The thumbnail of an old slam door train had me reaching for my inhaler. I used to commute on them in the late 80's and always wondered why I got home feeling wheezy. It wasn't until years later I discovered the seats were stuffed with horsehair and as someone allergic to horses this probably wasn't the best thing to sit on for 50 minutes every evening.
Far more comfortable and less sweaty than modern foam. Underground seats were also horsehair but supply would be a problem today with the lack of longer haired horses around. It is cheaper to maintain as doesn't need replacing when becomes compacted like foam, just remove, wash, fluff up and put back. Maybe a new market for all that hair on hairdressers floors.
As a plane-spotting child, I used to enjoy the great adventure of catching the 37 bus from Clapham Junction to Hounslow Bus Garage, where I (or sometimes "we", depending on whether I could persuade any mates to join me) would catch the 111 to the airport. There was nothing better than tucking into some Marmite sandwiches on the roof of the Queen's Building whilst inhaling lungfulls of jet fuel fumes as jets screamed all around you. It does seem incredulous though that I was able to do this between the ages of about 9 and 13 without being accompanied by an adult!
@@jonharbour9166 Or the A1 Express Bus from Hounslow West. I didn't use it because I think it wasn't covered by Red Rover tickets and had more expensive fares than the 82.
I did the Green Line 727 bus from Crawley to Heathrow, for much the same reason as you, back in the mid 70s, aged about 13 upto 16..Would a kid be allowed to do something like that now?
I travelled to Dublin in 1967, we checked in at the West London Air Terminal, our luggage was put in a special trailer attached to a special type of Routemaster Bus with a big engine and high speed axle, and we travelled at high speed to London Airport, (not known as Heathrow then), and were transferred, along with our cases, onto a BEA Vickers Vanguard, (four engine turbo prop, fantastic aeroplane, like the Viscount that preceded it, what a sound), and landed at Dublin.
Vanguards and Viscounts used to fly over my house daily back then. Being 6 miles from Gatwick and under the flightpath meant I became interested in planes ! The sound of those props overhead was brilliant.
@@nigelarmstrong252 Yes, great sounds. Rolls Royce Dart on the Viscount and I think Tyne on the Vanguard. Viscounts lasted until the 'nineties out of Southend, and some Vanguards carried on after being converted to cargo 'planes and renamed the Merchantman.
I worked at WLAT from 78 to 80. I don't recall much other than the two old buskers at Gloucester Rd tube station (one with a banjo) and the BA staff social club where we had a drink (or two) most lunchtimes. It's now an unremarkable Sainsbury's.
Thank you for pointing out that air travel used to be expensive! People love to post pictures from the olden days, showing how great flying used to be and how well air passengers dressed. Sure. But that was before airlines were created whose explicit goal it is to make flying affordable for everyone. Even to those with limited financial means. And due to this competition, the legacy airlines (such as BA) had to respond likewise.
The tube is a dreadful means of getting to Heathrow, with no luggage space. I lived in Croydon for 4 years (I survived the experience) and much preferred using Gatwick than Heathrow because a proper train was used, with luggage space. The new Heathrow Express is essentially a commuter train, with little luggage space for large suitcases. The _HE_ website suggests: "Leave your luggage in the ample racks near the doors" with a picture of a tiny rack, with a tiny lightweight case being lifted onto it. What a p155-take. I want to be able to keep my bags where I can see them, and close to me. I used to travel HuntingdonLeeds quite a bit in the '70s, and when HST came in the Mk3 coaches were perfect for the traveller - with luggage space between seats and overhead racks deep enough to take my 65l rucksack. The modern coaches on the west coast line, which I use every few weeks, is dreadful if you have cases. Modern trains revolve around commuters, not travellers, and it is mainly travellers who are going to the airport.
Another interesting video. Prior to the rail connections, for a while, I think there was a fleet of Routemaster buses painted silver and had luggage trailers. These were used to convey air passengers from central London to Heathrow - a curious way to start a journey by air.
