Central Line 1949

Interesting photo. I recall these lines in situ about 1964, their last year of use as a result of being cited in the Beeching Report. I have seen other photos taken at the North Acton end of WR Panniers hauling milk trains with Standard Stock and 1962 stock operating alongside. The additional unelectrified lines between North Acton and Viaduct Junction were opened in 1938 and were designed to remove goods trains from the busy tube line, which was increasingly subject to delays caused by slow moving or derailed goods services. The impending war was another reason for its existence as it would provide alternative access to the West London Line. A prominent aim of the 1935 New Works Programme was to isolate freight movements so that they did not foul frequent tube services and for this reason many of the goods yards at the eastern end of the Central Line were quite elaborate in design allowing freight workings to be completely independent from the main tube service, along with their distinctive bomb proof brick built cabins housing the ground frames.

Part of the line's course at Viaduct Junction was swallowed up in the White City area by the Western Avenue extension aka Westway, c.1966. The thing I remember was that it took ages - about 10 years, prior to a local authority housing scheme in Du Cane Road taking some of the trackbed - to lift the track: it sort of disappeared piecemeal, in a random fashion, with the rails going first then the chairs and sleepers as if it was being cannibalised for use elsewhere by LT/WR/other unknown persons?  Yes, in many cases it did take a long time for redundant trackage to be lifted - 4 years - in the case of the goods yards at Barkingside and Newbury Park - 9 years in Fairlop's case in 1967, but the removals were formally itemised in the LT Railways Traffic Circular and lifted in one go as part of a planned event in 1969, and not gradually. I still like to identify its course when travelling on the Central and the shot is the first I have seen of the tracks at East Acton. Alan A. Jackson's atmospheric shot of 1957 [featured in his second edition of "London's Local Railways"] taken from Wood Lane overbridge facing west includes all four tracks. Some years ago there was quite an involved discussion in one of the London Underground journals on whether there had been plans to include a freight facility in the new 1947 built station at White City in the vicinity of the signal box where the trackbed widens for no apparent reason, but the investigation was inconclusive. White City Underground Depot also had a BR connection with the West London Line of which I have never been able to establish a closure date but can only assume Beeching was involved!