London Rail

Category: Historical

  • Schwebebahn 125th anniversary

    2026 is the Wuppertal Schwebebahn 125th Anniversary! The railway’s first ever test run took place on 5th December 1898, thus the world’s longest surviving monorail system began life much earlier than is often thought. The 125th anniversary is related to the actual opening of the line in 1901 – whilst also not forgetting the Kasier’s…

  • Men in the railways

    This weekend’s March 8th 2026 is International Womens Day. Despite the advent of a number of equality measures the status of women is still affected by numerous obstacles in many areas of society – and that includes the railway. That because railways have always been designed by men. That has changed somewhat in the last…

  • Pontcysyllte aqueduct chaos!

    View of the aqueduct taken in 2004 by the author. This, the featured image, is taken from the same position where the narrowboat photos for the AI generated videos were shot – as discussed below. When the canals have so many problems such as breaches and the likes, like the massive breach on the Bridgewater…

  • A Tower Subway memo

    A London Inheritance published a post detailing the Tower Subway and also implied the southern end of the subway happened to be a mystery because it could not be ascertained whether the modern structure behind the Unicorn Theatre in Vine Lane was indeed its southern end. Its not its original southern end however the tunnel…

  • The Bridgewater canal breach #5

    Here’s the latest on the Bridgewater canal’s woes as work to repair/rebuild the disastrous breach at Dunham Massey gets underway! Having now done this fifth instalment on the Bridgewater – it somehow feels like I’m Ryan the Ride Mechanic! Instead of discussing the engineering problems of theme park rides (of which a few have been…

  • Yup its Pompeii! Rail 2000 #2

    One might have thought Yup its Pompeii! Celebrating Rail 2000 had been written in jest, for there are no railways to be found two thousands years ago – and yet in that article there were a couple of illustrations depicting steam trains within the Pompeii landscape! There’s every possibility people thought this was a joke…

  • Railways and canal tunnels #4

    In writing about railways and canal tunnels one might perhaps wonder why railways and canals in general are not the subject of discussion – apart from the Railway and Canal Historical Society who have existed since the 1950s with the aim of bringing history and topics on both together. There’s no doubt railways were substantially…

  • The Bridgewater canal breach #4

    This fourth instalment is three months on from the previous. Perhaps the biggest news so far is the Bridgewater company has given what seems a possibly optimistic date for re-opening the canal. On the 17th April their Facebook page announced a date of December 2026. Its quite optimistic given the scale of the breach, especially…

  • The Island Line runaway train 1991

    Back in 2019 a feature on runway tube trains was featured. One of the posts published had a short section about a runaway train on the Island line. Despite the incident being mentioned in at least two rail magazines (one of which the author has a copy) it seemed absolutely nothing was mentioned in the…

  • Railways and canal tunnels #2

    This is part two of the railways and canal tunnels feature. Whilst it was suggested one of the earliest contractors railways had occurred during the mid 1780s as suggested in part one of this feature, the fullest history is incomplete there in terms of railway chronology – and that is because the next railway/canal combo…

Search

Latest Posts

Categories

Tags

accessibility america anniversary breach canada canal canals closed railway coasters commuter rail deep level tube elizabeth line europe germany great western main line high speed rail industrial archaeology infrastructure japan london history london underground media metro narrow gauge operational issues paddington publicity quirky rail history railway railway history railway problems railway station roads South Africa station street theme park tokaido line transport tube tube station tunnels underground railway walking