BIRMINGHAM NEW STREET is the heart of the Midlands railway system, but not its best advert due to the area's track layout, which - even after recent improvements - is badly in need of further work to cope with the demands now placed on it. In fairness, increasing the line capacity would cost serious millions, be an operational nightmare at rail level, and probably a serious pain at street level as well, while it was all going on. But we doubt if the railway service is fixable until it gets done.

The upper levels of the station are still reasonably modern and ritzy, but the platforms lie in a miserable concrete cave beneath them, with too few seats for the number of passengers often waiting there. (There are waiting rooms, but passengers hog the platform instead, probably to improve their chances of getting a seat when the train arrives.) Worse, the pressure on the station means that any delays in trains en route to New Street can cause last-minute platform changes announced over the public address system, and a mad scramble to get to the new departure point against a tide of passengers who just got off the incoming train. This is compounded by relatively narrow stairways down to platform level. There are escalators as well, but mainly for upward movement, hard to squeeze past on - and not always working.

On the positive side, you can get almost anywhere from here; buses and taxis are adjacent to the station, and the centre of Birmingham is just outside the doors. If you're leaving from Birmingham but not yet ready to join the cave dwellers, train information is displayed at the right hand end, above the news/bookshop, and there are several choices of quick and somewhat pricey food sellers. If you've really got time on your hands, you'll find the Pallasades shopping centre just an escalator (or staircase) away.

Lifts are available just off the concourse. Go out through the exit doors either side of the bottom of the escalators and turn under them. Two main lifts a short way apart give direct access to platforms 6/7 and 8/9, but also drop further to a subway level that serves all platforms. You can exit there and go a short distance in the direction of your platform, and get a lower lift up to the platform you want. It's not posh, but it's easy, very well-lit, and the lifts are large. The only drawback is that you are at the east end of the station platforms, and may have to go some distance to reach a train standing at the west end.

Birmingham New Street, like most large stations, operates its long platforms as two halves, 'a' and 'b' (but note a recent bay added at the west end as platform 4c). The east end is 'a', where the lifts give access. The access corridor from the concourse is roughly where 'a' becomes 'b'. Virtually the whole station is under cover.

Finally, note that there is a second ticket office at the west end of the station (north side), convenient to the car park entrance, and giving access via the overbridge shown at that end of the station (though not directly to platforms 1 and 12). But this is not the best exit to use during a fire alarm, as idiot passengers bunch up against the railings outside, preventing those still on the overbridge from getting out.