London Railways in the 1960s

I can see how eager some passengers were to get off by opening the doors before the train even stopped.

Ten doors a side too - no wonder dwell times were short in those days.

Wouldn't be allowed now, but accidents didn't seem to be common. I can recall just one, when I was hit (well, tapped) by an open door - my own fault: I'd opened it myself, got out a bit too early, walked down the platform too close to the edge, and the door caught up with me!

On another occasion, I had got off the train and was just level with the front of it when it hit the buffers! (Again only a tap - this was Holborn Viaduct, where the platform lengths were so tight the driver had to stop less than a foot from the buffers to avoid fouling the points at the other end)

Oh dear ! Diana remembers every bit of this. Not only the locomotives but the music as well.

Right at the beginning is a shot of the old wooden departure indicator at Waterloo main line station. The last time I saw this, it was in a restaurant called Victoria Station in Los Angeles, and even that place went long ago.

Kings Cross appears as ever in those days, constant locomotives shunting to and fro between the station and the tunnels. It seemed to take about six reversals to get from the locomotive sidings on the west side to the platforms on the east, in the very limited space available.

Just going to watch it all yet again .... !

Absolutely superb, and some great music there too.

Can anyone identify the stock at 13:28 at Liverpool Street? I had to do a double-take as it has more than a passing resemblance to the Wessex Electric 442s which weren't around for another 20-odd years!

The 1962-built EM9 'Clactons' [later Class 309] were the first 100 mph electric units, and officially the fastest until the 100 mph 5-WES [Class 442] units were introduced.

Much of interest there for me too. The Waterloo shots showed "Nelsons", 4-SUBS, 4-EPBs, rebuilt Bullied pacifics and one original "Spam Can". There was even a BR standard. I watched the gradual changeover of the Bullied rebuilds as a boy going to and from school each day at Wimbledon. I thought the rebuilt version was the best looking loco ever to run in Britain. I still think so, although the Britannias come a close second. By a strange co-incidence, I stood next to both types yesterday - "Oliver Cromwell" in steam and "Boscastle" (the latter in a sad state of undress) at Loughborough, Great Central, where I work occasionally.

And Blue Pullmans at Paddington! They used to run next to my train often as I was doing Hammersmith turns on the H&C. The ECS road was next to the H&C at Royal Oak.

Then, the train arriving at Marylebone was ex Aylesbury according to the train number 2C74, so it would have come via the Met to Harrow.

Anyone remember the signal cabin at Kings Cross? It was on the west end of the old EB platform. You had to ask the driver of a Circle etc to drop you off if you wanted to go in there. Tiny little cramped place, it was.

Good as the music is, I would really love to know what some of that traction sounded like - I never heard a Warship or Baby Deltic, and can't remember what the one Blue Pullman I saw in motion sounded like.

Tubeprune - there are actually two unrebuilt Bulleid Pacifics in there - the first two. The third is, I think, the only Merchant Navy - the rest are light Pacifics, although without being able to make out all the numbers I can't be sure - there is no easy way I know of to tell them apart.

Note the spelling of "Bulleid" by the way - "bullied" ( a common error) is what happens to unpopular kids at school - or maybe a sort of beef - an alternative to what you find in a Spamcan?

"Nelsons"? I thought - then I realised you were referring to the 4CORs and not the Maunsell-designed 4-6-0s

All right, another identification puzzle - in the foreground of the "Standard 5" leaving Waterloo (at 05:25) there's a pre-war unit - you can only see the cab, in profile. I thought at first it was a pre-war SUB, but I think they'd all gone by the sixties. Is it a 2BIL? By the distance it is out of the station it looks like its the end of a 12-car train - were 6x2BIL formations common?

SE13 - I think the signal cabin tubeprune was referring to was on the old Metropolitan Line platforms. The main line SB went in the work on the KX throat in the mid 70s, which also closed the easternmost bore of Gasworks Tunnel. I remember the remodelling work well, and the disruption it caused, as I was regularly using KX at that time, travelling between my parents' home in Lincoln and college in London.

