There are a few stations like Small Heath dotted around Birmingham. Sad to say that they're all as…read moreunloved and fallen into disrepair as each other. Small Heath exists in the same vain as stations such as Duddeston, Kings Norton and Northfield; once quite big stations which now only serve the few local trains that pass through (Kings Norton and Northfield have more regular trains, but Small Heath and Duddeston have a fair share speeding straight through). Of the four platforms Small Heath once had, only two are now in use. These serve trains heading towards Birmingham Moor Street and Snow Hill (roughly 5-10 minutes away) in one direction and Stratford-Upon-Avon or Solihull in the other. As is the case with old stations such as these, the long platforms are completely open aside from a small shelter. I had to commute to Small Heath for a job a few years back. It was little more than a patch of concrete to get a train from then and it's still the same now, only with more weeds.

Had a great experience catching a train from here to London. Quick drop off by my Uber at the drop…read moreoff and. A quick walk inside the station and they thought of the ones with suitcases and had a non step entrance! Yay! That's what they call it ! We grabbed a quick coffee and found our platform easily and thankfully they have escalators. The train had just pulled in and we were able to get on and get settled and took off right on time . Found a spot for our suitcases as soon as we get on close to our seats which we had reserved and were easy to find. Smooth ride and very efficient. Would go from here again if I need to. Nice central Birmingham location too.

This is a pretty massive station, though to be honest it can be pretty annoying to make your way…read morearound. Like, there are four zones, no doubt matching the platforms where the trains arrive. The thing is that you have to touch off and touch on to move between the zones. However, they happen to have quite a lot of shops here, and pubs, yeah, they have pubs as well, and a place to dump your bags as well, which is pretty cool.

Once again, an English city that has multiple railway termini because, well, privatised railways…read more Then again, when it was built the only people investing in railways were private companies. However, this station is pretty massive. In fact it is so big that it is really quite easy to get lost in it. In fact, there are like four areas where you go to catch a train, and two of them don't meet (which means you have to exit, and then enter again). Anyway, this station isn't bad, and it even has a pub in it, which is cool.

Birmingham Moor Street might be one of the smaller stations in the city centre, and it might not be…read moreas big, bold and modern, while also lacking the number of railway services compared to New Street, but Birmingham Moor Street just has something I like. Its minimalistic style is beautiful and rather nice, it feels like a traditional old British railway station done well, even down to the platform numbers. It is right opposite the Bullring, I would recommend heading to a store inside there, or perhaps Subway to get some food for the train, as other than a few small stores, there isn't much on offer here especially if you are making a long journey. The station is managed by Chiltern Railways and is the terminus of their route into London Marleybone. Services are also offered by West Midlands Railway. Many of the services from this station are mainly local services, into the likes of Birmingham Snow Hill and Solihull, sadly there are no connections into Birmingham International (For the Airport and NEC). I found the staff at the station to be a little rude and unhelpful, which was a sad first interaction with Chiltern Railways. 3* - Traditional old station with a good feel to it, obviously the lack of services and unfriendly staff do let it down and I will always prefer travelling via New Street, but this isn't a bad alternative.

Why do I always think this is closer to Broad street than it is. I end up rushing for a train…read morepretty much everytime. Id say to be safe leave 30 mins from the middle of Broad street.......don't let this station catch you out too! The train station itself is actually one of the most basic in town....it has stairs....and platforms but what else do you really need. Take your own snickers and diet coke as you are not getting here. The trains come....they go.....how can it not be A-OK....3*

Depending on where you're going in the City Centre, this Station could well be a better bet than…read morethe main New Street Station if, as I do, you travel along the Lichfield line from North to South. The journey from New Street to 5 Ways on the train can be a bit misleading - after spending several minutes in the tunnels under the city and then trundling along the tracks, you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd left the bustle of town, but in actual fact this station is probably an equal walking distance to many of the city's attractions as New Street. If you are visiting Brindley Place, the Ikon Gallery or, Lord help you, Broad Street, then you are probably better off alighting here. Once exiting, look to your left and you'll see 5 Way traffic island a few hundred yards away. Much better than dealing with the insanely busy New Street and environs. The station is pretty tiny - particularly when viewed from the road as only the entrance is visible - and it can get very busy around rush hour as there are several large office buildings nearby, so plan your arrival around that if you don't want to deal with crowds.

