Work is now nearing completion on Network Rail’s project to rebuild Kings Cross, revealing the station’s impressive frontage for the first time in many, many years. We’ll be taking another look at the station next month, but in the meantime this seems like a good opportunity to take a brief trip back into the past – in this case to the forties and fifties – and look at what the surrounding area looked like then. Below you will find a selection of photos that do just that. For these we are indebted to Shamus, both for the photos and descriptions.
A view of Kings Cross in the late forties. The scene would remain much the same throughtout the subsequent decade. Photographer unknown.
A pre-war RT on route 30 approaching St Pancras town hall, on the left is an old Austin low-loader taxi – complete with external luggage rack. Photo by John Fozard.
A positively immaculate RT on York Way. Photographer unknown.
Two RTLs pass each other on the same road. Photographer unknown
Two RTs (and their crews) standing at Euston. In the background is an old London Transport RFW sightseeing bus. The busy road in the background is Euston Road itself. Photographer unknown.
Euston Road in the summertime. Photographer unknown.
The distinctive look of a Birch Bros express – which ran to from Rushden to Kings Cross via Bedford, Hitchin, Welwyn, Barnet and North Finchley. This one is parked up on Pancras Road. Photo by Peter Green.
A Birch Bros bus pulls out of the coach station that could, at that time, be found on Judd Street. Below is the same view today. Photographer unknown.
A trolleybus passing in front of Kings Cross. Photo by Geoff Bannister
Trolleybuses passing under the bridges on Pancras Road. The buses would need to travel quite slowly to get through this junction, but invariably caused of a shower of sparks from the wires as they did so. Photographer unknown.
A trolleybus pulls out on Pancras Road. Photographer unknown.
Trolleybuses on Caledonian Road. Houseman’s radical book shop is just visible and still exists today. Photographer unknown.
A trolleybus waits its turn on Kings Cross bridge, as a policeman directs traffic. Photographer unknown.
Black and white photos often serve to disguise the fact that the fifties were a grubby time for transport. Here a sleek – but dirty – trolley bus stands near Kings Cross. the bottom half of the image shows the same scene today. Photo by David Stevens.
Many thanks again to Shamus. You can find more photos of the area in his photoset on Flickr which is well worth a look.
I spent most of my childhood living in the Kings Cross area. I lived in Killick Street off the Cally (Caledonian Road) from 1958 to 1975. I shared some great times with my friends of those days. Yes, it was murky and dire at times, but as we know this was due to the Steam Trains, and smokey chimneys from the houses and factories, those often Smoggy days and dirty buildings and roads was all due to the industrial era of those times.
The Trolley buses to us seemed to be always breaking down causing problems and congestion. And the did appear to be dangerous with the overhead wires always sparking. But for us as kids, the “bestest” bus we found during those times was the great “Routemaster” in those days you could jump on and off those Routemaster buses at anytime, anywhere, even jumping off at traffic lights, and whilst in traffic jams, making it that much more an adventure to travel around London, not like now, there was No health and safety rules stopping you then.
Kings Cross train and bus station was always busy, we as kids spent a lot of time at that station and were always taking down the numbers of all the steam trains passing through, seeing the Flying Scotsman arrive on the platform. We even collected discarded coal being offloaded from the trains at York way coal depot to take home for lighting up the home fires. We were lucky living in an area where most train and bus routes came through Kings Cross, you had instant travel on your doorstep.
I remember meeting my dad getting off the Trolly bus outside Kings Cross Station after he finished work early and having tea with my mum and dad (RIP) at the Lyons Corner House Tea Rooms, then often going to the ABC cinema. So As a kid growing up in and around Kings Cross in those times was a great Adventure. Those photos bring back to me many Great memories.
can anyone tell me when last trams ran along the Cally (Caledonian Road)? please email me if you know. thanks muchly.
