Random Tram Stop: BLACK LAKE
Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell West Midlands Metro, zones 2 & 3
Most of what people think of as Birmingham is continuous urban sprawl crisscrossed by canals. This exciting new feature is an opportunity to take a snapshot of the city's undistinguished suburbs by alighting the tram at a random stop and exploring the everyday environs. Welcome to Black Lake, the ultimate in niche content.
Black Lake is an unremarkable pause on the Metro midway between West Bromwich and Wednesbury. It has two very typical tram shelters, a slew of overhead wires and space to lock five bikes, not that anybody does. But not everything about this tram stop isn't atypical. It's the invisible borderline between fare zones 2 and 3, which in a four-zone system makes it the cheapest place from which to travel to everywhere else - no more than £2.90 single. It's one of the Metro's five Park and Ride stations, with 148 spaces available free (free!) for those wishing to decrease their carbon emissions. And Black Lake also has a level crossing, a peculiarity common to only two other locations on the metro's trackbed section.
Perhaps the most unusual thing about this tram stop is that it sits in a cutting. Only at the southern tip, to be fair, but the embankment climbs steadily with a footpath on one side affording fine views over the platforms. The cutting broadens towards the hilltop settlement of Hill Top and then plunges into the Swan Village Tunnel, opened by the Great Western Railway in 1854, which at 412 yards is the longest tunnel on the Midland Metro network. 4G wi-fi has yet to be installed in the tunnel because this is Birmingham and residents can cope with a sub-1-minute drop in their phone conversations.
Pre-tram (and pre-Beeching) the station hereabouts was Swan Village Junction a short distance to the south, where trains towards Dudley bore off down the Great Bridge Branch. Much of this arc was reused in the 1990s to divert the A41 along a dual carriageway called Black Country New Road. If that sounds familiar it's because it's also the name of a contemporary rock band, although they're not local, they're from Cambridge and selected their name using the 'Random article' button on Wikipedia. Construction of Black Country New Road severed one end of the local canal, the Ridgeacre branch of the Wednesbury Canal, whose broad silted-up channel runs atmospherically by. I wouldn't follow the towpath to the bus stop after dark.
As names go, Black Lake conjures up an etymology much darker than most. It's actually the name of the local colliery circa 1855, where a black lake amid the Black Country might well have inspired such a downbeat title. The mine gained notoriety in 1871 when a fire underground led to the suffocation of eight men and severe burns to several rescuers, likely after a horse fettler allowed a candle to fall among the hay. The colliery lay disused until the 1950s when a housing estate was built on top, a three-looped dead end now accessible to the northwest of the tramstop. Local housing is certainly varied, from proper Victorian along the main road to interwar semis, sloppy townhouses and just-built commuter cul-de-sacs.
The finest sight hereabouts is Shree Krishna Mandir on Old Meeting Street, Europe's only Hindu temple with separate sacred areas dedicated to the five Vedic gods. The mandir is the culmination of 17 years of fundraising after the original temple, opened in a Victorian chapel in 1974, was substantially destroyed by fire. Less memorable buildings locally include The Halfway House pub, the food packing factory by the crossroads, Darlaston Builders Merchants and the Premier Inn on New Gas Street. All of these can be experienced simply by alighting the tram at Black Lake, which you never will unless you live here, or unless a random number generator improbably broadens your horizons.