This is one of those stations where you are like.......is that it......there is literally a ticket…read moremachine a waiting room and a not so happy to be there guy serving tickets if the ticket office is open. The other thing letting this place down is the shops around it there's hardly anything there either. This is a busy(ish) station at peak times and I dont see why there can't be a little coffee place or at least a vending machine on the platform....wold probably make a killing on cereal bars or breakfast snacks with commuters...if you are reading this national rail.....pull your vending machine finger out :) The trains are mainly on time and can take you towards town and the Jewellery quarter or towards the lakes and stratfrod. If you havent been to The lakes by the way its pretty beautiful for dog walking or a generally relaxing walk. Ill try and get a review in on that soon!

It seems a little odd to review a train station, but when I worked in Stratford I used to come here…read morealmost every day, so I have many fond memories of Yardley Wood station. Actually, they're not all that fond. Quite a lot of them consist of standing in the cold waiting for trains to arrive - which were frequently late. This is, of course, not the fault of the actual train station itself, so I won't hold that against them. What I might hold against them however is the fact that it appears to be a total wind tunnel and there's only 1 or 2 benches to sit on on the platforms. It does have a car park, which is really great, as a lot of people use this station, particularly those in the Kings Heath/ Moseley area of Birmingham as well as Yardley Wood, as there's a particular lack of train stations in that neck of the woods, so the likelihood is that you would have to drive to get to your nearest station. There's also a convenient row of shops opposite, and the ticket office always seemed pretty efficient - any queues would whittle down pretty fast.

An oldy, but a goody. Cadbury could at least give the station a couple cans of paint to brighten up…read morethe place!

On a sunny day this place isn't so bad, on a rainy day I can imagine it's hell. Running alongside…read morethe canal and with postcard bridges passing over the railway line it feels quite relaxing and picturesque in the sunshine. When it's raining this place is exposed. With a tiny ticket office, It suffers the fate of many small stations, it is only staffed part-time so who knows when it's open. As the train station for Cadbury World the signage has the touch of cadbury purple to them and you can see the back of the factory from the station. As a small station it has few amenities and just the two platforms so things shouldn't really be confusing. Sadly for me this isn't true, with no sensible way out signs to point you to Cadbury World, never mind to specific roads. When trying to meet a friend to by the main station entrance I went the wrong way and just couldn't figure out how to get where I needed to go through the lack of decent signage. I guess they just assume you should know.

This wonderful railway station feels like home to me. It links this suburb with Solihull, Warwick,…read moreLeamington and London Marlybone in one direction and Moor Street, Snow Hill, Jewellery Quarter and the Black Country in the other. For now the station and ticket office are usually staffed by very polite and helpful employees. There are trains in both directions every 20 minutes during the day but less so in the evenings. The Sunday service is extremely limited. I often joke to people who ask where I live that the best things about Acocks Green is the train line out of there. Obviously, there are many other wonderful reasons to live in this area (hey I'm there for a start!) but I do love that I can be in the city centre in 6-10 minutes. Often I call people that I am meeting in town to say I'm just leaving the house and they worry that I'll be late but I never am.

I have got off the train at this station a few times as a friend of mine lives in Acocks Green. I…read morewas actually quite surprised by how nice the station is. It is very nice and hard to imagine it is in the city as there are a few trees surrounding it and you can imagine that this is somewhere completely different - that is until you leave the station! Every time I have walked through here it has also been very clean and tidy, which is refreshing for a train station. The train from the centre of Birmingham to here does not take too long at all and in my experience it usually takes around ten minutes tops. There have never been many staff around when I have passed through, but I have always been here during off-peak times. Overall, it is a nice little station.

There can't be too many railway stations in Birmingham which have their own Facebook page which…read morequestions the point of their existence. Duddeston is the owner of that not-so-proud title. Duddeston is the first station (but not necessarily first stop) if you're heading from New Street towards Walsall or Lichfield. Back in the day, it was called Vauxhall and was what the Victorians may have called a station of means. It needed four platforms and was also home to an engine shed and carriage shed. These days the carriage shed is long gone, the engine shed has been bricked up for at least 15 years and two of the four platforms are disused. Apart from the two platforms which remain in use, Duddeston is a station surrounded by rusting tracks, weeds and signals permanently on red for lines which aren't there anymore. In the 90s there were some attempts at modern art put on the platforms to brighten the place up. These too are now rusty and unloved. Trains sometimes stop here but unless you've got business in this part of the inner city, it's a place to be avoided. Especially avoid it in bad weather as the long, open-air platforms have only one bus-shelter style stand to protect you from the elements.