I remember the West London Air Terminal with its branded buses with a little luggage trailer on the back. But when you say they were painted silver, are you getting them confused with the ordinary Routemaster buses that were painted silver for the Queen's silver jubilee in 1977?
A line to Feltham and Victoria makes so much sense in terms of the amount of additional track needed. It would also provide an automatic link to the Gatwick Express. In the fullness of time no doubt an inter-airport shuttle could be run. So of course it was decided to build a line for passengers with luggage that uses the smallest loading gauge and doesn't link up to any other airport.
Sadly the decision to build the Heathrow Extension to the tube loading gauge rather than the SSL was made in a spirit of penny-pinching in an era of rapidly-increasing costs...I seem to remember an LT high-up at the time saying it was a short-sighted decision he regretted,but otherwise the financial plug would have been pulled....
@@nickbarber2080 I would argue that the failure to build the Heathrow Extension to Sub-Surface Standards was more costly in the long-term. Especially when it ultimately meant that the Heathrow Express & Elizabeth Line had to be built later down the line. Just goes to show the dangers of under-investing in Transport Infrastructure.
@@nickbarber2080 Shows how poor they were back in those days of presenting cost benifits. Build a tiny railway or a full size railway that ultmately carried more people so fewer trains and staff were needed. Full size trains running round the north or south side of the Circle Line would have been much more useful. I suppose reinstating the disused junction at Hammersmith would have been out of the question by then. How much better would a full size Victoria line be than a tube line?
@@kevinrayner5812 Had they built the Victoria Line to accommodate Full-Sized Trains, it would have been possible to extend the line to additional places in South London such as Herne Hill. Instead we will have to build Crossrail 2 to deal with increased demand.
I well remember when the Heefrow express started but was not yet completed we were bussed out to a field where there was a wooden stand built beside a railway track. A posh new train arrived and we were whisked into Paddington in jig time. The trip cost just £5 and I loved it.
I am surprised that you did not mention the Staines and West Drayton Railway. Even though the tracks have been lifted, most of the alignment survives and it runs almost right up the back of the Airport. There have been proposals to re-open this route as a link to the Airport from the south. Maybe this would have been used in the Victoria to London Airport proposal.
The A1 non stop bus continued from Hounslow West even after the line's extension to Hatton Cross opened in 1975. It was finally withdrawn in late 1977, when the further extension into the airport opened.
Enlightening to hear about the old city check-in method of flying. I was in Hong Kong in 1997 and it was how they did things. Very civilised. Put your bag in in the morning, wander around sightseeing then jump on the train for your plane in the afternoon.
For the future their is also the "Heathrow Southern Railway" project, which is the latest idea to make use of the rail platform space that was built into T5 when it was constructive. So a lot of long term planning was put into the design of T5, but not a lot has happened since.
I remember checking in at both the British Airways and British Caledonia desks based in Victoria then getting a train to Gatwick in the 80s. I think TWA was in Kensington. But yes that huge BA building behind Victoria station was there until the late 80s if I recall? What memories😊
Amusing to see the efforts to tart up the slam-door sets shown at the start and also here 2:32 by painting "go faster" stripes on them. A favourite ploy used by some rail administrations to make older trains look "modern and dynamic". Go-faster stripes were also popular on some motor vehicles which in practice could definitely not go faster!
