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A February evening Passenger/ Parcels train stands at Platform 1 while parcels are loaded and unloaded giving a few of the passengers an opportunity to stretch their legs.
Bwâu'r rheilffordd/ Bolzioù an hent-houarn/ Áirsí an iarnróid/ Trenbide-arkuak/ Railway arches - Pàislig/ Paisley
This is a detail shot of the top of the St. Pancras International train shed roof. I liked that there was a clear blue sky when I took this shot, as it afforded great contrast to the building when in monochrome.
Throwback vibes with a twist of irony! Here’s the General Motors Class 071 engine, rocking its retro orange livery like it’s straight out of the 80s—back when CIE trains were basically Ireland’s version of a tangerine dream.
This beauty was spotted on engineering workings, which, let’s be honest, most commuters loathe for the delays (sorry, Karen, you’ll get to work… eventually). But for us train nerds? It’s a rare treat to see this nostalgic beast in action, hauling history down the tracks.
Who needs a time machine when you’ve got this orange slice of the past chugging along—disrupting schedules and stealing hearts since the 70s!
#CIE #RetroLivery #TrainSpotting #EngineeringWorksPerks
Irish Rail
071 at Dun Laoighaire Station
15th February 2025
Spoil train
Engineering works Dun Laoighaire southbound
Catching up on the admin at London Paddington station.
2021 represents a significant milestone in the history of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle with the celebration of our 50th anniversary. Phoenix was set up in spring 1971 and was created to promote an alternative approach to railway photography. Why not take a look at the PRPC web site at: www.phoenix-rpc.co.uk/index.html.
The Holywell Town station closed down during the fifties and the rail uprooted not long afterwards, leaving us with these two arches as virtually all that remains of what had been a station, carrying goods and people from the main coastal line up into the town of Holywell.
I converted this one into monochrome to show the details of the stonework.
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Opened in 1867, the Gare de Nice-Ville blends Belle Époque grandeur with the pulse of modern travel. Designed by architect Louis-Jules Bouchot, its elegant limestone façade, mansard roof, and ironwork canopy offer a Parisian flourish on the Riviera. Once the gateway for aristocratic travellers arriving from the north, it remains a striking departure point for Mediterranean adventure.
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Inaugurée en 1867, la gare de Nice-Ville allie le charme de la Belle Époque à l’effervescence du voyage contemporain. Œuvre de l’architecte Louis-Jules Bouchot, elle séduit par sa façade en pierre, son toit en mansarde et sa verrière en fer forgé — une touche parisienne sur la Riviera. Jadis point d’arrivée de l’élite venue du nord, elle reste aujourd’hui une porte d’entrée emblématique vers la Méditerranée.
Charles Holden knew exactly what he was doing with this little light box.
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Peppercorn 'K1' 2-6-0 62005 makes a brief stop at the historic Middlesbrough station during its positioning move from Fort William to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, the the 5Z09 15;17 Carlisle High Wapping Sidings to Grosmont shortly after sunset on Monday 16th September 2019. The eastern wing of the station, designed in a Gothic style by William Peachey and opened in 1877, were originally the refreshment and dining rooms. The station originally had two splendid overall roofs, for the trainshed and booking hall, which were sadly destroyed during a bombing raid in 1942. The trainshed overall roof cam up to the edge of the refreshment rooms, beihind the loco chimney.
The following website describes the former station in detail:
www.railwayarchitecture.org.uk/Location/Middlesbrough/Mid...
© Gordon Edgar - All rights reserved. Please do not use my images without my explicit permission
The preserved railway station at Chinnor, restored by the Princes Risborough Railway Association. Formerly the Watlington & Princes Risborough Railway and latterly GWR. A red kite enjoying wind currents on a very cold, but sunny, winter's day.
Strong autumn backlight reduces the impact of colour in this scene at Kings Cross, with the exception of the red livery on the Virgin Trains East Coast Class 91 set. This was early afternoon on Sunday 19 November 2017.
