 Hello, thank you for joining me. We're in Birmingham today. We're at Birmingham Snow Hill Station Now what we've come here to have a look at is a modern bit of not the shoes railway, but the shoes tramway So if you look over here, well firstly on this side is the main railway line. I know it's a bit windy out here Which goes that way towards Kilimanster That way underneath the car park in the city down to London Mar-a-Bone And here, you'll notice the catenary, that's of the middle of Metro Now the middle of Metro opened along the original Great Western Main Line up to Wolverhampton in 1999 But when it first started running it ran from Snow Hill Out of this platform here, and you can just see there's some track still in situ But when they extended it to New Street aka Grand Central The track then went up here There's a new stop there, which was originally called Snow Hill, but it caused too much confusion So it's now called St. Chad's after the beautiful Cathedral over there by QG And that's the Catholic Cathedral in Birmingham. There is another Cathedral up to go out the station and turn right you'll find the Anglican Cathedral So both of those are really worth visiting. So that is the current Snow where it's not Snow Hill it's now called St. Chad's as I said But if you want to catch a train heading in that direction They tend to say go out there right a tram rather and up to Ball Street Ball Street is now the official interchange for Birmingham Snow Hill Although what you could do you could if the train wasn't terminated You can stay on the Jury Quarter or the Hawthorne to catch the tram there heading north What they could do though I think the plan is eventually for this to become another network rail But in the meantime, you know, they could put a set ticket barriers just down there And people could access and they could just jump straight on the tram It might be quicker and easier interchange and would relieve congestion So if you want to get to that tram stop you have to go out these doors here Which I don't think are open all the time Okay, they are open today. I won't go down there now. We'd have to go down there and down To get to there's a tram there Number 36 to get if you wanted to jump on the tram heading north It's a little bit frustrating because you almost have a step-free access I appreciate it. Once this becomes a national rail track People in the railway train just pulled in across 172 The type of door on the front I'm shouting now because as you can see it's getting really, really windy There's the tram over there. We're going to go indoors in a minute So it shouldn't be too bad, but I want to show you the disused Midland Metro platforms So there's the class 172 It's better now. Now we're underneath the car park I must say it's not the most attractive of railway stations But at least it's not windy having that and you are in the dry So the tram line, old tram line, new tram line is behind that fence over there It's still a bit windy in here You know what would be quite funny is if they could do is get a preserved Birmingham tram Like say one of the original Alessandro-Beiro trams Just run it up and down here, have a little heritage tramway They could have like an old tram, probably have to be single-decker And there's two platforms up there, they could take it in turns of giving people rides So wouldn't that be fun? I don't suppose it would happen, but it would be quite cool, wouldn't it? So we're now, there's the various buildings here which have waiting rooms and toilets And then the three platforms of Snow Hill are just over there So when we come to here, you can now see the point work And up there is the disused platforms Now this station, we've done barrierless tube stations And we've explored half-barriered stations in stations that have ticket barriers But you could get onto without passing through a ticket barrier This one used to fall into that category It's what used to happen here There used to be, I think it must have been, see what it now says, no access to middle and metro You used to walk off the end of the platform and onto the platform that way So if you did that, you could access the station without passing through a ticket barrier Because if you look, it's good it's going to be a bit of a street better If you look up at the old, whether the camera's going to pick it out But there's a derelict escalator at the end of the platform Which took you up onto the street So that always was the end It became impractical for when they wanted to extend it to New Street So that's why the trams now run along up there and onto the streets So if we have a look on this map, it used to end here So now it goes up here and down there to Ball Street That is the official interchange It was actually the terminus for a while until it extended to Grand Central And the plan is they're now working on an extension up to Five Ways I think it will originally go to Centenary Square from here at Tram now It will go to Centenary Square and then it will follow on up to Five Ways I don't know if we're going to see that tram, but I can hear it So from Birmingham Snow Hill, thank you very much for watching I have to go now, I can see this train pulling in here, another class 172 This is my train So from the abandoned tram line at Birmingham Snow Hill Thank you very much for watching and goodbye