The opening of three rail stations on the Camp Hill line in Birmingham has been delayed after the project hit a raft of complications including the discovery of badgers on one site.
Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) said re-opening the line to passenger services for the first time since 1941 remains a key infrastructure project for the West Midlands Rail Executive (WMRE) and partners.
Kings Heath Station under construction
It said much of the structural work to prepare the site for building has now been completed at Kings Heath and Pineapple Road and the platforms are taking shape, while contractors will soon have full access to the Moseley Village site, where structural work will begin ahead of platform construction.
However, TfWM said that during work on these complex projects, contractors have met a series of challenges on site, including an unstable wall, a historic well, and a protected species.
The wall borders a locally listed building at Pineapple Road, meaning it needs to be rebuilt brick by brick, while the previously undocumented Victorian well at the Kings Heath site, linked to the historic Highbury Hall, has meant a redesign of the area.
ITV news reported that after badgers were discovered in Moseley, 30-metre exclusion zones had to be put in place. The protected species can only be moved at certain times of the year and with permission from Natural England.
TfWM said these challenges, ‘on top of the ongoing supply chain and inflationary concerns and the suspension of construction work for critical engineering work’ mean that although the majority of construction work will be finished early next year, ‘we are now targeting an opening date by the end of 2024’.
TfWM is part of the West Midlands Combined Authority. Andy Street, the mayor of the West Midlands, said: ‘After more than 70 years without a train service, people in Kings Heath, Moseley, and Stirchley can see the progress that is being made. We are working tirelessly to look at options to reduce the timescale and bring the benefits of the Camp Hill line as soon as possible.’
VolkerFitzpatrick project manager Conor Goodwin-Tindall said: ‘There's a particular period of the year that you can close habitats and we're just approaching that time of the year now, which is July.
‘This weekend we will be closing the habitats that we found and that will enable us to open those areas of the site for us.’
Badger setts are usually closed by fitting one-way doors to their entrances, allowing the animals to leave but not re-enter – a process that is not entirely predictable.
A source close to the badgers said: 'People come – they stay for a while, they flourish, they build – and they go. It is their way. But we remain. There were badgers here, I’ve been told, long before that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again. We are an enduring lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are patient, and back we come. And so it will ever be.'
Kenneth Grahame, in The Wind In The Willows,
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