Mansion House

I think there was a bay north of the eastbound platform (either that or the current eastbound was also a bay while the through was north of the current eastbound). Can't cite a source though, as it's been a while since I read it.

Looking at the picture at the bottom of the page of mrfs42's first link reminds me that if you went up the stairs marked No Exit you got onto a very narrow bridge over the tracks to the other platform. IIRC the railing supports were quite spindly and far apart and you could look down onto the tracks very easily.

Remember it was originally a terminus. I suspect that the layout pictured above was the best that could be achieved - the District was always strapped for cash IIRC.

It can't be seen from a passing train .

Granted, the disused crossover area can be seen but you specifically said 'platform area' which can't be seen from a train.

Not that I recall, I had occasion to work on several comms projects at the station during the modernisation/update of the platforms. My last project there was renewing the tunnel telephone cabling from the new tunnel telephone relay room about 20 years ago, I ran several hundred metres of pyrotenax MICC through the disused platform area. The area as was shown in the image pointed to by mrfs42 is a utility/office area with corridor and main cable route to the running tunnels. Prior to that there were some rooms in the area including the old tunnel telephone relay room before the new substation was built on the other side of the tracks, it's footprint being I believe over the other disused area.

ISTR the old eastbound bay was taken out of use when the present Tower Hill bay was commissioned. It was certainly still visible in my days on the DR, and we used to use the centre bay for Mansion House short workings.

As MRFS says, it was built as a terminus for the DR, hence that layout. I suspect locos were changed there as well in the early days as it was later an end-on junction between the DR and MR. During their feuds in the steam era, locos may not have been allowed to run through!

At any sort of speed the ride quality would have been horrific! The Met had a similar problem once the original stock began to run on the extension line leading to the construction or the Jubilee Stock and ultimately the bogie stock.

Having ridden on the preserved Metropolitan District coach # 100 on the K&ESR I can safely vouch that the ride is terrible, but this may be down to the fact that it runs on a former BR brake van chassis. I have ridden on other (more modern?) 4 and 6 wheel carriages and in most cases the ride was far superior.

Some of these boards have entered the LTM collection at Acton 'depot'.