By Mark Forrest
I’ve been fascinated by this station for as long as I can remember. Maybe it was my Dad’s tales of bunking off school to go train spotting there or maybe the fact that from High Level (which was by then just “Wolverhampton”) the Low Level station looked a bit like a model. By the time I became aware of the place it was in it’s last days as a parcels depot.
A few years earlier, in April 1970 the station had been converted to a parcels depot; although a peak hour DMU shuttle to Birmingham Snow Hill continued to operate until March 1972. All stations (including Low Level and Snow Hill, both of which were now a terminus) were unstaffed halts with a reputation for being grim and uninviting. My plan is to model Low Level during these dark years; the area to be modelled will focus on the southern end of the station, between the bridge at Sun Street and approximately half way along the platforms.
With a scenic break (in the form of Sun Street bridge) so close to the end of the platforms it looked like a model and a few calculations based on info from Planning Portal and Google maps seemed to suggest it might fit in the space I had available with minimal compromise. At this point I began to trawl the internet and books for photos and information; resulting in the following sketch of the area I intend to model:
Since then I have been extremly fortunate to have been given copies of some detailed drawings and plans of the station, which has enabled me to refine the layout plan further. My original intention as to use EM gauge (as I had previously for Foundry Lane), but I’ve recently decided to adopt P4 standards for this project. I’ll post progress updates as blog entries and will update this page periodically once I have more to show. Current focus is on constructing the station buildings, as seen here.
Staffordshire Finescale 