An evening visit was made to the new Train Crew Centre at Birmingham New Street Station on Monday 4th March 2013. 12 places were available for the visit and the event was fully subscribed. Our host for the evening was Martin Broomfield, Driver Manager of CrossCountry Trains.

This new centre is located at the west end of platform 1 at New Street station and can be clearly seen from Hill Street and Navigation Street in Birmingham. It was opened on June 24th 2012 having been provided by Network Rail. It replaces accommodation which was more than 50 years old and provides state of the art facilities for over 450 of CrossCountry Trains train crew and other staff.

The site of this new building has had a chequered history ranging from the “Lamp Block” where gas lamps were supplied to workers, who maintained the railway tunnels either side of New Street station in the 19th century, to the new train crew centre of today.

The building itself was manufactured off-site, delivered as 57 steel-framed modules which were assembled on site and was completed in less than a year. This method was used to minimise track possessions at New Street Station which is undergoing a major redevelopment.

It is one of the most eco-friendly buildings in the railway today and has a number of features which includes energy efficient lighting, solar panels to generate electricity, a “green roof” which has a number of plant species growing on it to contribute to the area’s biodiversity and reduce rainwater run off into the drainage system. This all helps to give it a BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) rating of excellent.

The visiting group were taken on a conducted tour of the building where we saw the mess areas, meeting rooms, Drivers Rules training room and other facilities finishing in the Drivers’ booking-on room. This room itself is about to be upgraded with the addition of a large IT monitor screen to replace the fourteen sheets of information that are provided daily.

Our thanks go to CrossCountry Trains for allowing us to see the new facilities and to Martin Broomfield for hosting us.