London Rail

Tag: infrastructure

  • Southgate station – an appraisal

    The fact Cockfosters station – an appraisal was popular prompted me to dig out this further look at one of the Piccadilly line’s iconic tube stations. Although we regularly visited Southgate in the 1960s, at no time was the Piccadilly line ever used this far. However the station certainly is remembered because this was where…

  • Cockfosters station – an appraisal

    Despite being the butt of many a joke, ‘Cock Fosters’ as it once was, is a real place and noted for being the northern terminus of the Piccadilly Line. The location itself prior to the opening of the tube was not even a major settlement of any sort, just a small school and a vicarage.…

  • The South Shore doubles its act!

    The South Shore line project involving work to double the route and modernise the street section in Michigan City continues. The main route also sees upgrades and enhancements at a number of other locations. The ninety mile route gets a brand new railroad too! This is a new branch off the South Shore’s main route…

  • The best Tube photo ever (redux)

    Could this photograph from 1937 be the best ever composition taken on London’s tube? It’s certainly very unusual for its time because it suggests a substantial abstraction and mystique. We do not know who the subject is other than its a guy in a bowler hat and his entire figure is almost in shadow. Perhaps…

  • Elizabeth line: ‘Ship impact protection’

    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…

  • The Opicina tram – an update

    The Opicina tram in Northern Italy, the world’s only tramway of its kind, has been shut nearly 5 years. Following an accident on Via Commerciale between Trieste and Opicina in August 2016, it was forced to close. The line was meant to reopen in March 2020 but then came the COVID pandemic. The last time…

  • 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…

  • Tinpot Railways: Terminal decline #3

    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…

  • Tinpot Railways: Terminal decline #2

    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…

  • Tinpot Railways: Terminal decline

    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…

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