British Rail Network SouthEast-Holborn Viaduct 1990
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ธ.ค. 2019
- A BR NSE vid taken at Holborn Viaduct station on the morning of Friday 26 January 1990, the last day it was open for traffic (its actaul date of closure was Mon 29 Jan 90 but this station was always closed on a weekend). Plenty of Southern Region EPB's including those older ones still with compartments, signified by a red stripe above the doors. Also seen is a Thameslink train disappearing down into Snow Hill Tunnel. If you liked the video please subscribe to my channel, there are lots more transport & quirky vids to upload!
I remember how long the booking hall was. Lovely EPBs oh please take me back in a time machine!
Yes, i wish i could go back and film all the things i should have but didn't!
I claim to be the last intending passenger to miss his train departing from Holborn Viaduct.
Bad weather delayed my service on Midland Mainline. I charged through the ticket barrier at St. Pancras and ran and ran through tunnels, up stairs, down stairs........
All to no avail. I approached the entrance to find three or four senior Ticket Inspectors keen to get back to a warm office, pulling the concertina gates shut and locking up and leaving with na'er a backward glance.
I was more upset than p***ed off: very sad to have failed to say "Goodbye".
Interesting memories.... thank you for sharing......
1990 - life made sense then.
Yeah....i'll go along with that!......
Those 8 car trains are a tight fit.
It's a station I sadly never visited, I'd have been 26 years old when you filmed that. I loved the 2 and 4 EPBs, 2 HAPs and 2 SAPs along with, the already withdrawn by this time 4 SUBs.
I used to like the occasional mixed formations of a 4 VEP + 4EPB on the Guildford via Cobham line.
Yes, the Southern did all sorts of weird things. All their stock could couple to any other stock until the 319s came along! What we see here is just the remains of the station, it was bigger but work had already started on rebuilding the Thameslink route.
This oozes nostalgia, can even smell them units while watching this. The drivers at 7oaks used to let me do the brake test etc on these before returning to here or Vic on plt.4 in 80's as a teen. . . Nice to see no.5524 again, 'snapped' most of it passing Tonbridge on 30.4.92 with no's 6229/5281 and 5518 on thier way for scrap, hauled by 47339. . . Top vid again, oh the memories here from 70/80's!
I aim to please. Some of the EPB's on this vid were definatly on their last legs, some have the red strip to denote compartment stock (no buffets on these trains!).....
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Hehe indeed, and bizzarely enough, aged 5 (1977 to '83), i'd endlessly watch blue + blue/grey EPB's, the friday 'Redland goods train' reversing into the terminal (with them sounds of cluncks and squealing) and the evening 'up' mail, all from my bedroom window looking across the old goods yard at Bat & Ball. Train-mad for life from then on. So, as i didnt have model trains yet, i'd draw and cut-out paper units and loco's i invented and line them up to play trains, one of which i remember inventing an EPB type unit with red strips for a buffet!! So it was kinda nice they got em in 1990's lol. . as for stone trains in the future for me, blimey!
@@djtrainspotter3079 I ended up driving those very stone trains you mention although not on the Southern. But have worked loads of stone trains not to mention ballast trains although they tended to involve a lot of sleeping!
My commute station when I first started work - I forgotten just how dirty and old these trains were (and the permanent condensation on the windows!) - it was like going forward in time 50 years when we eventually were switched to Thameslink services.
It looks like it had been a few years since they last saw the inside of a works!
I can smell those musty seats now. As an enthusiast I miss the slammers. As a commuter, I'd much rather a 375 (or 395) than a VEP or even CEP.
Ditto !
I used to live in Croydon and the slam-door express trains were really very comfortable. However, the safety problems and the lack of wheelchair accessibility are the reasons they were done away with.
@@IndigoJo the CIGs and CEPs weren't too bad, but all the ones with 3+2 seating and leaky/draughty doors to every bay were hideous for commuting.
The general poor ambiance, lack of access between cars on suburban units, and their age all contributed to their demise, but yes it was the lack of chassis over-ride protection was the final nail in their coffin.
This takes me back. I used to work in an office building a few yards along from this station, but did not have much occasion to use it since my home station was Lewisham. Still very occasionally I took a train that stopped at Peckham and waited for a train from Victoria.
