A miniature mosaic celebrates the history of Birmingham's Snow Hill station

In Colmore Circus, near the top of Colmore Row, a miniature recreation of a mural celebrates the history of Birmingham's Snow Hill station. This work, created in 2013 by Oliver Budd, is a faithful facsimile of an original mural by Kenneth Budd and associates. The original work was 300 ft long, featuring locomotives at 2:3 scale and carriages at 1:1 scale, and was installed in St Chad's Circus in 1969. The original mosaic was made of gold leaf and glass mosaic from Venice, set in stone aggregate, before it was destroyed during redevelopment in 2007.

The miniature mural features two plaques that narrate the evolution of the railway. The first plaque details the Great Western Railway line to Snow Hill, which began construction in 1847 under engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. By 1852, the 129 mile track from Paddington to Birmingham was complete. It notes that standard gauge became the national standard in 1892 and describes early rail life, including oil pot lamps in unheated carriages and the famous station dog, Dash, who carried a collection box on his back.

The second plaque explains that the "old" station was replaced by Snow Hill in its final form between 1909 and 1914 without interrupting regular services. It tracks the arrival of larger Castle and King class locomotives in the 1920s and 1930s, the shift to austerity grey livery during World War II, and the merger into British Railways in 1948. While the original station closed in 1972, a new station was opened in 1987, a history now preserved in this miniature mosaic.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons