going on as I passed.  The West Brom moved a couple of streets away to a new headquarters next to a Travelodge.  

The glory days of this stretch of West Bromwich were clearly the 19th century, with a sandstone Town Hall and elaborately decorated buildings - churches, schools and the like - repurposed into more secular and dull purposes.  Lodge Road backed onto the Edward Street Hospital and was located in a deep cutting.  

There was a lift, but it was one of those lifts that you absolutely know is going to smell of piss before you even  press the call button, so I followed the staircase down and round the shaft to the platform and took a seat.

The seats were decorated with the original logo for the Metro.  For a network that only turned 25 years old this year, it's been remarkably changeable; the current diamond logo is the third in that time and the trams are the second batch.  I bought David Voice's book The West Midlands Metro and Very Light Rail a while back and it paints a somewhat haphazard picture of the network's evolution.  My favourite detail was that the line used to have ticket machines at every stop, but they kept breaking down; finally someone was sent from the manufacturer in Italy to investigate.  They were horrified to learn that the machines were installed on outdoor platforms in wet Birmingham; they'd been designed for indoor use only and were not weatherproof.

It felt a little like the West Midlands invested in a tram, not because they wanted to, but because they could; as though they'd seen Manchester had one and had got jealous.  It explains why, for the first sixteen years of its existence, the line ended at Snow Hill station and didn't go anywhere in the city centre, thereby cancelling out the usefulness of a tram route.  Its extensions are bitty and piecemeal, and I can't help thinking that its chaotic birth - plus the financial and engineering disaster that was the construction of the Edinburgh tramway - effectively killed off trams for the rest of the country.  We'd probably have Merseytram sailing down Paradise Street if they'd been a little more prudent.

I was now in West Brom proper, at its Central stop.  The problem with tram stops is they're not especially exciting.  Without ticket offices and waiting rooms and all the accoutrements of a railway station they're basically a couple of shelters and a walkway.  It was, of course, a proper train station once but all that is gone now.  There's something slightly demeaning about large towns like West Bromwich and Oldham losing their railway connections.  It's a shame that they couldn't keep a fast connection into the city while also having the convenience of a tram link.

They've tried their best to make this a gateway to the town by landscaping it and calling it Metro Plaza, with specially themed signage (in the old pink and blue of the Network West Midlands branding, but anyway).  It might be more successful as a space if it wasn't stuck round the back of the shops, overlooking the bus station.  It didn't put off the students from the nearby Sandwell College, though, who were spread all over the seats and walls eating their lunch.

I'd bought a wrap from Sainsbury's for my lunch, but it was in my backpack and I fancied something trashy so I walked down the High Street in search of something to munch on.  I was out of luck.  West Brom's main shopping district was one of the most down at heel I've seen in a long time, a parade of pound shops and local marts and charity shops.  It didn't feel welcoming or a place to linger.  The few food places I saw - somewhere I could buy a quick hot snack - seemed cash only places, and it's 2024 and I didn't have any cash on me.  (In fact, I'd forgotten my wallet entirely, so I couldn't even access a cash machine; I spent the entire weekend on Apple Pay).

The pedestrianised strip ended and I thought "well, that's that then".  I'm very sorry if I missed out on some delightful culinary treats but nothing called to me.  I decided I'd walk on to the next stop and have that wrap after all.  This end of town was even less appealing, a rat run to the bypass, and next thing I knew I was waiting to cross at a busy intersection by a factory that made jeans. I like to imagine there are Brummie versions of  Ivy Tilsley, Vera Duckworth and The Blessed Ida Clough bellowing at a modern day Mike Baldwin in there, demanding endless tea breaks and absolutely refusing to do any actual sewing.  

Outside the tram stop was a set of railway wheels, mounted on a pedestal, a reminder of the old iron way.  At least I think that's what they were.  As usual in the West Midlands there was absolutely no signage to advise me what I was looking at.  It might've been the remnants of an HGV that got stuck in the mud and fell to pieces for all I know.

I went down to the stop and took out my wrap for my lunch.  Ah.

Apparently the conditions in my backpack had not been great, and the miles of walking had pummelled it into a pancake.  The contents had squeezed out the ends so what I really had was a single flat piece of bread with a smear of vegetables.  I decided I'd do without.

Kenrick Park was another stop where it was actually better for me to follow the tram tracks.  Alongside much of the route was the West Bromwich Parkway, which, despite its name making it sound like a car park, constituted a walking and cycle path that shadowed the trams.  This was the quickest way to my next stop, The Hawthorns.

As I walked along the path, alone, unbothered by scenic views, it came to me that I really wasn't having much fun.  The wise and venerable blogger was absolutely right - this wasn't a route worth bothering with.

Part of the problem stems from it being a converted railway line.  For a hundred years the region turned its back on the tracks, hiding them away in cuttings.  This is fine when it's a heavy rail route because you only get the odd, large station to interrupt it; it's fast and direct.  Trams are more circumspect and need more stops, and those stops were wedged in inelegantly.  While railway stations become hubs and centres for the community, the tram stops were afterthoughts, tucked down side roads, buried under bridges, away from places you'd actually want to be.  I'd seen this before on the Metrolink, but that network was big enough to provide variations, and they'd really embraced the trams and tried to make them part of the city.