If you like railway pictures that are a bit different to the norm, try the Phoenix Railway Photographic circle website;
A remarkable survivor in 2018 is the former East Lancashire Railway Station canopy at Nelson which dates to 1849.
Situated two miles from the end of the branch to Colne, which was until 1970 a through route to Skipton.
Processed with VSCO with av8 preset
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Fossway Signal Box is a L&NWR type 3, which was built in 1875. the signal box was then re-framed in 1890 with a better design.
After an uneventful existence, closure came 98 years later, on 16th December 1973 when the crossing was automated with AHB's supervised by Lichfield City No1. The box remained however, as the crossing attendant's accommodation for times when the barriers were on 'local control'.
The railway crossing Fossway Lane was opened in 1849 as the South Staffordshire Railway from Walsall to Wichnor, with John Robinson McClean of colliery and water renown as a leading light.
Regular passenger trains ceased in 1965, but occasional excursions used it till 1984, when the line closed completely south of Anglesea sidings.
Oil trains to Charringtons at Anglesea sidings from the Lichfield direction continued till 2001; it is now disused but not closed, hence new bridges over the Toll Road and the Lichfield Southern bypass,
The whole trackbed through to Walsall is understood to be still owned by Network Rail, and it may at some time be reopened, though there is no current scheme for this.
The rather beautiful train shed and platforms at Filey station in North Yorkshire. Opened in 1846 and designed by G T Andrews this style of overall roof was once a commoner feature of lines that would become part of the NER in later years but sadly many have gone through either removal or complete closure. The footbridge, very NER in style, was added in the late Victorian period.
The Grade 2* Listed station is seen here on a Sunday as lockdown is lifted and travel by train is back on the agenda again. The Hull - Scarborough service is seen passing the Scarborough - Sheffield Northern Trains services.
Approach viaduct to the Richmond Railway Bridge, completed 1848. Six arches in all, with red and yellow-brick voussoirs and round-arched niches in the piers. The decorative enhancement was required by the Crown Commissioners who were responsible for the park. Grade II listed. London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.
Like York in 1877, St. Louis Union Station was the largest in the world when it opened in 1894. The trains are long gone but the building has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and has been repurposed to include a hotel, shopping centre and an entertainment complex. This view shows the vast scale of the train shed to great effect.
Railway station. 1874 for the Sevenoaks, Maidstone and Tonbridge Railway (but see History below). Red brick with a white brick plinth and dressings, slate roof with ridge tiles. Two storey main range with single storey sections at each end. The yard elevation has a six bay front 4 + 2, with the left-hand part the station and the right-hand part a projecting cross-wing, which was the stationmaster's house. The ground floor has three doors and three windows D : W : D : W : D : W. The doors are half glazed double ones with a 2-pane light over to the station and a narrower pointed arch door to the house. The windows are cross-framed casements to the station with 3 + 3 panes and a l over I pane sash to the house. Continuous canopy on brackets over the four station bays. First floor white brick band to the house. The upper floor has six pointed arch 1 over I pane sashes, the left-hand four in half gables; these have bargeboards with collars forming As. The house gable has bargeboards and a white brick roundel. Three tall ridge stacks with weathered caps and a fourth on the house roof slope. Attached to the left is a screen wall, which includes a gable end with another ridge stack and bargeboards. The platform elevation has four windows and two doors to the ground floor, W : D : W : W: W : D, all flat headed, a sash to the left, then casements as before. Fretted canopy on decorative cast iron brackets carrying timber trusses right across the whole front. The upper floor has six windows as before. Small single storey hipped roof wing to left with door, window and tall stack, later gabled extension to right. Interior: Not inspected. History: The station was opened in 1874 by the Sevenoaks, Maidstone and Tunbridge Railway but the present building may date from a few years later as temporary buildings were replaced. The company was taken over by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway in 1879 and this was itself amalgamated with the South Eastern Railway in 1899 to form the South Eastern and Chatham Railway.
