Birmingham New St Station Opens

The new rail station at New Street, Birmingham has officially re-opened with a remarkable design greatly improving the city centre’s appearance. The development accommodates an abundance of new facilities including the new Grand Central shopping complex which holds one of the UK’s largest John Lewis department stores.

As well as the welcoming natural daylight from the large domed glass roof, a main feature of the development is its reflective exterior, the design of which has been described as a “reflection of movement” by the Director of Design at Network Rail.

Wintech were appointed to provide facade engineering consultancy services on New Street Station delivering structural analysis for the curved structure’s steel cladding panels and investigating the potential for panel buckling. This was undertaken using Ansys Finite Element Analysis (FEA).

Around 20,000 sq metres of steel make up the facade with each panel being unique. Birmingham New Street is the busiest outside of London within the UK and the transformed station will be able to handle 300,000 passengers a day.