Remember I teased that I had a sort of a personal connection to the Piccadilly Line link to Heathrow? It's actually more a... missed connection. Here's the story... the story of how a suitcase saved the lives of myself and my mother. It was the year after my 18th birthday. My mother was an attorney (we're Yanks, so it's just "attorney", we don't do the separate barrister/solicitor thing you Brits do) and making... reasonably good money, comparatively speaking (nothing like you'd see on the telly, mind, but it spends nonetheless). Enough so that we could afford to travel internationally for about two weeks, about twice a year or so. This was our second international trip. The first had been to London, sometime in early 2004, and the second in mid-2004, around certain nearby parts of the UK. This was a... somewhat expanded version of that second trip, going to Brighton and a few other spots in Britain proper, up into Edinburgh, and then off into Continental Europe, where we went on a bus tour of southern Italy and spent some time in Paris as well, as I recall, before returning to London on our way back home. Well, to make a long story short, we had already sent home two very large cardboard boxes of souvenirs at... quite considerable expense, especially considering that the exchange rate was almost two USD to a Pound Sterling, at the time (it was actually about $1.80-1.85 to £1 depending on the day, but we were not mathematicians and so just mentally doubled the cost of everything). For the record, true to form, UPS not only charged us a genuinely exorbitant sum for the effort, but smashed everything to bits -- and indignantly refused to cover the damages. But, that's beside the point... we actually had _such_ an out-of-control trinket collection habit, that even after all of that, we still wound up literally buying a spare suitcase off a London street vendor simply to house all the stuff we couldn't fit into the rather prodigiously American sized luggage we'd brought with us already. We were to fly out of London at Heathrow, of course (otherwise, this story being here would make precious little sense, if any), at somewhere around 10am. Mind you, I am autistic (Asperger's), and I also do NOT suffer mornings well at all. So, it was a bright and early Thursday morning in July, likely just about half past 8am, and I was utterly miserable, and I was not in the least bit shy about making sure the entire lobby of our hotel knew that as my mother tried to both shut me up and check us out of the place, at which she was far more effective (predictably) at the latter, than the former. I don't remember exactly why, but we were held up waiting for... something, and between me channeling my inner pester superpowers like Nermal from _Garfield_ in the Sunday Funnies, and the kind and gentle auditory ministrations of the hotel concierge (who no doubt simply wanted my fat American terror self out of his lobby absolutely as fast as humanly possible, and could someone kindly fetch him a cuppa for his nerves afterwards, please), my mother was eventually persuaded that, instead of hoofing it through the Underground as we'd originally planned, we'd be better off taking one of London's famous Black Cabs. Well, as it were, as we were rushing through Heathrow at breakneck pace (as my mother always insisted), with me desperately trying to catch my breath on a particularly lengthy escalator, Mom pointed to a television feed on a screen just above us. I was somehow more interested in trying to shove oxygen into the near-vacuum that my lungs were currently entertaining, but she was insistent. It was a news feed, and someone had just blown up a double-decker bus... it turns out that, by sheer coincidence, our flight home was on 7 July 2005, the day of the infamous London Tube Bombings. We later worked out that, had we taken the Tube as we'd planned, we'd almost certainly have been in Kings Cross St Pancras just in time to, erm, quite literally have had a blast of it. We would've died in that explosion. For the record... Mom came down with some chronic non-terminal illnesses in the summer and fall of 2007 and is now badly disabled because of them. My autism turned out to be disabling in its own way, and although I graduated college (you'd call it Uni, over there Across the Pond) in 2009, I began drawing what you'd call a disability pension within a year after, having applied not long before being granted it. I'm 38 now, just turned it a few days ago, and I now live some three miles (a bit less than 5km) from Mom, in a tiny apartment (flat) in a tiny town in the Southern United States where there's nothing of importance, nothing to do, and I absolutely hate it (but can't afford better... alas, my heart will forever pine for a flat in London). I still have the suitcase, although it rather sadly hasn't seen much use since. That said, whenever I pass it and I have the opportunity to remember, I stop and give it a smile. After all, it did save our lives once.
London - By the 1930s it was understood that for an airport to be successful it needed good transport links. Melbourne - Plan for the first airport rail link, taking passengers 20km in the wrong direction to only gain 5km before changing trains, delayed until at least 2033.
I grew up in Croydon and the Gatwick Express for most of the time of British Rail was an Intercity train, using class 73 locomotives and (I believe) Mk2 carriages with a GLV at the other end. After those trains got long in the tooth they were replaced with EMUs and there were three different classes of EMU in a few years.