The rather beautiful train shed and platforms at Filey station in North Yorkshire. Opened in 1846 and designed by G T Andrews this style of overall roof was once a commoner feature of lines that would become part of the NER in later years but sadly many have gone through either removal or complete closure. The footbridge, very NER in style, was added in the late Victorian period.
The Grade 2* Listed station is seen here on a Sunday as lockdown is lifted and travel by train is back on the agenda again. The Hull - Scarborough service is seen waiting for the Scarborough - Sheffield Northern Trains service to clear the single track section ahead.
The station's name comes from the St. Pancras neighbourhood, which originates from the fourth-century Christian boy martyr Pancras of Rome. The station was commissioned by the Midland Railway (MR), who had a network of routes in the Midlands, and in south and west Yorkshire and Lancashire but no route of its own to London. Before 1857 the MR used the lines of the L&NWR for trains into the capital; subsequently the company's Leicester and Hitchin Railway gave access to London via the Great Northern Railway (GNR).
In 1862, traffic for the second International Exhibition suffered extensive delays over the stretch of line into London over the GNR's track; the route into the city via the L&NWR was also at capacity, with coal trains causing the network at Rugby and elsewhere to reach effective gridlock. This was the stimulus for the MR to build its own line to London from Bedford, which would be just under 50 miles (80 km) long. Samuel Carter was solicitor for the parliamentary bill, which was sanctioned in 1863.
Design and construction
The interior of the Barlow Trainshed, circa 1870
The station was designed by William Henry Barlow and constructed on a site that had previously been a slum called Agar Town. Though coal and goods were the main motivation to build the station, the Midland realised the prestige of having a central London terminus and decided it must have a front on Euston Road. The company purchased the eastern section of land on the road's north side owned by Earl Somers.
The approaching line to the station crossed the Regent's Canal at height allowing the line reasonable gradients; this resulted in the level of the line at St Pancras being 20 ft (6.1 m) above the ground level. Initial plans were for a two or three span roof with the void between station and ground level filled with spoil from tunnelling to join the Midland Main Line to the St. Pancras branch. Instead, due to the value of the land in such a location the lower area was used for freight, in particular beer from Burton. As a result, the undercroft was built with columns and girders, maximising space, set out to the same plans as those used for beer warehouses, and with a basic unit of length that of a beer barrel.
The contract for the construction of the station substructure and connecting lines was given to Messrs. Waring, with Barlow's assistant Campion as supervisor. The lower floor for beer warehousing contained interior columns 15 ft (4.57 m) wide, and 48 ft (14.63 m) deep carrying girders supporting the main station and track. The connection to the Widened Lines (St. Pancras branch) ran below the station's bottom level, in an east-to-west direction.
To avoid the foundations of the roof interfering with the space beneath, and to simplify the design, and minimise cost, it was decided to construct a single span roof, with cross ties for the arch at the station level. The arch was sprung directly from the station level, with no piers. Additional advice on the design of the roof was given to Barlow by Rowland Mason Ordish. The arches' ribs had a web depth of 6 ft (1.8 m), mostly open ironwork. The span width, from wall to wall was 245 ft 6 in (74.83 m), with a rib every 29 ft 4 in (8.94 m) The arch was a slightly pointed design, with a reduced radius of curvature at the springing points. The Butterley Company was contracted to construct the arches. The total cost of the 24 rib roof and glazing was over £53,000, of which over half was for the main ribs. The cost of the gable end was a further £8,500.
The clock tower of St Pancras:
The single-span overall roof was the largest such structure in the world at the time of its completion. The materials used were wrought iron framework of lattice design, with glass covering the middle half and timber (inside)/slate (outside) covering the outer quarters. The two end screens were glazed in a vertical rectangular grid pattern with decorative timber cladding around the edge and wrought iron finials around the outer edge. It was 689 feet (210.01 m) long, 240 feet (73.15 m) wide, and 100 feet (30.48 m) high at the apex above the tracks. At the time of opening, it was the world's largest unsupported station roof.
