Proposed new railway stations for Moseley and Kings Heath

The information about the proposed new railway station for Moseley and Kings Heath has been leaked to the Birmingham Mail - see today's edition page 17. It wasn't supposed to come till next week. But hey ho! I can now provide the full details on the consultants report. We have been embargoed since May, until the land owners affected were notified. That has now been completed.

Consultants were employed by Birmingham city Council and Centro to look at the business case for re-opening the Camp Hill railway line to passenger services. This line runs through Moseley and Kings Heath.

The line last took passengers in 1941 and is presently used for freight traffic.

One of the reasons it has never re-opened to passenger services is because the line runs into the already over crowded New Street station. For example if you catch a train from Moseley, the line runs north past Balsall Heath, over Camp Hill, past the Birmingham City football ground, up to Nechells, round on to Proof House junction and into New Street station. As you can see this is a round about way of getting into the city centre and as anyone who regularly catches trains between Birmingham and Coventry will now, you end up getting stuck just before Proof House junction. Both Proof House junction and New Street station are at maximum capacity and cannot take any more train services.

What the report by the consultants looked at was constructing a viaduct or rail link at Camp Hill, joining the Camp Hill railway line to the Moor Street station line. This would mean train services from Moseley or Kings Heath would run straight into Moor Street and avoiding both Proof House junction and New Street station.

The consultant’s conclusion is that there is a sound business case for running a passenger service on the Camp Hill line, if the following is done:
1) Construct a railway link at Camp Hill – cost approximately £35million
2) use diesel trains running between Moor Street and Kings Norton
3) run trains every 20 minutes. This is the most frequent service possible that would not interfere with present freight traffic. Long term, the service could be increased to one every 10 minutes, if the railway line between Birmingham and Stourbridge was upgraded to allow increased freight traffic to use this line instead – this would mean freight traffic not having to go up the Lickey Incline.
4) Stations would be built at Moseley, Kings Heath and Cartland Road – cost for each station is just over £1million. The Moseley station would be located in the cutting between Woodbridge Road and St.Marys Row. The Kings Heath station would be located immediately south of the High Street bridge, close to Sainsbury’s Homebase store. The Cartland Road station would be located immediately east of the railway bridge.

The total cost of introducing this service would be approximately £40million.

A bid has already been entered into the government for the construction of the railway link at Camp Hill – this would be the South West link. An additional bid for a North West link at Camp Hill has also been put in. The bid formed part of the New Street station refurbishment bid, with the intention that these two railway links would allow train services to be moved out of New Street station and into the underused Moor Street station.

An announcement on whether the Council and Centro have been successful on the New Street station refurbishment and the Camp Hill railway line links is expected before the end of July.

Re-opening Moseley and Kings Heath railways is being viewed as a 5 to 10 year project.