What would have happened if St Pancras station had been closed?

In 1980 the were serious proposals, and not for the first time, to close both Marylebone and St Pancras stations in London.

Jago Hazzard takes us through the plans and why they came to nothing. Before I go any further, let my suggest you like this video, follow him on YouTube and have a look at his Patreon page.

One thing he does not explain is how trains from the Midland Main Line would have reached Euston. There was no existing connection they could have used nor any obvious new one that could have been built.

I don't know what the London Amenity & Transport Association had in mind in 1980, but a post on RailUKforums tells us what British Rail had in mind when there were serious plans to close St Pancras in the 1960s:

The broad outline plan was that the Bedford Suburban services would be diverted from St. Pancras into Moorgate, much as it happened later with Thameslink. Main Line services were proposed to be diverted from Market Harborough over the now closed line to Northampton, and into Euston, with the lines involved electrified. It was also proposed at one point that the line between Market Harborough and Bedford would close, with Wellingborough and Kettering losing their rail services. 

For about four years the St. Pancras to Nottingham Newspaper traffic, and the remaining St. Pancras to Glasgow overnight service were diverted to run out of Euston over the Northampton to Market Harborough route, before reverting to St. Pancras around 1970 after the station at St. Pancras had been reprieved.

Several floors of the old station Hotel at St. Pancras, which had been in use as offices, were relocated elsewhere during the period when closure seemed certain. Even after it was reprieved there was a lot of vacant office space left empty, and walking about up there could be very spooky at times.

It's worth reading the whole thread there. Other contributors say Bedford to Market Harborough would have remained open or that only the line between Kettering (Glendon North Junction be be precise) and Market Harborough would have closed.

I like the idea, possible if the latter closure had taken place, of a regular semi-fast service from St Pancras to Leicester via Corby and Melton Mowbray.

1963: London's summer of the Hoverbus

Jago Hazzard looks back to a short-lived transport experiment that took place in London in the summer of 1963. From 1 July to 31 October, a hovercraft service operated on the Thames in London between Festival Pier at Waterloo and Tower Bridge.

The experiment was not a success and the Hoverbus's manufacturers, Denny, went out of business the following year.

But Jago is right: hovercraft were once seen as the future. Later in the Sixties, I can recall, you often got mini-hovercraft rides at more ambitious fetes.

But then, as Jonathan Meades once pointed out, the future happened briefly in 1969.

You can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.

East Brixton: A once and future station?

Opened in 1866, East Brixton was a station on the South London line – now part of the London Overground's Windrush Line – served by trains from London Victoria to London Bridge. 

All went well until the opening of Brixton Underground station opened in 1971, when it lost many of its passengers. Then a fire at the station in 1975 destroyed its buildings and it was closed by British Rail in January 1976.

Jago Hazzard tells us more about this history, looks for the scant remains of East Brixton station and discusses the possibility that it will be reopened. At present, the Windrush Line trains sail over Electric Avenue without stopping anywhere in Brixton.

You can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.

Why and how is the DLR being extended to Thamesmead?

Here's Jago Hazzard to explain. Real horrorshow, my droogs.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page. And why not subscribe to his YouTube channel?

The 19th-century granite trackway along Commercial Road

Commercial Road was constructed at the beginning of the 19th century to connect London's docks with the City.

As Jago Hazzard explains in this video, a smooth granite trackway was constructed along the road in 1828 or thereabouts to speed the flow of goods away from the docks.

When the trackway was taken up is even less clear, but in 1840 a conventional railway that ran parallel to Commercial Road was opened, reducing the need for it. The road, which was opened as a privately owned toll road, was taken into public ownership in the 1860s.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page. And why not subscribe to his YouTube channel? I know I do.

How Derby became a major railway centre

Jago Hazzard on George Hudson and formation of the Midland Railway.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page. And why not subscribe to his YouTube channel? I know I do.

Jago Hazzard celebrates the gothic history of St Pancras

Jago Hazzard posted this, his thousandth video, a couple of weeks ago. And he found a fitting subject for it.

Iain Sinclair once referred to "the bat-chewed pinnacles" of St Pancras, which struck me as exactly right. Old St Pancras church and its churchyard are well worth visiting if you have time to kill at the station. The Beatles went there on their Mad Day Out.

Jago is right to sound a little sceptical about the myth of the Hardy Tree though.

Explore the history of the Central Line with Jago Hazzard

Jago Hazzard explores sites and stations on the Central Line that are significant in its history. I, for one, shan't rest until I've visited Gants Hill.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page. And why not subscribe to his YouTube channel? I know I do.

Fulham Broadway station and some Stamford Bridge trivia

I liked John Rogers' video on Fulham so much that I've gone back there with Jago Hazzard.

He sets out the history of Fulham Broadway station on the London Underground. And, in passing, he gives us our Trivial Fact of the Day: the terraces at Stamford Bridge were built using spoil from the excavation of the Piccadilly Line.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page. And why not follow his YouTube channel? I know I do.

Jago Hazzard looks at 50 years of Hatton Cross

I shall have my laptop back tomorrow, but for tonight here's a video from Poldark extra turned railway vlogger Jago Hazzard.

It's about a tube station many of us have been through on the way to Heathrow, but where few of us have got off: Hatton Cross.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page. And why not follow his YouTube account? I know I do.

GWR's trial of a battery-powered train on the Greenford branch

This time Jago Hazzard is not looking at the railways' past but their future. He reports on GWR's trial of a battery-powered train on their Greenford branch in West London.