Local services began running to the Metropolitan Railway junction underneath the terminus on 13 July 1868. The station itself opened to the public on 1 October. The first service was an overnight mail train from Leeds.
Early services
St Pancras was built during a period of expansion for the MR, as the major routes to Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Carlisle opened during this time. By 1902, there were 150 trains arriving and leaving the station daily, though this figure was far less than Waterloo or Liverpool Street. As well as Midland services, the Great Eastern Railway (GER) used St Pancras as a "West End" terminus for trains to Great Yarmouth, Norwich, Lowestoft between 1870 and 1917. At the turn of the 20th century, St Pancras also had a faster service to Cambridge than King's Cross, at 71 minutes. GER services were suspended because of World War I and never resumed.
The London, Tilbury and Southend Railway (LTSR) began offering boat train services from St Pancras from 9 July 1894, following the opening of the Tottenham and Forest Gate Railway. The trains ran from St Pancras to Tilbury via South Tottenham and Barking. Tilbury Docks then provided a connection to Australia and Scandinavia. The following year, the LTSR began a service from St Pancras to Southend Central. Boat trains continued to run from St Pancras until 1963, after which they were moved to Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street.
Grouping, nationalisation and privatisation
The station was damaged by a bomb in May 1941 during the Blitz.
The Railways Act of 1921 forced the merger of the Midland with the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR) into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), and the LMS adopted the LNWR's (the "Premier Line") Euston station as its principal London terminus. The Midland Grand Hotel was closed in 1935, and the building was subsequently used as offices for British Railways. During World War II, bombing inflicted damage on the train shed, which was only partially reglazed after the war. On the night of 10–11 May 1941 a bomb fell onto the station floor at platform 3, exploding in the beer vaults underneath. The station was not significantly damaged, but was closed for eight days, with platforms 2–3 remaining closed until June. In 1947 the St. Pancras junction was relaid with prefabricated trackwork, along with associated changes to the signalling system.
On the creation of British Railways (BR) in 1948, St Pancras received a significant investment after neglect by the LMS. Destinations included the London area services to North Woolwich, St Albans and Bedford. Long-distance trains reached Glasgow, Leeds, Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester, with famous named trains including The Palatine to Manchester, The Thames-Clyde Express to Glasgow, and The Master Cutler to Sheffield (transferred from King's Cross in 1966, which itself had transferred from Marylebone eight years earlier).
On 7 October 1957, the signalling at St Pancras was upgraded, replacing the three original boxes with a power box controlling 205 route switches and 33 points over a network of 1,400 relays. From 1960 to 1966, electrification work on the West Coast Main Line between London and Manchester saw a new Midland Pullman from Manchester to St Pancras. These trains and those to Glasgow were withdrawn following the completion of the rebuilding of Euston and the consolidation of these services.
By the 1960s, St Pancras was seen as redundant, and several attempts were made to close it and demolish the hotel (by then known as St Pancras Chambers). These attempts provoked strong and successful opposition, with the campaign led by the later Poet Laureate, John Betjeman. Jane Hughes Fawcett with the Victorian Society was instrumental in its preservation, and was dubbed "the furious Mrs. Fawcett" by British rail officials. Many of the demonstrators had witnessed the demolition of the nearby Euston Arch a few years previously, and were strongly opposed to the distinctive architecture of St Pancras suffering the same fate. The station became Grade I listed building in November 1967, preventing any drastic modifications. The plans were scrapped by BR in December 1968, realising that it was more cost-effective to modernise the hotel instead, though they disliked owning it.
In the 1970s, the train shed roof was in danger of collapse, and the newly appointed Director of Environment Bernard Kaukas persuaded the company to invest £3m to save it. In 1978, a Private Eye piece said that British Rail really wanted to demolish St Pancras but were opposed by "a lot of long-haired sentimentalists" and "faceless bureaucrats" and praised the office blocks that replaced the Euston Arch.