I did Holborn Viaduct in and out once, to ride over Blackfriars Bridge and sample the station before closure. I know many lament the passing of the slammers, but back then a 4EPB was about as low as you could go. Smelly seats. Dirty and oil everywhere. Slow. Chased lovely loco hauled instead. Then when slammers became endangered, everyone said how wonderful they were. Odd, we humans. Thanks for recording these scenes.
Interesting memories... I had some storming runs on the EPBs, from Woolwich to Gravesend back in the 1980s!
Notch 2 they could go 20 mph downhill. 😂
Brilliant - for some reason I find this bit of railway utterly fascinating. Particularly as there used to be an intermediate station at Ludgate Hill. Blackfriars is visible in the distance where the trains pass underneath an office building. Would make an excellent prototype for a model railway.
All gone now though, the whole area has been rebuilt. But i imagine the 1960s office block is still there, they always see to survive!
Soi Buakhao amazingly the Snow Hill Lines now go under Ludgate Hill rather than over it.
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus I worked in that office block that spans the track for a few years around the end of the 80s and early 90s. It is indeed still there though was empty for a number of years until Blackfriars station was rebuilt a few years ago, when the lower part of the building was incorporated into the structure of the station itself.
@@001krs The whole area around there has been rebuilt quite a lot since i filmed this and no sign of Holborn Viaduct platform area exists now. I'm glad i filmed what i did, happy days.......
WoW great memories of comutting from Beckenham to Holborn Viaduct from the mid seventies until closing, also witnessed the removal of the Ludgate bridge
I'm pleased you like the vid. It's always pleasing that others enjoy things i filmed just because it was what i was (still am) interested in! Plus now, 30 years later it's nice to look back to how things were.
Nothing like the sound of classic motor whine and thumping air compressors, like in the slam-door EMU stock.
Plenty of heavy industrial sounds in those days. Today it is all digital whizz-bangs.....
Fantastic video. As the first unit leaves you can hear a kind of creaking sound from the SR unit which I haven't heard in 25 years.
These old Southern units had a fair bit of charachter!
Excellent. In B R days there was an Area Manager located at Holborn. I walked through the tunnel shortly before track was laid. Thanks again, great memories.
That must have been quite an experience, did you take photos?
Soi Buakhao sadly not. I was working at South Eastern offices at Beckenham D M O from 1974. In readiness for the tunnel to open I, along with local p way and cable and track inspector walked through. No orange vests in those days. Walking past what would become Smithfield sidings the rats where as big as cats. Apparently their daily feed was on slops from market above. Again sadly I never kept the yellow signalling notice issued for this work or when London Bridge new box as it was then took over Charing Cross to Hither Green. I was in the Rules section and we had all signalling diagrams for every box on the South East. Wonderful days under B R, also workers who had an intimate knowledge of the railway. Thanks and regards. S.
Great video - from a time when EPBs were the order of the day! ...And 319s were the new kids on the block ;-)
Yes, funny to think now they were only a couple of yaers old then, now they're all gone! Well, some are working in the north and others are being converted to bi-modes which in itself is a Southern Region thing, they had class 73 & 74 bi-modes years ago!
Holborn Viaduct had a weirdly narrow platform, a Victorian timepiece surrounded by 60s architecture. The compartment stock in the video must have been some of the last on the network. Thanks for the memories.
Yes, those EPBs i think were. Some of the LTS 302s ended their days the same with a red stripe, also around this time.
The red strip was applied after there had been a couple of attacks on women travelling along in the "Doggy Booth" compartments,they put two off these carriages together with two driver motor coaches and only used then for rush hour traffic
We had slam doors in Bournemouth up until 2006 I think. Kind of miss them.
I think they were some of the last on the main line. Odd branch lines kept slam doors for a few more years but under special dispensation from the safelty authorities.
Holborn Viaduct had a rather eclectic set of services, both South Eastern & South Central destinations.
There was something about them ol' SR EMU's, the modern joyless, soulless, plastic rubbish today just does not come close.
Yes, the older stock certainly had charachter.....
