The West Midlands stations less than a mile apart where walking is quicker than taking the train

You'd have to travel out to Galton Bridge if taking a train between New Street and Snow Hill and Moor Street - but walking is far quicker

In the West Midlands, we have a fair number of train stations. Sure, it's not anywhere near the likes of London - many wish Birmingham had its own tube network - but every major town and city pretty much has its own train station in the region.

Of course, there's also the West Midlands Metro tram - which is being extended into more places like Dudley and Digbeth. But it appears not all the train stations are linked up as we'd like.

In Birmingham city centre, there's three train stations: New Street, Moor Street and Snow Hill - all within a mile of one another. The biggest station by far out of the three is New Street, in terms of platform and visitor numbers. It's seen as a central hub of the British railway system.

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New Street has 12 platforms, compared to Snow Hill (10) and Moor Street (6), with regular services to places like London Euston, Manchester, Liverpool and the south west, among others. Last year, the busy station welcomed 30 million passengers - making it the 11th busiest in the country.

In comparison, Snow Hill welcomed 2.7 million passengers and there were 5.5 million passengers at Moor Street. Moor Street has trains to London too, travelling to Marylebone, and it also runs services to Kidderminster via the Black Country and Stratford-upon-Avon. Snow Hill also goes to Kidderminster - and as far as Worcester - alongside Stratford-upon-Avon as well.

You can catch a direct train between Snow Hill and Moor Street, as they're on the same line and one stop apart. Located 0.5 miles from each other, the journey takes a meagre two minutes.

But that's not the case for New Street and Snow Hill, which are only 0.4 miles away - there's no direct trains here. Instead, you'd have to catch a train out to Smethwick Galton Bridge in neighbouring Sandwell and travel back in.

The journey from New Street to Smethwick Galton Bridge takes eight minutes, while the return leg to Snow Hill takes 10 minutes, representing an 18 minute's journey. Obviously, that's without taking into account waiting times at Smethwick Galton Bridge.

A quick look at the Trainline app reveals there would be an additional two-minute's wait at Smethwick Galton Bridge on this occasion - but you'd have to change between platforms two and three in that time frame. In contrast, it would only take eight minutes to walk between New Street and Snow Hill.

The same could be said for New Street and Moor Street, which are only 0.2 miles apart. There's usually never direct trains between the two.

Again, the quickest train journey between both of them would be travelling out to Smethwick Galton Bridge and returning along the same line which goes to Snow Hill. The journey between Smethwick Galton Bridge and Moor Street takes 16 minutes on average, representing a 25 minute's journey overall, before taking into account change over time in the middle. Alternatively, a walk between New Street and Moor Street takes only five minutes.

Unless there are radical plans for a subway in Birmingham city centre, it appears we'll be walking between some of our major train stations for now.