The results look encouraging and, as Jago says, this could be a cheap method of electrification for such lines.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page. And why not follow his YouTube account? I know I do.

London's lost underground lines - with a note on the wine cellar of the National Liberal Club

Jago Hazzard is our guide to a collection of lost lines, repurposed lines and abandoned oddments, some of them 50 miles out of London and deep in the Buckinghamshire countryside.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page and follow his YouTube account.

One scheme that never advanced far enough to carry trains was the Waterloo & Whitehall Railway, which:

was authorised in 1865 to construct a pneumatic railway (that is, one where trains are pushed though a tunnel by air pressure) from Great Scotland Yard to Waterloo station. The single cast iron tube, 3.89 m (12'9") in diameter, would have crossed the river by being laid in a ditch dredged in the bed of the Thames. 

Though work did start, a general financial crisis prevented additional capital being raised, and the work was abandoned in 1868, with the company being wound up in 1882. The trench excavated at the northern end is now the wine cellar of the National Liberal Club.

The rich history of Kensington Olympia station

Wikipedia gives the basics:

The station was originally opened in 1844 by the West London Railway but closed shortly afterwards. It reopened in 1862 and began catering for Great Western services the following year. In 1872 it became part of the Middle Circle train route that bypassed central London. 

The station was bombed during World War II and subsequently closed. It reopened in 1946 but the limited service to Clapham Junction was recommended for withdrawal in the 1960s Beeching Report. The main-line station was revitalised later in the decade as a terminus for national Motorail, and upgraded again in 1986 to serve a wider range of InterCity destinations. 

The station's Underground connection after World War II was limited to a shuttle service to and from Earl's Court.

But Jago Hazzard adds all the interesting details. Support his videos via his Patreon page.

The freight-only line under London that was never built

Jago Hazzard looks at the 1949 plan to build a freight-only railway under the Thames. Two routes were considered: one ran from Farringdon to Loughborough Junction; the other ran from Hither Green, went under the river at Greenwich and surfaced in the marshalling yards of West Ham and Plaistow.

Neither was built, and the decline of bulk freight and the Port of London meant that this proved to be the right decision.

You can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.

The surprisingly complicated history of Highbury and Islington

Jago Hazzard gives a thorough and entertaining history of this long-neglected, but now thriving, London station. I too have stood beside the Famous Cock and found that fragment of the original grand Victorian building.

The North London Railway's City terminus at Broad Street has disappeared into history, but in the early Eighties I was a regular user. 

The London Chess League matches, in which I played for the Richmond and Twickenham club, all took place at the nearby Bishopsgate Institute. When my game was over, I would catch a late train from Broad Street all the way home to Kew Gardens.

In case you don't believe me, here's the indicator board at Richmond in those days.

Anyway, you can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.

Jago Hazzard rides on London's cable car but no one else does

There's only one mode of public transport in London that's completely empty during the rush hour. Jago Hazzard has been to ride on it.

He finds it a fun day out, but little use as a form of public transport.

You can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.

Jago Hazzard on what remains of Crystal Palace High Level station

I've been interested in this station ever since I read an account of its decay - netting and all - in its last years of operation in one of the Forgotten Railways books.

Jago Hazzard takes us through the history of this "magnificent missing station", and shows us what remains of it today. (A surprising amount.)

There's just time for a reminder that my man Richard Jefferies was not quite the child of nature that critics often assume. He spent a portion of his boyhood living happily with relations at Crystal Palace, just after Paxton's great glass building had been re-erected there.

You can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.

Jago Hazzard on the failure of Ludgate Hill station

Ludgate Hill station? Wikipedia gives the basics and Jago's video gives you so much more:

Ludgate Hill was a railway station in the City of London that was opened on 1 June 1865 by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway as its City terminus. It was on Ludgate Viaduct (a railway viaduct) between Queen Victoria Street and Ludgate Hill, slightly north of St. Paul's station (now called Blackfriars station) on the site of the former Fleet Prison. 

North of Ludgate Hill station, Ludgate Viaduct continued to the Snow Hill tunnel to connect with the then recently opened Metropolitan Railway south of Farringdon station to enable main-line trains to run between north and south London.

Passenger services through the tunnel ended in 1916, after which services ran only the few hundred yards (metres) to Holborn Viaduct station which had opened in 1874. Ludgate Hill became little used because of its proximity to the Holborn Viaduct and St. Paul's stations, and on 3 March 1929 Ludgate Hill was closed. 

The platform buildings remained derelict until they were demolished in the 1960s but the island platform remained until 1974. Remains of the street-level buildings and traces of the platform and staircase lasted until the whole station area and viaduct were demolished in 1990.

It's remarkable how long the Snow Hill tunnels lay unused.

You can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.

Jago Hazzard on the complicated history of Turnham Green

When I lived in Kew (well, North Sheen) in the early 1980s, Piccadilly Line trains would stop at Turnham Green on Sundays, or at least for a part of them. There was a note to this effect on the London Transport Tube map.

So if I was coming back from a weekend in Market Harborough, I would change at Turnham Green, which added a little excitement to the journey. Would the train really stop?

You can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.

Lower Robert Street: A hidden way in London's West End

Jago Hazzard eschews (hem hem) his usual subject of railways and shows us instead a secret road in the West End.

To explain Lower Robert Street's existence and obscurity, he reveals the interesting history of the Adelphi district. 

Londonist has an article on The Adelphi Story and the district's Wikipedia entry lists the famous people who lived there.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page.