What’s Red and Lies Upside Down in the Gutter?
This is an old elephant joke from the 1960s and the answer is a dead bus.
It’s funny, but I’ve been on trains and planes that have broken down or developed faults, but I’ve never been on a bus that has suffered a similar fate.
Until today, that is!
A Dead Bus
As I was close to Turnpike Lane station, I took the Piccadilly Line to Manor House. This is one of the longest runs between stations on the tube and breaks the two-minute rule of calculating how long the journey will take. A good estimate of journey time is two minutes per station with five minutes for each change of line.
I’m not sure if it is unique, but Turnpike Lane still has the classic 1930s uplighters on the escalators. One place that still has them is Moscow, where London Underground installed all the original escalators. In Moscow, when I was there a few years ago, most of the escalators were still in wood, just like they used to be in London, until they were replaced after the King’s Cross fire.
A Walk Down Memory Lane
Or more correctly between Turnpike Lane and Wood Green stations on the Piccadilly Line.
I’d taken a 141 bus to Turnpike Lane from the end of my road and alighted opposite the station.
Turnpike Lane Tube Station
Or should I put the local name underneath which sounded like Turnpicky Larny. I wonder if it’s still used.
I walked down the west side of Wood Green High Road and the first place I remembered was the Marks and Spencer on the other side.
Marks and Spencer at Wood Green
I didn’t go in, but it certainly looked to be in a worse state than how I remember it from the 1960s, when it was one of their flagship stores. I visited it many times, as a bag carrier for my mother, when she used to do the food shopping, when she was working with my father in Wood Green.
Further up you can still see the remains of the old Wood Green Empire above the Halifax.
The Remains of the Wood Green Empire
I can remember going there once to see the pantomime. It may have been Babes in the Wood, with Ted Ray, but even if I hadn’t had the stroke, I wouldn’t be sure.
My father also claimed that he’d appeared on the stage there in a variety show. But at one time, I know he did print the programs and posters for the theatre, so perhaps he did a deal. Knowing him, that could have been possible.
The centre of Wood Green High Road used to be crossed by a railway bridge that carried the Palace Gates railway line to Palace Gates from Seven Sisters. At one time there was a station in the area called Noel Park and Wood Green, but although I can remember the bridge and trains running on the line, I can’t remember the station. To the south of the bridge there used to be a pub called the Alexandra, which was pulled down in the 1960s or just before to build Wood Green’s first supermarket. Now the whole area has been redeveloped as Wood Green Shopping City.
Wood Green Shopping City
Moving along towards Wood Green tube station, I passed what some refer to correctly as the Broadway, but I just remember it as the place where you caught the trolley buses. On the left there used to be a restaurant called the QS for Quick Service and one of the first burger bars. I can remember visiting both quite a few times with my mother. I can still remember and smell, the chef, Ally, turning the greasy burgers as he fried them.
On the corner opposite the tube station, there is a pub which is now called the Goose.
The Goose, Wood Green
I think the pub used to be called the Nag’s Head and it is part of a family tale. My father used to live with his mother over the print works in Station Road, which is just around the corner. One Sunday morning her dog, who was a renowned thief, arrived back with a large cooked joint of beef in his jaws. My grandmother, immediately washed such a prize present off and that was the family’s Sunday lunch. My father surmised that the chef in the Nag’s Head had put the cooked joint on the window sill of the kitchen at the back of the pub to cool down a bit and the dog just couldn’t resist.
I then crossed the road by the tube station to catch a 141 bus back home from where the trolley buses stopped.
Wood Green Tube Station
All of these stations from Cockfosters to Turnpike Lane are very much part of my childhood and I remember them all with affection.
A Disappointing Result at the Morgue
I went in hope to Chelski for the FA Cup match with Ipswich. I returned very disappointed, as it seemed that the Town players virtually gave up after thirty minutes.
Inside Stamford Bridge
Chelski may have an impressive stadium, but I wasn’t very impressed with the pitch and it certainly wasn’t up to the standard at Portman Road.
Considering that there were 41,000 people inside it was also very quiet.
