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Fight to name Birmingham station recommences

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Eng274

Eng274

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Similarly Newton (Lanark) as it is, is somewhat misleading depending where you read it. I've seen it described as that or Newton (LanarkSHIRE) which is more accurate. The town of Lanark is about 20 miles away.

Pretty irrelevant but I'd hate for some unfortunate tourists to end up in Newton by accident. Or Lanark come to think of it...
 
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Eagle

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JamesRowden said:
'Ashford (Surrey)' station.
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But what's wrong with Ashford (Kent) then? That was its name before Eurostar, and indeed its CRS code is still AFK.

158>185 said:
Similarly Newton (Lanark) as it is, is somewhat misleading depending where you read it. I've seen it described as that or Newton (LanarkSHIRE) which is more accurate. The town of Lanark is about 20 miles away.
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The station's official name is Newton (Lanarkshire), but that doesn't fit on tickets, so it gets shortened in that slightly unfortunate way. It used to be Newton (Strathclyde), though.

Interestingly you could get away with just calling it Newton, as there is no other station called only Newton (closest is Newton for Hyde).
 
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Eng274

Eng274

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Most passengers, staff, CIS and on board PIS just call it 'Newton' so its already pretty much redundant suffixing Lanark(shire) in the station name.
 
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12CSVT

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Birmingham International should either be left as it is or renamed Birmingham Airport.

If the problem is tourists getting off at International when they want the city centre, then they could rename New Street to 'Birmingham Central' or 'Birmingham City Centre'
 
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JamesRowden

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Perhaps 'Birmingham International' station should be renamed 'Birmingham Airport Mainline' and the HS2 station named 'Birmingham Airport High Speed.'
 
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Muzer

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JamesRowden said:
Perhaps 'Birmingham International' station should be renamed 'Birmingham Airport Mainline' and the HS2 station named 'Birmingham Airport High Speed.'
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Whoa there, you saying the High Speed line isn't Main? ;)
 
D

dvboy

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cjp said:
Have you a suggestion then for Syon Lane ?
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I don't know the area well, but Syon Park?
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
158>185 said:
Most passengers, staff, CIS and on board PIS just call it 'Newton' so its already pretty much redundant suffixing Lanark(shire) in the station name.
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I think the idea is to not be confused with "Newtown (Powys)"
 
Andyjs247

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alwaystouchout said:
As others have said, I think there need to be more guidelines with regard to station names to give them a bit more clarity.

'International' is just so clumsy, seemingly used to simply lend a locale a greater proportion of recognition than it has. It doesn't necessarily mean a station has international rail services (ie. Stratford Intl), but means it could also be attached to an airport or in the case of Harwich has international ferry services.

Why is Ashford 'Ashford International' when there's no other station in Ashford to differentiate it from and Eurostar are doing everything they can to avoid stopping there?

Stratford International isn't too bad I guess as there's an existing Stratford station 500m away, and the alternative name could have been far worse. 'Lea Valley Parkway' or something like that.

Ebbsfleet International is just all-round appalling
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Although perhaps clumsy naming, Birmingham International has been named that way for 37 years! There were no other 'International' stations then. If people don't know where Birmingham International is by now then frankly there's not much hope. It's not really relevant that other stations have used similar naming since and that there's no consistent pattern.

12CSVT said:
Birmingham International should either be left as it is or renamed Birmingham Airport.

If the problem is tourists getting off at International when they want the city centre, then they could rename New Street to 'Birmingham Central' or 'Birmingham City Centre'
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Even though 'International' is probably unnecessary (how many commercial airports in the UK don't have international flights?) I didn't see the point in renaming Birmingham International Airport -> Birmingham Airport. I don't see the need for the railway to follow suit.

Eagle said:
What about the local service to Curzon Street then? :P
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JamesRowden said:
Doesn't stop at any intermediate stations. :D
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As my father likes to point out, it will still be quicker to go from Birmingham International to New Street by Pendolino than from Birmingham Interchange to Curzon Street on HS2, eg if arriving at the Airport and going to the city centre.
 
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HowardGWR

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Andyjs247 said:
As my father likes to point out, it will still be quicker to go from Birmingham International to New Street by Pendolino than from Birmingham Interchange to Curzon Street on HS2, eg if arriving at the Airport and going to the city centre.
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I don't get that - how does that work out?
 
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crewmeal

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I've always said it that the word international means and I quote from Wikipedia:

"The term international as a word means involvement of, interaction between or encompassing more than one nation, or generally beyond national boundaries."

Are there any trains that go "international"? Why not just leave it at Birmingham Airport with the appropriate sinage to go with it. It will cause less confusion for those who don't speak or read English.
 