After the sectorisation of British Rail in 1986, main-line services to the East Midlands were provided by the InterCity sector, with suburban services to St Albans, Luton and Bedford by Network SouthEast. In 1988 the Snow Hill tunnel re-opened resulting in the creation of the Thameslink route and the resultant diversion of the majority of suburban trains to the new route. The station continued to be served by trains running on the Midland main line to Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield, together with a few suburban services to Bedford and Luton. These constituted only a few trains an hour and left the station underused.
Following the privatisation of British Rail, the long-distance services from St Pancras were franchised to Midland Mainline, a train operating company owned by National Express, starting on 28 April 1996. The few remaining suburban trains still operating into St Pancras were operated by the Thameslink train operating company, owned by Govia, from 2 March 1997.
A small number of trains to and from Leeds were introduced, mainly because the High Speed Train sets were maintained there and were already running empty north of Sheffield. During the 2000s major rebuild of the West Coast Main Line, St Pancras again temporarily hosted direct and regular inter-city trains to Manchester, this time via the Hope Valley route (via the Dore South curve) under the title of Project Rio.
New role
Model of the extended St Pancras station (left) and King's Cross station (right, seen before restoration circa 2012)
The original plan for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) involved a tunnel from south-east of London to an underground terminus in the vicinity of King's Cross. However, a late change of plan, principally driven by the then Secretary of State for the Environment Michael Heseltine's desire for urban regeneration in east London, led to a change of route, with the new line approaching London from the east. This opened the possibility of reusing St Pancras as the terminus, with access via the North London Line, which crosses the throat of the station.
The idea of using the North London line was rejected in 1994 by the transport secretary, John MacGregor, as "difficult to construct and environmentally damaging". However, the idea of using St Pancras station as the terminus was retained, albeit now linked by 12.4 miles (20 km) of new tunnels to Dagenham via Stratford.
London and Continental Railways (LCR), created at the time of British Rail privatisation, was selected by the government in 1996 to reconstruct St Pancras, build the CTRL, and take over the British share of the Eurostar operation. LCR had owned St Pancras station since privatisation to allow the station to be redeveloped. Financial difficulties in 1998, and the collapse of Railtrack in 2001, caused some revision of this plan, but LCR retained ownership of the station.
The design and project management of reconstruction was undertaken on behalf of LCR by Rail Link Engineering (RLE), a consortium of Bechtel, Arup, Systra and Halcrow. The original reference design for the station was by Nick Derbyshire, former head of British Rail's in-house architecture team. The master plan of the complex was by Foster and Partners, and the lead architect of the reconstruction was Alistair Lansley, a former colleague of Nick Derbyshire recruited by RLE.
To accommodate 300-metre+ Eurostar trains, and to provide capacity for the existing trains to the Midlands and the new Kent services on the high-speed rail link, the train shed was extended a considerable distance northwards by a new flat-roofed shed. The station was initially planned to have 13 platforms under this extended train shed. East Midlands services would use the western platforms, Eurostar services the middle platforms, and Kent services the eastern platforms. The Eurostar platforms and one of the Midland platforms would extend back into the Barlow train shed. Access to Eurostar for departing passengers would be via a departure suite on the west of the station, and then to the platforms by a bridge above the tracks within the historic train shed. Arriving Eurostar passengers would leave the station by a new concourse at its north end.
This original design was later modified, with access to the Eurostar platforms from below, using the station undercroft and allowing the deletion of the visually intrusive bridge. By dropping the extension of any of the Midland platforms into the train shed, space was freed up to allow wells to be constructed in the station floor, which provided daylight and access to the undercroft.
The reconstruction of the station was recorded in the BBC Television documentary series The Eight Hundred Million Pound Railway Station broadcast as six 30-minute episodes between 13‒28 November 2007.
Rebuilding
The Meeting Place and the Olympic Rings for the 2012 Summer Olympics
By early 2004, the eastern side of the extended train shed was complete, and the Barlow train shed was closed to trains. From 12 April 2004, Midland Mainline trains terminated at an interim station occupying the eastern part of the extension immediately adjacent to the entrance.
