Below are the answers to this year’s Christmas Quiz. We were amazed at the amount of entries this year, so thanks to everyone who took part. I’m happy to confirm that thanks to the generosity of various people we now have some excellent prizes to give away. We’ve finalized the prize pot is as follows:
1st Prize: A veritable transport library – Copies of “Shelterers on the Tube” and “London’s Secret Tubes,” both very kindly donated by the London Transport Museum, as well as a copy of the excellent “Beneath the Wires of London”
2nd Prize: A copy of “Bright Underground Spaces” and the “Crossrail Collection” – A set of postcards featuring the designs for Crossrail’s central stations, a Crossrail gym bag and a Crossrail water bottle, all kindly donated by (perhaps unsurprisingly) Crossrail.
3rd Prize: The “from John Bull’s library” collection – A copy of the little booklet the LTM produced to go with their excellent Aldwych tour earlier this year, and a rather fascinating little book on the construction of railways in Scotland.
Special Award: We have decided that everyone who managed to get the dreaded “Belgian battlefields” question correct will get an InterCity APT t-shirt. Which probably gives you an idea of precisely how many people managed it!
I will post the winners of the above prizes tomorrow, but in the mean time the questions are here and the answers are below:
Q1: Aldgate – The victim was Arthur Cadogen West in the Sherlock Holmes’ story of the Bruce-Partington plans.
Q2: James Henry Greathead, bonus point for those who knew that this particular statue’s plinth is actually a vent for the Northern line.
Q3: Stratford Market Station – just across the road from the new DLR station.
Q4: Leytonstone Tube Station – Alfred Hitchcock was born at 517 High Road, Leytonstone and to commemorate this link with the area, 17 mosaics are installed in the entrance corridors of the station.
Q5: The Wheatsheaf pub at Borough Market – As we reported earlier this year, this has had its top floor removed to make way for the new viaduct but has gained a beer garden as part of the Thameslink works.
Q6: Harold Wilson and Charles De Gaulle can both be found, “Where’s Wally” style, in Cuneo’s painting. It’s now hanging in the National Railway Museum in York, for those who wish to try and find them for themselves.
Q7: St James Park – it is, of course, one of the Four Winds on the newly Grade 1 Listed 55 Broadway.
Q8: Oxford Street / Regents Street were what we were after, although we will accept Balham High Road / Balham Station Road as well, because we’re nice (and technically Balham did get there first).
Q9: The Model Railway at West Ashfield/Ashfield House – London Underground’s training centre (pictures here). The man who put it together was obviously a Quartermass fan.
Q10: Richard Trevithick. After all the trouble I went to of trying to find a statue of him where he was holding his own, distinctive, engine, anyone who said “Stephenson” should be taken out and shot (or at least fined a penalty fare)!
Q11: Waterloo was the obvious one (although as people pointed out, technically this is named after the bridge which is itself named after the battle). The second one we wanted was…
…Ypres
Ypres – or “Wipers” as it was referred to on the proposal (in line with the pronounciation most common in the army at the time) was proposed in 1917 as part of a scheme to close Charing Cross and build a new joint terminus for South Eastern/Chatham.
The plan was to remove the Hungerford Railway bridge, replacing it with a road bridge, and leave the “new” Embankment and Strand tube services to pick up the travelling slack on that side of the river.
The station would have been similarly sized to Waterloo and stood opposite it between Stamford Street and New Cut.
Q12: BRITISH RAILWAYS
Q13: The Victoria Line (A couple of you spotted that originally I’d forgotten to photoshop out the destination blind on the right-hand train).
Q14: Charles Holden designed several of Britain’s cemetaries and memorials for the Imperial War Graves Commission after the First World War. This the Buttes New British Cemetery (New Zealand) Memorial at Zonnebeke and you can clearly see the beginning of a style he would later use on the Underground and at 55 Broadway.
Q15: The London Necropolis Railway, about which we really should do a post sometime!
Thanks again to everyone who entered!
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