Hidden London

I would love to go on some of those tours! There's some good ones there. Unfortunately I'm short of money at the moment and I'm saving up for my driving lessons and PhD fees.

I've booked for Charing Cross, not been on any of these tours before. Hopefully I'll get a chance at Down Street and Euston at some point. They've been on sale for a month, so perhaps not surprising that they've sold out!

Oh dear. Maybe the eye watering prices are finally proving too much for the relatively captive market. A lot of people don't have such a huge amount of spare cash to throw on a mediocre tour.

Probably several factors. When I did it we had to meet in the hotel opposite first which was legitimately booked and incurs a cost. From memory group sizes were small because of the difficult nature of access and also keeping the ratio of staff to group size manageable because you’re effectively a metre away from live track. It’s also not very well lit down there so another reason to have more staff than usual.

Add to that the super rare, holy grail-esque nature of this particular tour and I can see why they’re charging more. As you allude to, as they do more and supply goes up, price will most probably come down a bit.

Hopefully by then they’ve got something else equally rare!

I wonder what else could be put into the repertoire?  Bull & Bush would be fascinating, but I don't suppose it's remotely feasible to let the public near live rails and trains (at least Down Street has a wall).  Is there enough of Brompton Road still there to make it viable?  Aside from abandoned stations, depot or control centre tours would be good, but I'm sure they'd say there were security risks as well as the safety issues.

Three cheers for the staff and volunteers who made this afternoon's Charing X tour so enjoyable. Saving up for Down Street now.

If you want more history on the whole branch, check the web for 'Northern Wastes' by Jim Blake, now out of print unfortunately