@Ted H – the 17 and 21 trams were replaced by trolleybuses (517/617, 521/621) on 6 March 1937 and the 59 was replaced by trolleybuses (659) on 16 October 1938. The trams’ LDO would have been the day before in each case (unless there were any post-midnight journeys scheduled).
The tram routes operating on the Caledonian Road were the 17 (Farringdon Street – Archway, 21 (Grays Inn – North Finchley and 59 (Grays Inn – Edmonton) .
The 17 and 21 were replaced respectively by trolleybuses 517/617 and 521/621 (numbering depending on their direction round the Kings Cross -Holborn loop) on 6th March 1938. The 59 was replaced by the 659 on 16th October the same year. This would appear to have marked the end of regular tram operation on that road.
The demise of the trolleybuses in 1961 was just as swift. The 517/617 were replaced by diesel bus 17 on 1st Feb, the 659 being replaced by diesel bus 259 on 26th April, and last of all the 521/621 were replaced by diesel bus 221 on 8th November.
All three diesel routes still operate, although the 221 has not operated south of Turnpike Lane since 1995.
All information from John Reed’s “London Tramways” and Volume 1 of Ken Blacker’s “The London Trolleybus”, plus the route maps linked here
http://www.tundria.com/trams/GBR/London-1934.shtml
and Ian Armstrong’s route histories
http://www.londonbuses.co.uk/_routes/current/221-2.html
@Graham H
Are you sure about that? Sunday was the usual day for a conversion. 6/3/37 was a Saturday.
Both Reed and Blacker say the 17 and 21 were converted on (Sunday) 6/3/38.
Anyway, it looks like the last day of tram service on the Caledonian Road was 15th October 1938.
How strange to think that the main road I live near has had the 23 tram and the 623 trolleybus and now I’m lumbered with the ever worsening and overloaded 123 bus. I was clearly born too late to experience proper electric public transport in London.
Or too early.
Sadly, the causes of the “ever worsening and overloaded 123 bus” are probably not the mere fact of its oil engine, nor its route number.
Meanwhile, the first line in the article (“…revealing the station’s impressive frontage…” has not yet come true; there is /still/ a building site right in front of where the front picture of this article was taken from.
@timbeau – yes,sorry,my bad as they say; I mistyped (and failed to doublecheck…). [I tend to use Oakley and Holland’s “London Transport Tramways” as a quarry, despite its infuriating index… You may also find “London Trolleybus Wiring – North” of interest. This shows the evoluton of the layout at KX/Grays Inn Road – unfortunately, some of the pictures on this thread don’t show the ohle detail (or it has been airbrushed out) otherwise we could try and put some dates to them.]
The wiring for the 623, down the hill from “The Waterworks” to Wood St (Walthamstow) as well as the section across the Lea, was always kept very tight & straight – the “trolleys” used to get up to quite a speed along those stretches, & going over the “hump” where the Chingford line was crossed could be interesting.
As was the complexity of the wiring at “Bell corner” where there were turns in both directions to-from the North, to enable buses to get to/from Walthamsow garage – now demolished & replaced by houses, but the municipal Tramway Offices remain.
Like this: https://goo.gl/maps/mpJx4
@ WW What may be the last Trolleybus traction standard poles in London still cling on near Tottenham Hale Station and which would have supported your route 623 overhead!
We constantly hear of bus jams along Oxford Street and calls to cut bus routes when the best solution would be to rejoin bus routes together thus allowing them to pass along or across Oxford Street and remove the ” emoty bus” argument that arises from being a terminus .
Melvyn – well, all the accumulated experience of running buses in London and elsewhere is that delays and bunching increase in proportion to the length of the route. * So, no, joining existing routes would merely leave the bus network reliability in tatters. This is why LT spent a great deal of effort in the sixties and seventies in splitting the major trunk routes such as the 12 (Harlesden to South Croydon) . The alternative strategy could be – as in the bus re-shaping plan – to terminate many trunk routes at the periphery of the CAZ and operate a quite separate high frequency network (aka the Red Arrows) within it, and replacing some of the central area trunk route extensions (eg the 507).