I last went to Stamford Bridge in probably about 1963 to see Spurs play. In those days, you stood in an enormous terrace alongside the pitch, with the so-called Shed sticking up like a thumb to your left on the other side. There was also a lot more aggro about and Spurs and Chelsea still have a certain amount of bitterness between them.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the difficulty of getting to the ground. I took the train to Fulham Broadway to get there and coming home, I did what we did in the 1960s and walked to South Kensington. From there in the 1960s, I would have taken the Piccadilly Line to Oakwood. Yesterday, I just took it to Piccadilly Circus and got a bus from there all of the way to the stop by my house.
Tired Euston
Euston has hardly changed since it was rebuilt in the 1960s. The black marble inside the station has always made it a bit of a black hole and I’ll admit it used to be worse as you walked down the ramps to the trains. They seemed to have brightened up this area with perhaps just a few more lights and some new paint.
But it is in the Underground and the connections to it, that it is really lacking; from the inadequate escalators from the station and the rather dull tunnels connecting you to the Northern and Victoria lines. Compared to later stations like Liverpool Street, it is all very poor. It will look even more so, once King’s Cross and St. Pancras are finished.
Euston also needs to be properly connected to the Metropolitan and Circle lines, which run just in front of the station, by some form of proper people mover.
Perhaps in the future, all the Marylebone/Euston Road stations could be properly linked, so that passengers arriving at Marylebone and Euston could be quickly whisked to St.Pancras and King’s Cross for Paris, Brussels and the North East.
I think, I would ban cars and lorries from the route, put a travelator down each side, with trams and gardens in the middle and cafes and restaurants along the side.
ASLEF Put Their Marker Down for the Olympics
The various rail runions have never got on well and have always tried to see that they could get more out of owners, managers and ultimately taxpayers for as long as I can remember.
Today’s action by ASLEF was supposedly about triple pay and a day-off for working Boxing Day, in variance with an agreement they are reported to have signed, but was it also to show their power with the Olympics coming in 2012? They didn’t get the Danegeld this time and as millions of Londoners and tourists were seriously inconvenienced, I doubt they’ll get it if they try to do something similar about extra benefits for themselves during the games.
I was seriously inconvenienced today, as I had intended to get a Central Line train to Newbury Park for a friend to take me to the football at Ipswich. As I said earlier, the direct trains weren’t running. Instead I tried to take a 25 bus to Ilford, from where I would complete the journey on another bus.
But I was running seriously late for a pre-arranged pick-up time on a bus that would have had just a small bit of space for a couple of Snow White’s friends. All of the overcrowding could be put down to the non-running Central Line, as people had things like cases and bags of presents with them. So I abandoned the bus with some difficulty at Stratford and thought I’d get a bus home. The queues were enormous, as I suspect many had come to the interchange to get buses like the 25 to Oxford Circus. The shopping centre by the interchange was very busy too and it looked like things were getting worse rather than better.
I’d determined that I needed to get a 276 to Stoke Newington, but as that shared a stop with the 25, it would not have been a sensible proposition, so I walked back down West Ham Lane to the previous stop of the bus. Eventually, I got on a small single-decker bus after about a quarter of an hour, as that is the Sunday frequency. It then drove back through Stratford and the overcrowded stops and was probably carrying twice its legal capacity by Bow Church, where it started its meander towards Hackney.
It was then, that I got a text saying that the match at Ipswich had been called off due to a frozen pitch. So at least I was saved a long journey, even if my shorter one wasn’t much fun!
In the end I abandoned the 276 when it got to Mare Street in Hackney and went to look for another to get me back home.
I shall be interested to see how this story develops. ASLEF have seriously managed to annoy all of the shops in London, Transport for London and I suspect several million Londoners. At times, at Stratford, I felt some were going to seriously explode and that was one of the reasons, I walked away to look for a bus. I saw mothers with children getting distraught, as youths refused them access to buses with buggies, drivers and other staff were getting abuse and no-one was offering the disabled and the elderly the priority seats.
Still it was all good fun and practice for a man with dodgy eyesight and only one 100% hand. But the idea is to see if I can improve the parts of my body that don’t woek too well, by using them!
Am I Bothered?
Look at this picture of a Congestion Charge sign.
Congestion Charge Sign
And this parking ticket machine.
