please empty your brain below

Maybe your next trip could by tram-tastic, filling in the gaps at Wednesbury and sampling the delights of Coventry ultralight (once they open that particular gadgetbahn).
I'm not fan of concrete so I rather like the look of the revamped Coventry station.
I always used to think I'd never warm to the architecture of the 1960s and 1970s. But I far prefer the old Coventry station to the new, and 1/2 Chamberlain square are uglier than the library was.
Previously that area of Birmingham next to the library was "Paradise Forum", and the replacement is truly paradise compared to it.
To be fair to the current Birmingham council, Paradise sits alongside Paradise St named centuries ago. That begat Paradise Circus in the 1960's when the city fathers tried to strangle the city centre with concrete ringroads. Paradise Forum was an 80's construct I believe, to try and encourage punters to bars and restaurants (including the terrible Hooters) in a windswept afterthought under the old library. I loved the old library, but it was rubbish inside.
Anyway, the name Paradise was there long before the new Chamberlain Square development, which I also like.
Sandwell & Dudley station's previous name was Dudley Port.
Oldbury station was on a branch line closed to passengers in the First World War.
Some good pictures sampling the West Midlands (and Coventry, which to me is Mid Midlands). I like your schematic map which helped me place Sandwell.

Last week I drove unknowingly right under the skeletal One Centenary Way, suddenly alarmed by a sign which made passing mention of an emission zone charge, far too late to avoid. Luckily it turned out that it would only have applied to vehicles in some mysterious category of which mine was not a member.
No, Sandwell and Dudley's previous name was Oldbury, as implied. Dudley Port is a different station, and still exists. There was indeed also another Oldbury station, on a Great Western branch line.

The whole set-up is a bit confusing to outsiders, with what seem to be a multitude of stations in the wrong local authority area, but locals probably understand it without difficulty.
Glad you got to enjoy our wonderous City of Culture. You are lucky to have missed yesterday's closing carnival parade, which was incredibly noisy.
I hope Black Country Beats has a section devoted to the great(est) Kevin Rowland.
Maybe this is the time to skip Wednesbury and go straight on to Thurso.
If you know the West Midlands from a canal perspective, Oldbury is far less obscure.
I like the original Coventry station, to me the most successful of the 1960s stations on the WCML.
(like) for Wendy's description of the previous Paradise Circus which was truly horrendous. Literally anything, including soil sown with salt, would have been an improvement.
I'm actually catching up on old posts. I dropped off following regularly due to something or other; work, life... anyway, I came back on because I was looking for information about these bus changes that someone was having a whinge about. Redeploying central London bus resources to more needy outer London ones. I came across an Ian Visits post that showed a map of all the bits of London & area which were more than a mile away from a tube or train station. I wondered if there was a comparable map of London bus routes colour coded by frequency perhaps. See exactly which is the most surprisingly ill-served by public transport bit of London.










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