Great video! Good that you captured a moment in history, especially, as you say, most of this has disappeared or built over. Who'd have thought back then that you'd be able to allow anyone in the World the chance to watch what you filmed that day!! Thanks for the memories - I was an apprentice at Slade Green in the 70s, working on EPB units! I, too, managed to walk through Snow Hill tunnel before it opened for trains because I worked for BR. Happy days. 👍
Yes, when i filmed this computers were for companies to do pay-rolls ect. No internet and mobile phones that did exist were the size of house bricks!
Soi Buakhao So what made you film this then? Bearing in mind internet let alone TH-cam weren’t available back then
Yep, ain't that the truth! Watching it from my couch in Auckland, New Zealand. Thanks for posting. Brings back loads of memories!
@@ChilternTransportProductions I filmed things that interested me, things i grew up with and were due for replacement. I have a lifelong interest in bues, tubes and trains as my father was into railways, we lived backing on to a railway, we had no car so travelled everywhere by public transport and he encouraged me to film all this stuff. And i'm still at it! TH-cam has given me a reason to go out filming again, and camera's are so small now compared to the large VHS tape camera i used to use, taking one out with you is no hassle!
Holborn Viaduct, the bridge itself, not the station, is my favourite bridge in London
What a wonderful video! I was there at the end for the last scheduled train out of HV (though there was a railtour out a few mins later if I remember correctly).
I think i was late turn on the Underground this day but at least i got these shots!
There were a lot of non-refurbished SR Bulleid Designed Class 415 4-EPB electric units carrying the 1980s standard blue & grey livery at the time.
Those lovely slammers ! In proper BR livery ! So much better than the toy child like colour schemes, and trains of today.
Happy days , now long past....enjoy the nostalgia!
Seats were better back then too.
@@petercdowney Too true! These EPBs seats you really sunk into, unlike todays class 700 seats, not much better than a lump of wood!
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Maybe I should be running these railways!
There'll be better seats for sure under my watch!
I might even use the same seat moquette used by Network SouthEast! I remember seeing that moquette a lot during my early years.
@@petercdowney Now you're talking! NSE was really on the ball and totally changed travel in the south east, happy days.......
I could swear I saw this vid on here already, years back.
I imagine there's not much left to tell you a station once existed there now.....
Unlikely, this film has never been released in the public domain before. Others of course may well have taken video here and uploaded it?......
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus I've found it th-cam.com/video/DX5CV-C07yI/w-d-xo.html
I remember Holborn Viaduct.
Have you got any footage from Primrose Hill/Broad Street Stations? Or any from the Croxley Green Branches
None from Primrose Hill or Croxley but i did get the last night of Broad Street, see it here th-cam.com/video/_MJ5AAo4vrk/w-d-xo.html, enjoy!
Is this now City Thameslink with the Snow Hill tunnel? Used to commute via here back in the day.
Thameslink is now in tunnel here, yes.
Great video such memories. What is the double track line running besides the station can't find it on my 1970s atlas? Thanks.
That is the Thameslink line through Snow Hill tunnel. By 1970 it had been closed so would not be there! It was re-opened in 1988 and today the whole area has been rebuilt and realligned.
Thameslink now descends immediately after Blackfriars (just visible in the distance). It now drops under Ludgate Hill (the street) rather than over it on the bridge you can see just a few feet away. Removing that bridge restored the famous view looking up Ludgate Hill to St.Pauls Cathedral. So the railway is still there (30 feet lower) but invisible under new buildings.
@@Crepello100 Yes, i remember the bridge that has been removed. I have bus vids with it in the background.
Can I ask what line this was then? If Thameslink are heading towards Farringdon on the right what trains were these?
The Thameslink service is on the right, going into the Snow Hill tunnel towards Farringdon. The other way is towards Blackfriars. Where i am standing is a city terminus, Holborn Viaduct. It was larger than what we see here as some of the station had already been demolished. It was at one time a grand victorian affair by the Luftwaffe put paid to that! Southern Region services to places various on the South Eastern Division ran to/from here (possibly some on the South Central Division as well). It was quite a unusual station in that it was one of the few main line railways to get into the actual City of London, most were barred from entering but this line sneaked in just! After it closed the Thameslink line was put in tunnel all the way to Blackfriars and the bridge across Ludgate Hill was removed and a new City Thameslink station was opened on Ludgate Hill right by the road junction to Farringdon Street.
