A Plea For Peckham Rye
Tristram Hunt wrote a thoughtful article for the Standard yesterday about Peckham Rye station. He says this of the station.
Sadly, British Rail didn’t care for this station as it should have done. Its features rotted and beauty ebbed. The Old Waiting Room closed and the windows were bricked up.
It’s not just Peckham Rye station, that has been treated like this.
Some have been treated badly, whilst others have even been built as eyesores or impractical buildings like Brixton. Those architects of the 1960s, who worked for British Rail and London Underground should hang their heads in shame.
The saviour for these buildings could be proper property development in conjunction with good architecture. I have seen what is proposed for some sites and liked what I have seen. Surely similar schemes should be proposed for other stations to both improve the lot of both passengers and local residents.
Fracking In The Times
The Times yesterday also had an article in favour of fracking from Alice Thomson.
As an engineer and a scientist, I tend to dismiss emotional arguments about anything, when the science and technology says otherwise. In this article, I outlined a few thoughts on the subject. I stated this in the article.
The technologies employed are still very much under development and have been used mainly in the very underpopulated parts of the United States and Canada. The extraction is now moving towards more populous states, like Pennsylvania, and only when it is totally accepted by the inhabitants there, will it be time to use it in Europe.
My views haven’t changed and as I said we should keep a watching brief.
We should also do more research, as I said here.
One point that we forget about onshore energy extraction, is that in Wytch Farm, we have one of the largest onshore oil fields in Europe. It’s also slap bang in beautiful countryside. Do we here a massive movement to close it? To me, it proves that in the UK, the oil and gas industry can be good neighbours.
If we can use fracking safely, I believe that the economics say that our energy bills will drop.
The Dead Can’t Enter A Plea Of Not Guilty
The media has already found Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith guilty, but under British law and in fact in a lot of countries, defendants are not guilty until proven to be guilty. Daniel Finkelstein had a long and measured opinion about this in The Times yesterday. He finishes with a plea that everybody has a fair trial and as he says, not being taken to court in their coffin.
But we all tend to be hard on the dead and their perceived crimes.
In a post yesterday, I was being very hard on the man, who decided to electrify the trains south from London using a third rail. I know design faults are not as serious as child abuse, but I’m not alone in condemning the dead.
Starbucks On Southern
I was offered a cup of coffee from the trolley on the train back from Worthing today.
I refused, as the trolley had the Starbucks logo on the side.
Has the anti-Starbucks protest got to me? I think so, but we had actually discussed this at lunch.
I’ve not completely got them out of my life, but where there are alternatives like Knot Pretzels at Clapham Junction, I use them.
The Most Read News Item On The Crossrail Web Site
This article is the most read article on the Crossrail site.
It’s about property prices rising because of the new railway line!
It was always thus and with any sniff that their house might be worth more, people will always check.
After all, government know that the best way to get re-elected is to make sure property prices rise.
This is also why most people object to new housing developments in their area. The law of supply and demand might cause the value of their house to fall, so it’s better to be safe and sure and stop more being built.
Does The Passenger Know Best?
As I indicated in this post, if I was going from Dalston Junction station to Gatwick Airport, I’d go via Clapham Junction station, as the interchange is simple because of the well-designed bridge.
But what is the recommended route from the National Rail Enquiries journey planner? It seems to recommend routes via New Cross Gate station and often ones that need two changes as well. But it does generally get times of just over the hour. Forcing the journey planner to go via Clapham Junction gives a silly route using Highbury and Islington station and the Victoria line, which you don’t want to do with a heavy case. Finally, I got it to go via Claphsm Junction and it looks like this route is about twenty minutes slower than the New Cross Gate route. But most of that time is spent changing trains, so you have plenty of time for buying coffee and tickets.
So sometimes, it’s easier to do the journey, the way you think is best!
Changing At Clapham Junction Station
The one thing that worked well on my trip today, was changing at Clapham Junction station to go south.
If you use the bridge over the tracks, it is fully served with lifts, so if you are wheeling a heavy case to Gatwick Airport, it is probably easier than say getting it off the Underground at Victoria station. There’s also a couple of coffee shops on the bridge and even in the rush hour today, there was somewhere to sit.