Parking Ticket Machine
But then look at this picture of the traffic as I approached the West End on one of the few means of transport still available to me, my feet.
Traffic in the West End
So am I bothered? Not in the least, as I can still walk, use buses, the Underground and other trains and where it is more convenient or a cost saving, I can even use a black cab!
Born 1967, Still Going Strong
I took this picture of the door plate on a Victoria Line train yesterday.
Victoria Line Train Door Plate
Note the date of 1967, which says that the train was built in that year.
Or it was originally intended to, although the plate on the other side of the carriage said 1972. In fact, on the train I took from King’s Cross to Highbury and Islington, there was a mixture of 1967s and 1972s. I doubt it matters, but I do like to see the age of my train!
It is rather sad, but all new trains now seem to be undated.
A Pointless Strike
The London Underground strike is totally pointless as it is trying to protect booking office staff, who because of the new ticketing systems, have little to do anyway.
Boris hohnson said this.
We need to take account of the fact that some ticket offices are now selling fewer than 10 tickets an hour. We need to liberate staff to get out on to the platforms and concourses where they can be of most use to the travelling public.
I’m afraid that this won’t be the last strike, where new technology is threatening to get rid of jobs or redeploy people.
Reflections on My Journey to Scotland
In my Modern Railways for October, which I bought in Doncaster, there was an heretic article by Chris Stokes, asking if we really needed HS2 or the High Speed Line to the North, which would go to just Birmingham at first. He described it as a vanity project.
Twelve months ago, I was a sceptic on whether we needed a High Speed Line to the North, mainly because I didn’t think it would do anything for anybody in East Anglia where I lived. If I needed to get to the North, I wanted a fast line from somewhere I could drive to easily like Peterborough.
But when it was announced that the route would be to Birmingham in the last days of the disastrous NuLabor experiment, I warmed to it a bit, although I did think it needed to go via Heathrow. I also thought very much that it was a Nimby’s charter.
But Chris’s article has now turned me back to very much a sceptic. Competition being what it is, his argument, that unless you virtually close down the West Coast and Chiltern Birmingham services, no-one will pay a premium to go from London to the Midland’s premier city. My son incidentally always goes by Virgin and has never thought about using Chiltern, as Euston is on the same Underground Line as where he lives.
Chris also argues, that the amount of First Class traffic will decrease due to austerity, good housekeeping and modern technology removing the need to travel. Some years ago, I installed a Management Information System in a company, which was web-friendly and even allowed the computer-phobic CEO to find out how the company was doing from any computer in the world. But also, the modern traveller will become First Class smart and book it when and where they need it. So if you think there is a premium market that saves a few minutes, forget it!
Put simply, a lawyer say going to Birmingham from London for the day, will choose his route and class dependent on what is best for his needs. Hopefully, when I move to London, it will be in walking distance of Canonbury. Who’s to say that in 2015, someone isn’t running an express to say Milton Keynes, Coventry and Birmingham from Stratford and East London on the North London Line and possibly the Primrose Hill Tunnel?
So what will happen to lines to the North, if we don’t build HS2 on schedule? We’ll get the usual whining, we always get when the investment is cut, but let’s look at the reality of what will happen!
We now have two good and pretty reliable and fast train lines from London to the North of England and Scotland. I was told on my trip to to Inverness that it should be possible to be some minutes under four hours from Edinburgh to London. This compares with a fastest journey now of about four hours twenty minutes, although Operation Peppercorn is aiming for the magic four hours flat for the fastest trains with a stop at Newcastle. Glasgow to London by comparison is now about four hours and twenty minutes. Many of my Scottish friends say this is fast enough to mean they won’t bother to fly to London, as airport checks and delays are getting worse and they can use phones and laptops on the trains.
If there is a problem with the two stiles of a possible ladder reaching up the United Kingdom, is that some of the interfaces to other lines are poor. But the basics and some of the rungs of the ladder are already in place.
There are a succession of large stations on both lines, such as Peterborough, Crewe, Doncaster, York and Newcastle, which can be developed into easy change stations to other places. As I said earlier, Doncaster isn’t bad and I think Peterborough is going to be developed and hopefully linked to the nearby shopping centre, but a lot of work needs to be done.