As part of the construction of the western side of the new train shed that now began, an underground "box" was constructed to house new platforms for Thameslink, which at this point ran partially under the extended station. In order for this to happen, the existing Thameslink tunnels between Kentish Town and King's Cross Thameslink were closed between 11 September 2004 and 15 May 2005 while the works were carried out. Thameslink services from the north terminated in the same platforms as the Midland Main Line trains, while services from the south terminated at King's Cross Thameslink.
When the lines were re-opened, the new station box was still only a bare concrete shell and could not take passengers. Thameslink trains reverted to their previous route but ran through the station box without stopping. The budget for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link works did not include work on the fitting out of the station, as these works had originally been part of the separate Thameslink 2000 works programme. Despite lobbying by rail operators who wished to see the station open at the same time as St Pancras International, the Government failed to provide additional funding to allow the fit out works to be completed immediately following the line blockade. Eventually, on 8 February 2006, Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Transport, announced £50 million funding for the fit-out of the station, plus another £10–15 million for the installation of associated signalling and other lineside works.
The fit-out works were designed by Chapman Taylor and Arup (Eurostar) and completed by ISG Interior Plc Contractors collaborating with Bechtel as Project Managers. The client was London and Continental Railways who were advised by Hitachi Consulting.
In 2005, planning consent was granted for a refurbishment of the former Midland Grand Hotel building, with plans to refurbish and extend it as a hotel and apartment block. The newly refurbished hotel opened to guests on 21 March 2011 with a grand opening ceremony on 5 May.
By the middle of 2006, the western side of the train shed extension was completed. The rebuilding cost was in the region of £800 million, up from an initial estimate of £310 million.
The International station
In early November 2007, Eurostar conducted a testing programme in which some 6000 members of the public were involved in passenger check-in, immigration control and departure trials, during which the "passengers" each made three return journeys out of St Pancras to the entrance to the London tunnel. On 4 September 2007, the first test train ran from Paris Gare du Nord to St Pancras. Children's illustrator Quentin Blake was commissioned to provide a huge mural of an "imaginary welcoming committee" as a disguise for one of the remaining ramshackle Stanley Building South immediately opposite the station exit.
St Pancras was officially re-opened as St Pancras International, and the High Speed 1 service was launched on 6 November 2007 by Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh. Services were extended to Rotterdam and Amsterdam in April 2018.
During an elaborate opening ceremony, actor Timothy West, as Henry Barlow, addressed the audience, which was also entertained by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the singers Lemar and Katherine Jenkins. In a carefully staged set piece, the first Class 395 train and two Class 373 trains arrived through a cloud of dry ice in adjacent platforms within seconds of each other. During the ceremony, Paul Day's large bronze statue The Meeting Place was also unveiled. At a much smaller ceremony on 12 November 2007, the bronze statue of John Betjeman by sculptor Martin Jennings was unveiled by Betjeman's daughter, the author Candida Lycett Green. Public service by Eurostar train via High Speed 1 started on 14 November 2007. In a small ceremony, station staff cut a ribbon leading to the Eurostar platforms. In the same month, services to the East Midlands were transferred to a new franchisee, East Midlands Trains. The low-level Thameslink platforms opened on 9 December 2007, replacing King's Cross Thameslink.
St Pancras has retained a reputation of having one of the most recognisable facades of all the London termini, and is known as the "cathedral of the railways". In Britain's 100 Best Railway Stations by Simon Jenkins, the station was one of only ten to be awarded five stars. The station has bilingual signs in French and English, one of the few in England to do so.
Services:
St Pancras contains four groups of platforms on two levels, accessed via the main concourse at ground level. The below-surface group contains through platforms A and B, and the upper level has three groups of terminal platforms: domestic platforms 1–4 and 11–13 on each side of international platforms 5–10. Platforms A & B serve Thameslink, 1–4 connect to the Midland Main Line, while platforms 11–13 lead to High Speed 1; there is no connection between the two lines, except for a maintenance siding outside the station. There are also a variety of shops and restaurants within the station concourse.
