Lost in time: 30 stunning pictures look back at trains and stations of Birmingham’s Age of Steam

With Birmingham's New Street station undergoing a £600m revamp, we look back at how rail travel has changed in the city over the decades

The £600 million redevelopment of Birmingham’s New Street station - due for completion in 2015 - is the latest major change to the transport network in the city.

Rail travel in the region has undergone many transformations over the decades.

Here we look back at the trains and stations of bygone times in Birmingham.

Steam engines were manufactured by Birmingham industrialists James Watt and Matthew Boulton from 1775, firstly at Soho Manufactory near Boulton’s Soho House in Handsworth, and then (after 1795) at the Soho Foundry, on the edge of the Birmingham Canal, in Smethwick.

These were stationary engines that powered machines on factory production lines and helped to drive the Industrial Revolution.

The engines were later used for transport when steam locomotives were developed in the early 19th century.

Steam trains were eventually replaced by diesel and electric engines.

British Railways chairman Richard Beeching, who lived in Solihull for a time, brought about further changes when he put forward a major restructuring of the network in the 1960s.

His first document, called The Reshaping of British Railways (1963) and popularly known as the Beeching Report, identified 2,363 stations - 55 per cent of the total - for closure, along with 5,000 miles (30 per cent) of the country's railway lines.

Some stations were resurrected years after the cuts, including Snow Hill which was rebuilt and reopened in 1987 after closing in 1972.

It was the earlier Age of Steam that proved an inspiration for the author of Thomas the Tank Engine when he lived in Birmingham.

The Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry was a curate at Kings Norton from 1940 to 1946.

While living here in 1943, he invented stories featuring trains to entertain his son during a bout of measles.

The stories were based on his experiences hearing steam engines making various puffing noises - almost as though they were alive and with different personalities - as they went along the nearby railway line at Kings Norton.