As I rode out of Edinburgh towards Inverness, I was impressed to see that electrification has started to link Edinburgh and Glasgow. As it is trains now run every fifteen minutes and most take just fifty to link Scotland’s two capitals. I suspect that this will become a very important link between the two fast lines, not only because of level cross-platform interchange from the South to local trains, but also because full electrification would allow fast direct trains from Glasgow to York and Edinburgh to Liverpool. Taking the first journey, my road atlas estimates that at four hours ten minutes, which compares with about four hours by train now with two changes and two different companies. I estimate that something like a Pendelino could do this journey direct with perhaps just a stop at Newcastle in about three hours fofty-five minutes. Who would back against, Peppercorn 2, squeezing more minutes out of the East Coast Line.
A similar situation could exist between Newcastle, York and Doncaster in the East and Manchester, Liverpool and Preston in the West, by expanding and electrifying the TransPennine network. Edinburgh to Sheffield is a journey that uses either a direct diesel service or a change to TranPennine at Newcastle. If TransPennine was a level change at Newcastle from one fast electric to another, there would be a much better service.
London too has a strong link across, although as I said Euston is not a welcoming station, but when you’ve got three world-class stations in Kings Cross, St. Pancras and Euston, as you will have, an innovative transport solution along Euston Road could surely be achieved. For a start let’s have a proper walking route a hundred metres or so north of Euston Road, with cafes and shops. But I’m certain that people should be encouraged to take the Metropolitan Line rather than the Victoria or Northern. Perhaps we need a moving walkway! Euston is supposed to be being developed and also be a terminal for HS2. If the latter does happen, there will be a lot of grief and opposition in that area of London. That development, whether it incorporates HS2 or not, will divert rail passengers to other routes, such as Chiltern for Birmingham and East Coast for Scotland.
There is also another link that might be brought into use, especially if Euston has to be partially closed to traffic, whilst it is rebuilt. That is the link to Manchester out of St. Pancras, which was used reasonably successfully as Operation Rio during the West Coast Main Line upgrade. I’ve always argued that this should have stayed in place, as it interfaces well with the A14 at Wellingborough for those going from East Anglia to the North Midlands,Sheffield and ultimately Manchester.
So what’s missing?
As I found going to Scunthorpe, it’s not what’s missing in this case, but what’s still here; Pacers. All of these links to the two stiles of the ladder must be upgraded to the standard of the diesel trains, I used in Scotland. And where possible, they should link easily to the fast services. I think that this will happen, but in some ways it depends on a strong electrification program to release suitable diesel units.
The real problem though is the lack of a full East-West route between say Peterborough and Birmingham or perhaps Milton Keynes and Stevenage or Cambridge. The Peterborough to Nuneaton route is being upgraded for frieght and passenger trains between the two towns take seventy-five minutes. So it would look like that route could be another rung in the ladder. The other route is the possible Oxford-Cambridge Line, which could be built, if funds were made avaialable.
I believe strongly that the two route ladder offers advantages over just building a speculative line from South to North, which would cost several times the amount needed to build the two route ladder.
For example, as electrification progresses, subsidiary lines like Birmingham to Bristol could be further improved, so that more and more people had less than two hour access to the main network. More rungs could be opened up, by any company that feel there was a niche to be filled.
So should HS2 be built? I think that one day it might be built, so we must safeguard the route, so that at some future date it could be added as another part of the network.
If Beeching made one big mistake it was not in making sure that abandoned rail lines were able to be rebuilt. How many lines hastily abandoned in the 1960s are needed now? But perhaps it would mean knocking down a hundred or so houses and a Tesco’s!
Welcome to Euston
I arrived at Euston on time at about a quarter to eight!
It was clean, neat and tidy, but really it is not the most welcoming of stations. Perhaps, it is if you are going a few miles in a taxi, but I was going to Kings Cross for a train to Cambridge. On a good day, I’d have walked and possibly had breakfast, in one of the few stations in the world, that can call itself a destination in its own right; St. Pancras. So I struggled into the Underground, luckily against the flow of people and took the one stop to King’s Cross. I thought about breakfast, but as I wasn’t really hungry I took the 8:45 to get home. It was virtually empty, so that was at least good!
The Anonymous Widower 