The station is the London terminus for Eurostar's high-speed trains to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Lille via the Channel Tunnel. It is also the terminus for East Midlands services from London to Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield, and smaller towns en route. Thameslink trains on the cross-London Thameslink route call at platforms beneath the main station, south to Gatwick Airport and Brighton and north to Luton Airport Parkway for Luton Airport and Bedford. High-speed domestic services to Kent, run by Southeastern, depart on the same level as Eurostar & East Midlands Trains.
The terminal is one of relatively few railway stations in England to feature multilingual signage in English and French. In March 2014, the station's public relations team commissioned a study of mispronounced words, reportedly as a result of passengers referring to the station as "St Pancreas".
An official photo this and showing the newly opened St John's Wood station on the Bakerloo line extension that had opened on 20 November 1939 under wartime conditions. This section of tube railway, from a new junction at Baker Street to Finchley Road, created the second northern branch of the Bakerloo and, at surface at Finchley Road, it took over the Stanmore branch of what had been the Metropolitan Railway/line that had itself come into use in 1932. This scheme had its origins in the desire of the Metropolitan to ease congestion on the sub-surface two-track section of railway between Finchley Rd and Baker St that a combination of new Met branches and electrufucation had helped to create. Following the effective merger of the Metropolitan Railway into the new London Transport in 1933 LT picked up the problem and under the 1935 - 40 New Works Programme (a vast series of schemes to improve London's transport) constructed this section of tube tunnel with two new stations (St. John's Wood and Swiss Cottage) and closed existing stations on the Met to help improve capacity.
The scheme did assist but it in turn, over time, caused huge overcrowding and operational problems on the Bakerloo south of Baker St (the joy of managing two branches into one rapid transit railway) and this eventually was solved by the Fleet/Jubilee line extension of 1979 that built a new tube south of Baker St and grafted the Stanmore branch on to it. So, the station here was on the Bakerloo and is now on the Jubilee line.
The platforms are very fine examples of the 'standard' LT tube platforms of the period, drawing on the work of the company's two architects - the 'consultant' Charles Holden and their 'own' Stanley Heaps. The tunnel walls are clad in a pale yellow, matt glazed ceramic tile made by Carter's of Poole and designed to be 'clean' under filament lighting - oh, how I struggled in my job 80 years later to 'manage' what appeared, visually, to be even grubbier tiling than use had created thanks to fluorescent lighting! This batch of stations iniated the use of the tiled upper name frieze, in Johnston typeface, and here all 18 of Harold Stabler's embossed "London's symbols" tiles.
Under PPP work with Tubelines Ltd a decade or so ago all this original tiling was tripped out due to water ingress and physical damage and, carefully, recreated with new tiles made to the original specification, albeit with a slightly different layout to allow for metric posters and frames rather than the original imperial dimensions. Everthing that could be was integrated and so all cabling, and what services existed at the time (no fire alarms or CCTV cameras then!) was in conduit. We managed to put a lot of 'new' requirements behind the scenes when we did the reconstruction but that is a continuing problem on existing stations.
One main feature were the recesses to allow for vending and other services "auto sales" and one of those little illuminated signs survives in the LTM Collections. Auto as in Automatic so there is the cigarette and chocolate vending, the integral litter bin and yes, behind its bronze frame and with the weighing plate just visible is the 'penny in the slot tell me my weight' machine! The remains of such integrated scales survive on a couple of station platforms.
The other signs are all bronze frame vitreous enamel and include the rare complement of miniature bronze frames on tracksde walls that only a handful of stations had. The trackside 'describer' sign is also showing the short lived "1938 Standard Signs Manual" tombstone top with another bronze framed miniature roundel in place. Plainer versions of such signs, the first to standardise line interchange colours as per the map and diagram, survive at one or two places.