I was on the tube today - a rare occurrence these days and thanks to your videos I spotted so much more detail along my journey. Do keep up the good work!
I was only vaguely aware of Heathrow shuttle buses from diecast toys of the real thing, and vestiges of the old booking in facilities in the 1970s. Impossible to imagine modern traffic levels permitting such a timetable.
Imperial Airways began to tout Fairey's test field at 'Heath Row' in the 1930s as a replacement for Croydon, Heston and Northolt, with longer runways to rival those at Tempelhof and Schiphol. The Great Western offered to build a spur from Hayes into a central terminal area, which would have left the main line sooner than the branch laid years later from Airport Jc. AFAIK this was the first scheme for an LHR rail connection. In the 1970s there was some talk of a triangular junction between Feltham and Ashford (Middlesex) in the Bedfont area, enabling trains from Waterloo to run through the proposed Terminal 4 to the central area, plus services from Staines and points to the south west. But all plans for a southern 'Airtrack' approach to LHR have been stymied by the plethora of level crossings between Richmond and Wandsworth, while using the Hounslow loop would lengthen the journey time. Neither has the chord at Airport Jc which would facilitate trains from Reading and Slough to LHR been installed. The Elizabeth line ignores the existence of the world's busiest international airport.
The Great Western was way ahead of British Railways which always seemed rather lukewarm about planning to serve Heathrow when there was more free space and it would have been easier to do. I suppose the West London Air Terminal didn't help. Having lived in Hampshire and Oxfordshire, the idea of going all the way into Central London, then wiggling over to Gloucester Road, then a bus to the airport, boggles the mind. Railair isn't great, but it's way better than that ... as is driving there directly (or being driven) if you can afford the parking/taxi. But always hankered to westward and southward rail connections.
I distinctly remember my days of 73 bashing on the Gatwick Expresses that BA & American Airlines allowed passengers to check their luggage in at Victoria station before catching the train.The luggage was carried in the. MLV that formed part of the train
Imagine if they had built both the branch from Hayes and Harlington **and** from Feltham as one continuous through-running rail service... I'm a bit of a dreamer, me.
I've done Heathrow to Croydon in as little as 70 mins, Admittedly it was late night and all the connections fit perfectly timewise (Tube to Hatton X, bus 90/285/490 to Feltham, - South western railway to Clapham and then Southern to East Croydon.) National Rail suggests taking Elizabeth line to Farringdon and then Thameslink. Whilst this is the most convenient route, especially if you have lots of luggage, it takes longer, sometimes much longer if there are cancellations.
It's always interesting to read about these type of projects. By that I mean projects which everyone knows are essential, but take 20 years to build, and even then end up being sub-optimal.
One of the reasons it never took off (SWIDT?) is the large number of Level Crossings on the "Windsor Lines" between Clapham Junction and Feltham. An extra 4-6 trains per hour in each direction would mean the barriers would only be open to road traffic at those crossings for a few minutes in total each hour. Now like any train nerd, I always hope the barriers will come down in front of me if driving over a level crossing... but if it happens every 2-3 minutes the novelty might wear off!
I remember , as a boy, checking in for a flight at what I think was still BOAC or it might have just become BA at their offices within walking distance of Victoria Train Station ( I think the NAO uses the building now).They had a check-in desk just like the airport and no queues (unlike the airport) and afterwards you would sit around and wait for a complimentary coach to drive you through to Heathrow. As some who lived in Beckenham at the time , it was really convenient . I wish they did it today , it was a heck of a lot easier than trecking across to Heathrow using public transport from SE London today.
At one time, BA had a check-in area inside Victoria Station itself that you could use if you were flying from Gatwick. Checked bags were loaded onto the Gatwick Express. I remember using it myself when I was flying with BA from Gatwick to New York back in 1991.
@@andybaker2456 BA briefly introduced a similar service at Paddington in 2001, not too long after the Heathrow Express, which was originally affordable, came into service. Unfortunately the additional security measures that were put into place following 9/11 brought it to an end, which remains a real shame.