I did



12 cars on the Reading line? Certainly not possible now, even with gangwayed stock. Anyway, that train is on the main line side (at least, it's on the left of a departing steam service, which is most likely to be for the West of England line

It's a class 24 - no headcode panel. (D5054 I think) Another one is seen in Platform 9 later on (when the Cravens set is leaving).



Two views of the same one I think - they are certainly both in the same position and sport the same headcode. In the second view, the loco with a split headcode behind it is a Type 3 - no Baby Deltic, and only a few Type 4s on the LMR, had split headcodes.

I've been trying to put dates to some of these views - they are obviously not all the same year as some clips show all trains in Rail Blue (which did not appear until steam had gone) and other clips have no blue in sight. The sequence with the Baby Deltics must be after their rebuilds, as they had no headcode panels before that.

Oh, and now I know what a T9 Deltic sounds like! Very different from the once-familiar sound of a big Deltic - the turbo-charger in the T9 is probably the main factor

My stamping-gound was Claphan Jct in the mid-70s (though my baby-Slugabed memories go back to green EMUs,wooden "square" 2BIL type stock,and hazy memories of smoke,engines being watered etc)
To get to the point,the Southern section of BR tended to run few 12-car trains,and they were generally confined to Bournemouth REP-TC-TC sets and longer distance Brightion Line trains using combinations of VEP family,CIG and BEP.These longer trains tended to be divided en-route to provide a complex sevice pattern.
Outer suburban service wouild be 4- or 8-VEP,or sometimes a mixture of 4-EPB and 2-HAP which had lavatories.These latter trains,I never saw exceed 10 cars.For example,the Readings were 4- or 8-VEP,the Windsors 8-EPB+2HAP.Immediately recognizable by its all-over blue,with yellow stripe on the HAP unit.
Although a 12-car rake wouldn't have been impossible,far more likely is that two trains have drawn up on one platform.Sometimes the "Town" end train would hang around there all day,having arrived in the morning peak,departing in the early PM peak,providing a sanctuary for schoolboys who should have been somewhere else.
Slam-doors were FANTASTIC,and I especially liked the "running-board",on which you could stand,door open,till the train had slowed sufficiently to risk stepping off.The skillful would keep one hand on the door,causing the movement of the train to slam the door shut as it went past.
Any accidents were caused by people doing something wrong or stupid.
I never saw an accident,or even a near miss.
It was evident when one had strayed into "at your own risk" territory.......
Apologies for thread drift.

Possibly of more relevance here is this video:

It's not a loco - it's the power car - note the windows towards the rear. The power bogies were the rear one of that vehicle and the adjacent one in the next vehicle. This configuration was made to avoid the unnacceptable axle loadings that powered leading bogie would have caused.

One problem with these units was the poor ride quality - the best ride was apparently the non-powered bogie under the driver's cab - this was a different design than under the trailers, to take the weight of the engine - which was similar to those in the class 43 Warships.

All makes me realise how old I am.

That Bulleid Pacific slipping on starting. Well the unrebuilt ones always seemed to do that. I believe oil from the oddball internal mechanism used to drip down onto the track as they were standing. Even the one that pulled Winston Churchill's funeral train out of Waterloo did so on starting, although they must have been desperate to be on their best behaviour, you can see it on the TV archive coverage.

The tank locomotive at Waterloo was not a "station pilot" as such, but there were a substantial number of them in use bringing the empty coaches to and fro between Waterloo and Clapham.

I may be one of the few here who actually travelled on the Blue Pullman. Returning from a family beach holiday in Ostend, Belgium, we got to Paddington just in time to board the evening departure to Bristol, bringing sand trails and dragging kids buckets and spades down the carpeting! My principal recollection is that it was the first train I ever used which had PA announcements.

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