On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:04:07 +0100, Kevin Ayton
wrote:
On 20/07/2011 23:22, wrote:
Chingford is only 4 tph?
When it 1st electrified, (Nov. '60, when I were but a young lad....)
it was 6 tph off-peak& 9 tph in the peaks.
Train were probably longer too, 6-car off-peak& 9-car peak.
'Twas before the Victoria line opened, so perhaps that stole some of
the traffic?
DC
I commuted from Chingford to Liv St to go to school (at Blackfriars)
from 65 to 72. My recollection is 9 per hour in the peaks - three groups
of three, one group every 20 mins. The first two in each group ran fast
between St. James' Street and Liverpool Street, while the third had
stops at Clapton, Hackney Downs and Bethnal Green. My memory is of just
one every 20 mins off-peak, but I could be wrong.
Rush hour trains were 9 car (3x3), but off-peak I think were only 3 cars.
That dind't change even with the opening of the Victoria Line at Hoe
Street (or Walthamstow Central as it became) - well not before my family
moved over to the SW side of London and I stopped doing that journey.
Kevin
I used to live v. near Wood Street Loco Shed, (the wrong side of the
tracks....) & sometimes used train + bus to go to schooI, on the
other side of Walthamstow. (McCentee in Billet Road) rather than two
trolley bus rides.
I finished school in 1963 & started commuting to the city, sometime
cycling but usually by train so I'm quite sure about the service
patterns back then.
The off-peak 6 tph pattern was really 3 all stations + 3 omitting
Clapton & Bethenal Green, explained by pretty coloured "clock-face"
posters on the local stations.
By the time the Victoria Line had opened I'd moved (with parents)
across W'stow to Hoe Street, so I had a choice of routes into London.
Since Kings X was only about 20 minutes away I have a few memories of
Deltics departing the cross after dark.....'
My 1st two years in high school were spent in a building backing onto
the Goblin, adjacent to Walthamstow Queens Road good yard, which had a
daily pick-up goods + much shunting, worked by whatever steam loco
Cricklewood could find on the day. Black Fives are not at there best
shunting a coal yard......
Lots of other sightings, Flying Pig Ivat 2-6-0's on the St. P to
Tilbury boat trains, 9F's on tank trains from Thames Haven & the ECS
for an LTS rush-hour train that was stabled in a siding at South
Tottenham, worked by a Brush type 2 (class 30?).
Before the Bed-Pan dieselisation, we endured Fowler class 3MT's
trundling back & forth with 3 coach trains, usually between Kentish
Town & Barking, but with occaisional forays into St. Pancras, (The
shortish platform 1?) & one weekday PM train which worked around the
long forgotten curve into the bay platform at East Ham!
This was a total surprise to me, & I watched it propel out of the
platfrom back to Barking be fore following it on a District line
train!
I so wish that I'd owned a camera back then, but I probably couldn't
of afforded the film.........
But that was then, I've been living near the LT&S since '74, enjoying
the wonders of the varied MU fleet through the years & todays reliable
357's on an up to date railway.
I'll stop now before you all get bored..........
DC