Looking towards the station, on the right hand side is a white fence - there used to be more tracks on the other side of this. www.disused-stations.org.uk/h/holborn_viaduct/index.shtml
I never used this station, but I did use Broad Street which closed in 1986, I think.
Did not realise there was low-level and terminus versions of Holborn Viaduct, was the original plan for the latter to always be a terminus with a hotel or did the East Kent Railway / LCDR have other plans in mind prior to their financial problems?
Holborn Viaduct itself was always a terminus, much to the disgust to the rulers of the City of London who stopped most railways and tramways from entering the ancient city. The low level lines was always there to connect to the Metropolitan, Great Northern and Midland Railway lines.....lots of freight passed through until the late 60s when BR closed the line, it's passenger service having long since stopped.
Though the rulers of the City of London would not likely approve of the following had it come to pass. From my limited perspective it would seem hypothetically speaking based on the Rail Map online and historical NLS Map of the area, Holborn Viaduct could at best have potentially ran to Bishopsgate beyond via Barbican (albeit after a bit of a tight squeeze at Smithfield and St Barts) and Broad Street (albeit by way of a westward expansion of the station) or follow a similar route but avoid Broad Street altogether.
The latter would have allowed the route after Barbican from Holborn Viaduct to quickly run outside of the City of London area onwards to Bishopsgate past Sutton Way / Whitecross Street (the latter apparently being an area where another station was historically planned for a 1880-1890s Regents Canal Railway scheme part of which was to travel onto the Midland Railway and GNR from City Road as well as another proposal to the northeast of London towards Waltham Abbey - presumably from Highgate Road station).
Never understood why City Thameslink station didn't get the name Holborn Viaduct as that's where it is (even if most trains, for some reason, stop at the Ludgate Hill end, despite it being closest to Blackfriars).
How come they never gangwayed between the carriages on these trains? I know it's part of their unique character, but just always wondered why the didn't connect the cars up for passengers to walk through.
Great video!
Not much point really, as built each coach was individual compartments with 6 a side seating! They were for high capacity, short communter routes where the idea was to pack 'em in in the peaks......
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Oh right, I'm trying to picture that, so they really were quite unique then if a bit claustrophobic feeling if I'm picturing it correctly from what you're saying.
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Not all the carriages were like that though, there were some open saloons too. If I recall correctly the saloons were divided in two, with one for smoking. The first class compartments had access to a toilet too.
no more people getting off before the train stops nowadays (except maybe the bakerloo line) and soon no more slam doors
Yes, a whole way of train travle is ending. As i grew up most trains (apart from the Underground) had slam doors and it was quite normal to open them before the train stopped.
Yes, and the menace that was! Got clouted by an opening door a couple of times and do not miss them.
@@KevinRBoyd I learnt at a young age to keep well clear on the platform edge, my family never had a car until 1981 and we used public transport everywhere!
where are those iconic trains gone
Into the scrapyard.....the EPBs had disappeared by the mid 90s....
My London Terminus from 1973-79 when I worked in Bedford Row, and travelled on the Sidcup line via Lewisham, Nunhead and Loughborough Junction.
If i remember rightly by the 1970s wasn't it peak hours only at this station?
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus No, there was a very reduced service outside peak hours but it was never "peak hours only" in the 1970s and early 80s when I used it for my commute to Holborn from Tulse Hill.
@@peterdavy6110 Thanks for that, i had it in my head it was peaks only. But then again i never lived on the Southern, and it was around 30 years ago!!!!
Wasn't that a rush hour only service?
Doesn't Birmingham also have a Snow Hill tunnel?
trainrover yep, also reopened in the 1980s coincidentally
City Thames Link!!
It was built in the area somewhere but not on this site.
@@SoiBuakhaoRoutemasterbus Pretty much next door, and CTL has an entrance in the same place or very close to where the old station was on Holborn Viaduct (the street).
As a brighton trainman I used to guard the thameslink 319 s to Farringdon before DOO was pushed down to gatwick. So that coulda been me on the back of the Tonka Toy. Lovely to see, epb s were great
I rode with a Thameslink driver back in 1900s time and is was DOO to Gatwick. Those 319s had a fair turn of speed, he's on the MML line thrashing HSTs and Meridans....
now this section is just a boring Thameslink service
And in tunnel!