Cherry_Picker

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crewmeal said:
Are there any trains that go "international"? Why not just leave it at Birmingham Airport with the appropriate sinage to go with it. It will cause less confusion for those who don't speak or read English.
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How can you leave it at Birmingham Airport when it has never been called Birmingham Airport? It's always been called Birmingham International.

One thing I am curious about is which group of people are the biggest users of the station. I'd imagine there are three main groups, people local to the station who use it to get into the city centre or out of Birmingham completely, people travelling to the station to use the airport and people travelling to the station to use the NEC. The NEC is a busy place, they claim they are the busiest exhibition centre in the country and get about 3 million visitors a year when you combine the halls and the arena.
 
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The Planner

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Judging by the use of the car park whenever I have been by it is a massive hub for London commuters.
 
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BananaRepublic

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HowardGWR said:
Andyjs247 said:
As my father likes to point out, it will still be quicker to go from Birmingham International to New Street by Pendolino than from Birmingham Interchange to Curzon Street on HS2, eg if arriving at the Airport and going to the city centre.
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I don't get that - how does that work out?
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Howard, because the Interchange HS2 station is about 1.5 miles from the airport as the crow flies, but 2.1 miles away by the route of the proposed transfer system (Rapid Transit / people mover or whatever).
It'll take another 5-10 minutes to get there compared with getting to the current "International" station.

Also consider that not all London - Birmingham HS trains will be stopping at the Interchange. The other stoppers will be some of the trains heading north to Leeds and Manchester etc, which will bypass Curzon Street.

It will therefore be much quicker to catch one of the many, frequent trains from the "International" station to New Street, than spend the extra time getting to the HS2 Interchange and then probably having to wait a relatively long time for a train to Curzon St. to arrive.

Who knows, Interchange to Curzon St. may be as little as 1 tph and the private operator may decide not to sell tickets for that route?



 
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HowardGWR

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BananaRepublic said:
Howard, because the Interchange HS2 station is about 1.5 miles from the airport as the crow flies, but 2.1 miles away by the route of the proposed transfer system (Rapid Transit / people mover or whatever).
It'll take another 5-10 minutes to get there compared with getting to the current "International" station.

Also consider that not all London - Birmingham HS trains will be stopping at the Interchange. The other stoppers will be some of the trains heading north to Leeds and Manchester etc, which will bypass Curzon Street.

It will therefore be much quicker to catch one of the many, frequent trains from the "International" station to New Street, than spend the extra time getting to the HS2 Interchange and then probably having to wait a relatively long time for a train to Curzon St. to arrive.

Who knows, Interchange to Curzon St. may be as little as 1 tph and the private operator may decide not to sell tickets for that route?



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Thanks very much, I had not realised the two 'airport' stations would be so far apart and so far from the airport (i didn't even know they would be that separate). I must look at the download maps of HS2 I made a time ago. I am now trying to work out what the two stations should be called and whether they should have different names.

What a disaster, they should be like the planned OOC interchange, adjacent.
 
TrainfanBen

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First arguement: Keep current name.
'International' is out of date. Not even the airport use the word anymore.

Next: 'Parkway' is too generic, it doesn't explain what the station serves.

So most obvious choice: "Birmingham Airport & NEC"

I chose Bias towards 'Airport' over 'NEC' because its a transport hub. Therefore the link to other transport should be prioritised in my opinion.

I thought of "Liverpool South Parkway for John Lennon Airport" AND what a mouthful. But I liked the concept of putting something local into it.
Maybe...
"Pendigo station for Birmingham Airport & NEC" or "Bickenhill station for Birmingham Airport & NEC"

I propose "BHX & NEC" as the shortest possible name.


Can I just for a moment digress to the creativeness of the planners behind the Birmingham Airport terminals: They named the access roads after aircraft e.g "Concorde" & even lesser known aircraft types which probably served the airport in yesteryear such as "Herald"

I also propose they also rename "Airport Link Road" with "Deltic road" or something train related.

EDIT: 55th post ;)
EDIT 2: Something glitched. Apologies for any confusion.
 
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aye

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Slightly OT, but isn't it about time that stations like "British Steel Redcar" and "IBM" be renamed too, as they bear no relevance to the sites they serve today?
 
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HowardGWR

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Eagle said:
What's wrong with that? Severn Tunnel Junction station is located at a junction which is called Severn Tunnel Junction, which is the junction for the Severn Tunnel.
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True but 'Windy God-forsaken Dump' could also be appropriate? Actually the village is called Rogiet is it not?
 
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