Duddeston Station

If you were to ‘check-​in’ to Duddeston Station on Foursquare (or should I say Swarm?), you will see several comments describing the station a «wack». Whack seems to be the general consensus around this particular station.
I’m not too bothered by it myself. I grew up in Bromsgrove, which also just has a platform and a bridge. Duddeston’s facilities are higher than that, boasting an albeit rarely open ticket office, and a bus stop style shelter.
Perhaps one day Duddeston will become homogenised for consumption and feature a big brand coffee chain. So as people can get their ‘one shot decaf skinny caramel latte’ on the way to and from the city. It can however, be refreshing to be somewhere where no one’s trying to sell you anything.
Whilst the ‘Cross City Line’ runs at intervals of 10 minutes; only one in three of these trains stop at Duddeston, this can be rather frustrating.
There is a ghost platform overran with weeds, as are the tracks that used to serve it. At some point in the past, this was a four platform station. Now it barely manages two. Just by the station, one can also see disused industrial sheds. Echoing a life that once was.
At some point, there has been a rather awful attempt to install some public art on the platform. These are like black metal signs with some bad imagery on them. I’m not sure when they were installed, but they’re rather rusty now.
Duddeston is handy for the BM&AG Collections Centre (which they open to the public once a year) and is a little closer than New St for Millenium Point.
If you’re into trains; it is very close to Aston Signal Box. I’m not really sure if this is a point of interest, but it could be.

There can’t be too many railway stations in Birmingham which have their own Facebook page which questions the point of their existence. Duddeston is the owner of that not-​so-​proud title.
Duddeston is the first station (but not necessarily first stop) if you’re heading from New Street towards Walsall or Lichfield. Back in the day, it was called Vauxhall and was what the Victorians may have called a station of means. It needed four platforms and was also home to an engine shed and carriage shed. These days the carriage shed is long gone, the engine shed has been bricked up for at least 15 years and two of the four platforms are disused. Apart from the two platforms which remain in use, Duddeston is a station surrounded by rusting tracks, weeds and signals permanently on red for lines which aren’t there anymore.
In the 90s there were some attempts at modern art put on the platforms to brighten the place up. These too are now rusty and unloved. Trains sometimes stop here but unless you’ve got business in this part of the inner city, it’s a place to be avoided. Especially avoid it in bad weather as the long, open-​air platforms have only one bus-​shelter style stand to protect you from the elements.