If you were to 'check-in' to Duddeston Station on Foursquare (or should I say Swarm?), you will see…read moreseveral comments describing the station a "wack". Whack seems to be the general consensus around this particular station. I'm not too bothered by it myself. I grew up in Bromsgrove, which also just has a platform and a bridge. Duddeston's facilities are higher than that, boasting an albeit rarely open ticket office, and a bus stop style shelter. Perhaps one day Duddeston will become homogenised for consumption and feature a big brand coffee chain. So as people can get their 'one shot decaf skinny caramel latte' on the way to and from the city. It can however, be refreshing to be somewhere where no one's trying to sell you anything. Whilst the 'Cross City Line' runs at intervals of 10 minutes; only one in three of these trains stop at Duddeston, this can be rather frustrating. There is a ghost platform overran with weeds, as are the tracks that used to serve it. At some point in the past, this was a four platform station. Now it barely manages two. Just by the station, one can also see disused industrial sheds. Echoing a life that once was. At some point, there has been a rather awful attempt to install some public art on the platform. These are like black metal signs with some bad imagery on them. I'm not sure when they were installed, but they're rather rusty now. Duddeston is handy for the BM&AG Collections Centre (which they open to the public once a year) and is a little closer than New St for Millenium Point. If you're into trains; it is very close to Aston Signal Box. I'm not really sure if this is a point of interest, but it could be.

As small out of city train stations go this isn't really that bad - I have seen my fair share…read more It has four platforms, but only platforms 1 and 4 are used. 2 and 3 have been turned into what I can only describe and some sort of forest nature reserve and I feel that this could be better used for something. This brings me into my next point, it has had a lick of paint recently - just the benches. It could do with a bit of TLC. The main entrance leads up to a fair few shops and cafes in Cotteridge, because of this you can forgive the station from having no facilities of its own. I've heard it has a toilet if your desperate but never used it. It isn't this stations fault that the train service on it getting me here each day is terrible. However please be ready for many delays, many many delays.

Kings Norton train station is located at Cotteridge, which often confuses a lot of people…read more It is accessible from 4 different directions/points which is absolutely ideal for those times when you're running a few minutes late. It could do with a bit of TLC like most train stations in the city, the central reservation (which has been unused for as long as I can remember) sites overgrown and unloved. A potential city in bloom project if there ever was one... Overall the station is kept reasonably clean, however the entrance to platform 4 pretty much always has a feint smell of urine (nowhere else, just always this one spot?), luckily I'm rarely heading out of town on this platform! Being a busy station, I've never felt safety is an issue at the station, bar a few mumbling crazy people wandering along the platform (although they're pretty harmless!). Parking provision at the station is always in high demand weekday mornings, but evenings and weekends there is always plenty of free spaces. The parking is free too which is laudable these days!

Jewellery Quarter Railway Station is mainly used by West Midlands Trains, yet also provides…read moreChiltern services occasionally, it is a really small station being used by under a million people annually. More importantly, it also has West Midlands Metro services providing trams into Wolverhampton and Birmingham, if you're heading into the city centre of Birmingham this is the LAST STOP in the city zone meaning you can go all the way from here to Central Library for just £1.50. The station is a little confusing to navigate, I personally struggled to find the trams platform as the signposting stopped and then the tram platform is basically located in the middle of Platform 2, and with it being an unstaffed station most of the time, that made it a little trickier. I ended up missing one of my trams and came close to boarding the wrong one (Wolverhampton bound rather than Birmingham), it just wasn't clear enough. It does have lifts for both platforms making the station step-free, if you're planning to travel on the train and require disabled access this means you have to prebook and try to signal for the conductor as all trains passing through here have conductors to help assist customers when required to get on and off the train. Pretty basic station, yet still providing railway and tram services from the Jewellery Quarter into the city centre for those who don't fancy the mile or so walk (like me) is pretty handy even if the station is pretty crappy. 2*

Choo choo! Trains come here, sometimes on time, sometimes not. Ticket office seems forever closed,…read morethe ticket machine is usually out of order, and the permit machine switched off. Station needs a good clean, the stairs are filthy. There are lots of stairs, a good workout.