
Changing platforms at Birmingham New Street
If, like me, you change trains at Birmingham New Street railway station, this article might be of interest to you.
Almost always when you change trains you will need to change platforms. You may already know the way Birmingham New Street is organised. You have to go up and down stairs or escalators to access the platforms. The station is organised into zones and there are ticket barriers you need to go in and out of. Also, due to the length of the platforms, each is divided into an ‘a’ and ‘b’. section So, for example. For platform 4 there is 4a and 4b.
The secret is to access the stairs / escalators at the ‘b’ end of each platform. Once on the top you can easily walk to all the stairs to the other platforms without having to change zones or go through the ticket barriers.
So, for example, my train often arrives at platform 7 and my next train is from platform 12. When I arrive at platform 7, I need to look which part of the platform I’ve arrived at, is it 7a or 7b? If it is 7a I should walk down the platform to the 7b end and go up those stairs. Once above I look up to see the signs for all the other platforms and head for platform 12. Go down those stairs and decided where to stand to wait for my train.
Prior to knowing this I used to go up the nearest stairs to where my train stopped. This could mean I was lucky, but often I found I had to go through different zones and 2 sets of ticket barriers to get to the platform I needed. This caused unnecessary stress and time delay. Luckily, I had enough time between trains. Should one be delayed I would have had a problem.
Last week I checked my theory with one of the platform assistants and he confirmed that the information above is correct. I checked on both my outward and return journeys and it worked. The only thing I found was that I was often walking in the opposite direction of most people in my quest to get to the ‘b’ end of the platform.
Network Rail have produced a guide to the platforms which visually shows the information above.