I think we should congratulate Network Rail on doing a good design job in bringing an old bridge up to the standard that travellers expect these days.
I would also recommend you buy your tickets before travelling, unless you are prepared to go through the barriers and buy the tickets at the station.
One good thing about changing at Clapham Junction, is that if you use the bridge it is fairly eas to find your ongoing platform. Coming north, it is very easy as you always go to Platform 2.
Hopefully, this will improve as more and more people use Clapham Junction station to change to and from the south. Today, the trains to and from the station on the South London line weren’t very full. But then that was the case when the rest of the Overground opened.
I don’t think it will stay as quiet for long!
Going South
I could have called this piece Going Southern or Wandering Through Sussex, but today’s trip was a bit of a nightmare.
I’m always a bit apprehensive going south of the Big Sewer, as inevitably when I do I get lost or something happens.
Today’s trip couldn’t have been simpler. I wanted to get to Bosham station, just to the west of Chichester to have lunch and walk by the sea with an old colleague. It appeared that now the new South London line is open, a start by going to Clapham Junction station would be a good idea. From there I would take the 09:38 towards Bognor Regis and change off this train at Barnham station for Bosham.
The first leg went very well and just a couple of minutes late, the lightly-loaded Overground train pulled into Clapham Junction. There was a slight problem in that there are no ticket machines by the Overground platforms and you have to go outside the gated area to get a ticket. I couldn’t complain about the price and it cost me just £15.30. As one connection from the Overground to the train I wanted was just a minute, you’re a bit stumped if you cut it fine and have a ticket to collect.
I could have done it as the 09:38 pulled into the station, about ten minutes late.
We ran well until Billingshurst, but then it all started to go wrong, as a train in front had broken down. Eventually, it became obvious, I wouldn’t make my connection, so I phoned my friend and we agreed, he’d pick me up at Chichester. Which is what happened, but we finally got to the restaurant in Bosham about an hour after we planned.
We had our lunch and a walk and then I was dropped back at Bosham station to get the train home. As my ticket allowed me to go via Havant, if I wanted, I wasn’t pleased to see the westbound train steaming out of the station, as I arrived on the platform. As the trains seemed to be running to a random edition of the timetable, I thought the best thing to do, was to take the first train to arrive, as most seemed t0 be either delayed or cancelled.
So I found myself on a Brighton train and felt the best thing to do, would be to ask the conductor’s advice, as to the best route back to Clapham Junction. But he was nowhere to be seen, so I decided to take my chances at Barnham station.
There I got advice to go to Worthing and get a London train from there, which is what I did. I finally arrived at Clapham Junction nearly three hours after being dropped at Bosham. The trip is scheduled to take around one hour fifty minutes.
To make matters worse, i just missed an Overground train at Clapham Junction and had to wait fifteen minutes. But there were no further delays and I thought the train was surprisingly full for an early evening one. It will be interesting to see how traffic builds in the next few months.
So why were the Southern trains late?
One of the rather overworked employees said is was all down to the cold and when I said it didn’t seem to happen on the Ipswich line, he blamed the third rail electrical system. Perhaps, now the long-since dead idiot who decided to use this system, is getting the criticism he deserves. After all Southern Railway did start electrification with an overhead system and then ripped it out in the late 1920s.
I should say too, that all the staff were very good and helped when they could. The advice to go via Worthing was totally spot on.
I think next time, I go south, I’ll check on the weather first!
The Cost Of Christmas
I suppose I can afford the cost of Christmas, but others can’t. This article speculates that in London about half a million will turn to short term lenders.
Hopefully, people will start to see sense, especially after the government limits the charges in a couple of years time.
My worry, is that any legislation will push the really needy into the arms of illegal loan sharks.
Is Norwich The Most Godless Place In Britain?
The 2011 Census results have started to be published and this report on the BBC, asks if Norwich is the most godless place in Britain.
This surprised me, as I always thought the city had more churches than most conurbations of its size.
But then there are plenty of people from Suffolk, who would suggest reasons for this statistic. Many would not be repeatable.
The Anonymous Widower 