Tag: infrastructure

  • Ship impact protection? What the heck is that? Well its a means of protecting something from being hit by ships. You know ships can be pretty nasty if they collide with something, say another boat, a quay or even buildings sited alongside water. Thus its said that Canary Wharf is the only Elizabeth Line station…

  • Tower Subway gets filmed!

    London’s mysterious Tower Subway, which opened in August 1870 and was the site for the city’s very first tube railway even though that was a small narrow gauge line with just one carriage carrying a few passengers a time under the Thames, has been the subject of curiosity for decades because many spot its circular…

  • We continue with our investigations into what could be said to be the ‘public sphere’ or perhaps the British consciousness in terms of its railways. The grand modernisation schemes and rationalisations of the sixties and seventies were really nothing more than contrived schemes to give the motorist a better deal. And its how we ended…

  • This looks at further examples of British railway’s 4xD policy. That is Demote, Deconstruct, Dereliction and Destruction. I made that up but what it means is first a station was usually demoted. Services downgraded to the most basic. Then the track layout would be deconstructed, usually to a single platform at the far end of…

  • The good old British railway system! One of the fighter points for the UK’s successful tinpot railway system were its termini. Who needed grand stations with a judicious choice of platforms and stupendous station buildings when a bus stop thingy could do better? Better still – why not push the railway buffers further back and…

  • This is a follow up to other stuff on Wandsworth’s Young’s Ram brewery and the Surrey Iron Railway. Some further stuff related to the former waterway (known as McMurrays canal) which served the town and its brewery was found thus this post was created. Since there’s very little written on this canal, it seemed a…

  • Remember the popular post Central Line: Beyond Caxton Road published more than two years ago? This is a follow up and its based around several old photographs of the area plus some of the latest developments at Westfield. The DIMCO buildings, which some will know were once part of the coal fired power station that…

  • Again & again it’s been said Crossrail should have a City Airport station. This week the news is City Airport’s in discussion with TfL on it. Crossrail actually passes through the site of the old Silvertown station on the North London Line and this was once City Airport’s official station! The argument for a new…

  • Another installment in the Baker Street track replacement works series! This time we can see the entire track layout at Baker Street consists of flat bottom rail, and I assume the work here has been done (apart from tidying things up and removing the other spare bits of flat bottom rail on the pit floor.)…

  • Fifty years ago in February 1959, the last tube trains to served this particular station were withdrawn. The station itself eventually became hidden for good by huge advertising boards and the only proper reminder it ever existed was a footbridge that apparently went nowhere! Recently these advertising hoardings came down and the station once again…