Whos playing WD LEGION
wow…all with a video camera that probably weighed three to four kilos.
i can see why they stopped with compartments, it’s a danger to passengers to be able to open the doors while the train is still moving even if it’s stopping at the station. i know people are used to riding in them, but even so they were still a danger that could be used for getting money through lawsuits and false claims of dangerous actions by crews
I don't recall much of that sort of thing happening back then. Most BR stock was slam door stock when i grew up, people were used to them, it's how life was!
That wasn't the problem, there were lots of non compartment stock with slam doors too. The problem was that the compartments in these units had no corridor or links to the rest of the carriage. So you would be trapped in it while the train moving. Not good for women travelling alone.
People were warned to stay back from the side of the platform because everyone knew that people would be opening doors the moment the train came into the platform and leaving before it had fully stopped. I once heard a guy on the radio saying that his guide dog had been put out of action by being whacked about the head with a train door.
@@hollyhamilton3319 no, it’s a way of seeing it as being what it was. my being a Yank doesn’t change that it was dangerous even if you Brits accepted it as being alright.
@@joegrey9807 that sounds like a huge issue after dark, criminals could easily rob, rape, or murder and get away with it
EPB's OR NOT EPB's - LOOK AGAIN !!!
Some of those "EPB's" are NOT EPB's, but HAP's, with toilets & 1st class (2:18) + Express gear ratio NOT Suburban !!! Further these "Slam door" units often reached 300,000+ miles BETWEEN FAULTS. A feat not achieved by ANY post BR built train. None of which have yet surpassed 150,000 miles between faults !!! Indeed slam door stock was far "Greener" and cheaper to operate than ANY Post BR built design. BR(SR) "Slam Door" EMU's had only ONE competitor in the WORLD that achieved such high reliability rates of 300,000+ miles between faults, & they were/are a number of Japanese EMU types.
Further it was the Southern Railways 1933 London-Brighton 3rd Rail mainline Electrification, that introduced 4 Aspect signalling (to the World), with 2 minute headways, and regular interval working, that resulted in a 150% increase in passenger numbers within a year. As a result a number of overseas railways, rushed to Britain to see "the impossible". The Japanese National Railways (JNR) & some Japanese Private Railways being those to make major in depth studies of how this was all possible. And one of the things they learnt was "DO NOT over engineer the rolling stock if you want to make a profit. A concept totally forgotten by the Post BR "Franchised madness". Hence train fares in Britain are now some of the most expensive in the WORLD !!!!
THE NECESSITY OF SLAM DOORS !!!
Why did the Southern stick with slam doors when even the LMS & LNER had begun building EMU's with Sliding doors before WW2? Answer: Because 10 Slam Doors per suburban coach side, allows over 500 people to detrain & retrain from an 8-car formation in less than 30 seconds. And 30 second station stop allowances were necessary if you had trains arriving at 2 minute intervals, themselves necessary in the London Suburban area during rush hours. So on today's idiotic Franchised network, using suburban units with only two double sets of sliding doors per coach side, ONE minute (minimum) is needed at station stops. Meaning suburban journey times are now longer than they were in 1946.
And as many Railway Companies have discovered, sliding doors on densely used commuter networks means a serious increase in door faults which itself causes more delays to trains. And in Britain this problem is made worse by the fact that the "Train OWNING" Franchises no longer allow the Driver, who works for a "Train OPERATING" Franchise to touch anything except the driving controls !!!! So today's Drivers (in Britain) are no longer trained on "faults" or any of the trains equipment, resulting in yet more delays and a huge increase in operating costs. As there are Financial penalties "for every minutes" delay between the "Franchises" & Network Rail which is of course Government owned !!!!!
I can travel from Narbonne in France to Lisbon in Portugal by train, for half the price of a London to Manchester train ticket !!!
It wasn’t the case that slam door trains were dangerous….it was the case of how stupid and thick the human race can be….one person jumped out of the train before it stopped and gained at least 5 seconds….wow what a time saver.
Back in the day, the passengers would be passing the driver before the train had come to a halt! Can't remember any deaths though, it was the way people were brought up then, most buses used to have open platforms, and plenty of us have been off the bus before it had stopped!