The posters are of course period piece and include some LT ones by the entrance/egress passageways; "Open Again" referring to the temporary closure of the various under-Thames tube lines to allow flood gate and safety features due to the concern that bombing may have penetrated the running tunnels and flooded large areas of the central area of the tube.
Scanned from an article on London's New Towns, the post-war scheme to reduce the population of London by creating a 'ring' of planned new towns this image, from Transport Age, shows the new (and now Listed) Harlow Town station with its newly electrified suburban services into London Liverpool Street. The station replaced the original Burnt Mill station. The station architecture formed part of only a handful of wholly new BR stations at the time - and is similar in many ways to the contemporary Banbury station - and with similar elements of stations (such as Coventry, Stafford or Wolverhampton) that formed part of the modernisation and electrification of the West Coast Mainline.
The green bus is a reminder than the majority of road transport in the New Towns, such as Harlow, was provided by the Country Bus division of London Transport, itself part of the BTC like BR. How clean and well-ordered this all looks - the station still survives and is busy although, as I waited for the bus in the rain last Thursday evening, much more cluttered.
...reworked as a seasonal "Brandy Snap". "The Great Britain IV (renamed Riley's Whisky Chaser)" leaving Perth on April 2011. (Please view F11 in lightbox for intended best.)
The empty carriages of the overnight service from London about to be removed to Edge Hill carriage sidings. Nearest the camera is a Mk III sleeping car.
The Architectural Review of this period was not only an amazingly authorative journal but also, in terms of its own style and design, a very contemporary journal. This issue from 1948 could boast the noted illustrator Gordon Cullen as the assistant Art Editor and the editorial board consisted of J M Richrads, Nicholas Pevsner, Osbert Lancaster (himself) and H de C Hastings.
The reason behind this marvellous cover by Lancaster was an article on the new colour schemes and liveries for the newly nationalised British Railways by the well known railway writer, Hamilton Ellis. Osbert Lancaster, a noted architectural writer and illustrator, chose this series of trains to show the legacy liveries of not only the pre-decessor companies to BR, such as the Southern, but also the pre-Grouping concerns such as the Midland, the Great Northern and the Caledonian Railway. Oddly, the latter's blue was to reappear some years later as the livery for the new Glasgow area electric multiple units and that helped garner their 'brand' as Blue Trains. The subject of what colours the new national organisation should paint its trains, and so develop a 'national' brand was vexed, and the debate and decisions swithered from regional colours (along the 'Big Four' lines) to different liveries for different types of stock - locomotives, carriages and, such as for EMUs, a continuation of the Southern's green seen here.
One lovely touch is that the artist has chosen to place the issue title and information in the form of enamel advertising signs in the last illustration! It adds to the charm and reality of a multiplicity of information and advertising often to be seen on railway platforms!
Gresley 'A3' Pacifics were no strangers to the York to Leeds main line, so a combination of the truly splendid circa-1896 built North Eastern Railway cast iron footbridge at Garforth with one of Gresley's "Racehorces" was an opportunity too good to miss for the 'Waverley' charter from York to Carlisle via the Settle-Carlisle line on Sunday 20th August 2017. Although the angle of the sun was virtually straight down the line at this time of the day, the wind direction was perfect for this angle. I used the arch of the fabulous 1830s-built skew bridge (designed to span four tracks, but never used as such) to shield the lens from the sun, and I took a chance on sufficient light reflecting off some of the many sloping parts, a feature of the deflectored A3s, as it leaned to the high-speed curve, which it was taking full advantage of thundering beneath the stone bridge and on to Leeds and Carlisle.
(Best viewed large - full screen)
Copyright Gordon Edgar - All rights reserved. Please do not use any of these images without my explicit permission
More information on the architecture at Garforth can be found here:
www.railwayarchitecture.org.uk/Location/Garforth/Garforth...
(I have digitally removed several bystanders, a videographer and his tripod stood under the bridge, a salt box and a plastic rubbish sack to 'tidy up' the scene!).