A perennial and fairly meaningless question that is often asked is ‘what are the origins …
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Accidents and Islands: A History of St Johns Station – Part 1
Some railway stations are more worthy of a visit for their own sake than others. History, architecture, location, current operation and future plans, all contribute in their own way to give you a reason to explore a particular station. You wouldn’t think the small suburban commuter stop of St Johns was one of these, but in truth it’s a far more interesting station than one might imagine.
Continue readingIn Pictures: Crossrail Beyond the Main Drives
Crossrail have released another batch of photos related to their current tunnelling operations. Interestingly, these seem to focus more on activites beyond the main tunnel drives than the previous batch. It includes, for example, photos …
Continue readingBeyond the Barriers: The Future for TfL’s Non-Fare Income
Given the amount of money generated by the fare box, it is easy sometimes to forget that this is not the only source of revenue for TfL. One of the more interesting things lurking in …
Continue readingFirstGroup Announces Sale of Eight London Bus Garages
Somewhat out of the blue FirstGroup have announced the sale of eight of their bus garages in the capital. First began a rationalisation of their bus operations last year, and further sales had been expected, …
Continue readingLight and Breezy London Bridge
Although we have had a lot to say about the Thameslink Programme over the past few months news on the construction front has gone very quiet. There is a small amount of residual work at …
Continue readingA Beeching Epilogue: The Curious Case of the Clapham Junction Ghost Train
In Part 2 of our piece on The Beeching Report’s impact on London, Pedantic of Purley highlighted that the report called for the closure of the Clapham Junction – Kensington Olympia service. As Pedantic pointed …
Continue readingIn Pictures: Catching up with Crossrail
As readers will no doubt have noticed, we have been somewhat quiet lately. This is, in part, because both Lemmo and I have been involved in the process of moving houses (an exercise at which …
Continue readingThe Beeching Report: Freight and Final Conclusions
In The Beeching Report: 50 Years On we looked at the report itself and its relevance to London as far as passenger traffic was concerned. This was followed up with a look at its impact …
Continue readingThe Beeching Report: The Closure Proposals For London
In our look at the Beeching Report itself we saw plans for a considerable number of railway closures, and looked at the reasoning behind the proposal. For London though, there were actually very few closures …
Continue readingSwitchin’ at Hitchin: A Quick Update
Map courtesy of Network Rail In 2009, we described how Network Rail planned to debottleneck the ECML at Hitchin by building a flyover from the Down Slow to the Down Cambridge at Cambridge Junction. This, …
Continue readingPostscript: Thameslink and The Transport Committee
We really were going to take a break from Thameslink and look at a few completely different topics. We recently covered Thameslink twice – here and here. Then along came the GLA Transport Committee and …
Continue readingCrossrail Gets Its Roundel
For some time now we’ve known, roughly, what Crossrail’s stations will look like on the inside, thanks to a visit to their mockup station back in 2011. One key design question has, however, remained – will Crossrail get a roundel? The image at the top of this article represents the answer. It will, and it will be purple, with a blue bar. Crossrail will also use TfL New Johnston as its primary typeface.
Continue readingThe Beeching Report: 50 Years On
in March 1963 a small book of around 150 pages was published by the British Railways Board. Its official title was The Reshaping of British Railways. Inevitably, however, it became known by the name of the man who headed British Railways at the time. An industrial chemist who had previously headed ICI, he was “on loan” from that organisation with a remit to sort out the problem of the railways. That man was Dr Richard Beeching, and this was “The Beeching Report.”
Continue readingA Glimpse Into the Past
Recently, the Financial Times celebrated 125 years of publication and reproduced, by way of remembrance, a copy of its first front page, of 13th February, 1888. The front page makes interesting reading for LR readers, …
Continue readingThe Transport Committee: Crossrail and the Overground Talk Shop
Today’s London Assembly Transport Committee meeting covered Crossrail and wider London Rail developments – two areas of great interest to LR readers. Andrew Wolstenholme (CEO) and Terry Morgan (Chairman) both attended from Crossrail. Taking Crossrail …
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