*Behind this is the observation – made as long ago as 1668 by Blaise Pascal in relation to his carosses a cinq sous – that the causes of delay are random events, statistically, and therefore their likelihood of occurring is subject to the usual sort of distribution curve; so, the longer the route, the more chance of “random events” supervening. This approach to bus operation seems to have originated (perhaps via the French connexion) with the LGOC and, of course, is today reflected in the way that high frequency routes are managed in real time.
@ Greg – I have seen photos of the Bell Junction with the wiring in place and am very familiar with the bus garage site. It was still operational when I first moved here and had to cope with the “magic void” at the Bell on the 123 route. Buses were forever turned short there whenever I wanted to travel across! The “magic void” has simply moved over the years depending on who was running the route.
@ Melvyn – yes I know of those poles. I have photos of them.
WW
Two (out of three) are visible in this picture ….
I remember seeing the Birch buses parked in Pancras Road and as a bus spotter sometimes ventured in to the Pentonville Road coach station. It took me some puzzling with a map and on the ground to recall the exact location 50 years on.
Just thought I’d pop by to say how much I’ve enjoyed reading the anecdotes and historical chat here. For those particularly interested in the King’s Cross area, these photos are a small selection from my flickr album which show 118 pictures of King’s Cross and the surrounding streets. You can find it here…
https://www.flickr.com/photos/warsaw1948/sets/72157626070269684
There are also albums featuring the Angel Islington, Essex Road, Camden Town, Holloway Road and Charing Cross Road. You don’t have to be a member of flickr and can browse at you leisure.
@shamus – thank you for sharing these with everybody. I particularly liked the shots of C class trolleybuses on the 513/613 – Highgate had these for only three years in the early ’50s, so not often photographed. Also the 2RT2 on the 30 and those peculiar Birch Bros vehicles.
It’s noticeable how (a) grubby London was even 10 years after the war, and (b) how little apart from bomb damage refill, the physical infrastructure has changed – most streets and indeed individual buildings are still recogniseable even now.
Hello Graham – yes, KX has retained most of its old buildings (the first one to go was the old Century cinema opposite St Pancras station, formerly a theatre). Perhaps it’s because the locality became more rundown from the late sixties onwards. Up until that time you could find most of the shops seen in other areas e.g. Hepworths tailors, Boots chemist, Freeman Hardy Willis, Lyon’s etc etc. But by the mid/late seventies, they’d all gone and the place became a virtual red-light district. It’ll be interesting to see how it looks when the lighthouse buildings are finished.
My first memory of Kings Cross was as a 15 year old, on 2nd September, 1948 – volunteers just arrived with 2 others from Scotland to join our respective corps and regiments. The R.T.O. inside the station advised us to go and have a cup of tea in the Red Shield canteen outside the station. before finding our way to other railway stations. We were unsure of our bearings and one of my travelling companions insisted,to my embarrassment,on asking directions from a corporal in the Pioneer Corps who was escorting a prisoner.
This helpful Londoner took us to the Underground and put us on the various trains -mine was Waterloo, for the steam train to Brookwood, Surrey.
Lots of times in and around there since then, Copenhagen Street, York Way, Percy Street,Pentonville Road – decent, helpful working-class people!
Recently managed to purchase a rug showing a wonderful, clear picture of the 38 bus (Victoria) which I would get to Green Park. Thank you for showing such wonderful pictures – much appreciated!
Just found this site looking for information about Killick Street in 1946-1960. Saw comment from PETE PP “The Kings Cross Kid” dated 2015. Would like to make contact please or anyone else who lived in that street at that time.
D. Coates,
I will forward your email address to the one given by Pete PP. Due to data protection rules, we cannot do more than that.
If anyone else wants to get in touch with D. Coates please let the moderators know at [email protected]