The West Midlands Metro didn't feel like a proper tram route.  It reminded me of an airport shuttle, the little monorails you get that take you between terminals at big hubs, an anonymous vehicle designed to get you from A to B without hassle or glamour.  It could be so much better.

The Hawthorns, of course, I'd already been to.  Somewhat unbelievably, it was this year, back in January.  That feels like an age ago.  2024 has been a very odd year for me; we're approaching the end and I'm not entirely sure I can remember most of it.  It's simply been... there.

Unsurprisingly, The Hawthorns hasn't changed radically in the nine months since I last visited to collect the railway side.  I did find a delightful little surprise though: bands of decorated bricks inlaid into the platform walls.

Lovely.

Handsworth Booth Street turned me out onto a small access road.  I followed it down to beneath the railway bridge, where trucks clattered by with heavy loads.  Across the way, a garage had filled a narrow street with its vehicles, scattering them over the pavement and forcing me into the road.  Litter piled up between the cars and the walls.  I walked round a corner and a sofa had been abandoned on the corner, its seats torn open to expose the stuffing.

There was a brief glimpse of the city centre across a concrete driveway, then I was passing a primary school, where a teacher tried to corral his charges into a PE lesson on the playground.  The road was bigger, wider now, and I found the tram halt opposite a bus shelter that encouraged me to give the gift of gold this Diwali.  

Winson Green stop came with elaborate metalwork instead of a boring old sign, and was subtitled "Outer Circle".  This was where the Metro crossed the path of the legendary number 11 service, a bus route that encircles Birmingham and takes about three hours.  A vague part of me had thought about travelling on it, for a look, but then I remembered that I don't like buses really and the Metro wasn't exactly floating my boat either.  If you want to know what it's like, Diamond Geezer did it in 2015, and Jonn Elledge did it three years after that, so I wouldn't really have anything pertinent to add anyway.  

I was exhausted by now.  I'd been walking for hours.  The frequent trams and the short hops meant I'd never really had a chance to rest between walks.  I was hungry too, having missed out on my lunch.  It was, by now, nearly half two, and I thought about that lovely hotel room waiting for me from three o'clock.  I considered giving up there on the platform at Winson Green, getting the tram into town, and using the hotel bar until my room was ready.  Then I looked at the map in the shelter.

I'd started the day in Zone 4, and now I was two stops from the end of Zone 2.  I had to complete that much.  The city centre - the glamour stops - could wait for another day.  

I got off the tram at Soho Benson Road with an extremely good looking man in a wheelchair.  You know how a little awkward part of your brain registers the presence of a disabled person, and you immediately panic that they think you're staring?  I experience that anxiety, but from a different angle; I wanted to stop him and say, "I'm not looking at you because you're in a wheelchair, I'm looking because you're very hot."  

This was a proper inner city now: dense, traffic-filled, grubby.  Scrappy pieces of land were covered with parked cars.  New homes had been built as a regeneration attempt; cul-de-sacs designed to minimise crime, apartment blocks with gated entrances.  I took a well-used desire path across a patch of green and dodged a black bag of dog mess right in the centre of the walkway, with the grass either side littered with carriers full of who knows what and a torn mattress.  Over the railway tracks, the tall buildings of the city centre appeared again, feeling incredibly distant.

Pitsford Street had once shadowed the Hockley Goods Yard, a massive expanse of railway lines and vehicles with a passenger station, Hockley, at its centre.  In 1971, British Rail took the decision to close the entire line between Snow Hill and Wolverhampton, and Hockley stopped getting any services the following year.  The goods yard became an industrial estate, but the newly-created West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive swept in and protected the railway route.  BR may not have seen the value of trains between Wolverhampton and Snow Hill, but the WMPTE did, and it subsequently became the Metro.

There's very little left of Hockley station; as is often the case in the West Midlands, they rebuilt the road passing the site and knocked down what little remained.  This entrance from the corner of Icknield Street is about all that's left.  When heavy rail services resumed, the station was relocated further south, closer to the city centre, and named Jewellery Quarter.

That was going to be my final stop of the day, but first I had to reach it, so I took a stroll through a graveyard.  Warstone Lane Cemetery was a private burial ground, set up in the 19th century.  For a while it was a lucrative business, but the problem with graveyards is they start filling up, and after a while they ran out of space for corpses.  The business ended and it was taken over by the City Council.

Its undoubted highlight is the catacombs, two rows of chambers for the interring of bodies.  The day I was there it was being photographed by a professional, with a tripod and everything; I skulked off to one side and took a snap with my iPhone.

Jewellery Quarter station is in the next street and, again, I was here back in January.  I resisted the urge to visit that lovely little pub.  I needed a lie down and a sandwich.  The Metro was almost conquered, but it'll be a while until I return for Zone 1's stops.  Who knows how long.