That Vickers Viscount! Great plane. In the '80s Richard Brandson's Virgin Airways opened a feedline between Gatwick and Maastricht Airport, just 5km from my home. Initially Virgin used the very loud Bac 1-11, but after a short while changed to the Viscount. Unfortunately I never flew with the Viscount, nor with the Bac 1-11 I used the fast train link from central London to Heathrow. Faster than the tube anyway.
Hello Jago, (this video reminds me of the Underground poster “Fly the Tube - Take the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow Airport. It’s the only way to fly” that featured 4 aircraft front sections with Tube train bodywork. The poster featured the red circle with the blue bar roundel with white text HEATHROW CENTRAL and a plane silhouette within. There was another poster that features a paper dart made from the UndergrounD map and a green rolling hills landscape with the “Fly the Tube to Heathrow “ text. Yet another poster that I haven’t seen before is “The Heathrow Connection” “Links directly with Terminals 1, 2 and 3.” Nice artwork of front ends of Jumbo and Tube train from 1983, showing people alighting from a Piccadilly line train onto a plane. This poster, promoting the Heathrow extension displays the all red roundel. Best wishes from Oxfordshire.
Having used the Heathrow Piccadilly line and then District line to Victoria, and thence to Sussex , with 2 large 23kg bags and a cabin bag, I have to say that the Piccadilly trains are woefully inadequate, even on a 6am departure..The District line trains have a little more space, but I suppose that the Elizabeth line trains are the way to go now..(when iI did LHR-Victoria last, the purple trains were not yet operational).. Comparing it to other cities, specifically Amsterdam or Paris, the RER trains from CDG are not much better, but the trains from Schipol into Amsterdam are much practical...I am amazed at the plethora of government committees over the years, its a wonder anything happened at all! Keep em coming, Jago! are you sure you dont want to be Minister of Transport?
I remember the "Gatwick Express" trains that ran from London Bridge, 4VEPx3 with fluorescent gutter banding and Gatwick Express/RapidAir lettering down side of leading coaches and these units were tweaked with more powerful traction motors and either one stop or no stop to and from Gatwick these things would fly and the only trains running out of London Bridge on Xmas day earning staff a cool 5x overtime bonus and BR used to pay a hotel to lay on a banquet Xmas day for staff and their families to have Xmas dinner in London Bridge power box (trust me it wasn't worth the fuss...) but the problem was yes trains ran Xmas day but tubes and buses didn't, taxi's didn't so getting from London Bridge to wherever was just not happening lol Many a hapless arrivee would soon discover there was zero hotels nearby, the nearest was the exorbitant priced one next to Tower of London which was usually full over the holiday or up in the west end so shank's pony it was with luggage to try and find a hotel and getting cornholed for the price chucked in for free...
This was rather fascinating. It seems so many transport plan were first envisaged many decades before they came to fruition. I also agree that transport ministers, in fact I'll go further and say politicians in general do not know what they are doing when it comes to transport. They put in policies that benefit them, to the detriment of large portions of the populous.
Jago how about something on the public helicopter between Gatwick and Heathrow? I seem to recall that it failed as the CAA insisted it used runway "slots" at Heathrow. But not at Gatwick, if memory serves me correctly. Plus the residents of Esher complained....
I remember being desperate to do a flight on that helicopter! But if I recall correctly, a one way flight was £15 if you weren't connecting between flights. My dad refused to fork out the cash, saying that it was too expensive. But I later found that he was just terrified at the thought of flying on a helicopter! 😄
Remember my dad taking me to Heathrow in 1974 on the 140 bus, RT then, under the subway it was great. Wondered why there was no rail line. The BR map showed Feltham to be nearest. Then Hatton Cross opened and then Heathrow on the Piccadilly line. It's progressed quite a way since then. Think 81B bus route was one of first to Heathrow.
It seems so strange to me that I used the Heathrow Express just after it opened. It was just one of those things I just figured had been around for decades by the time I used it.
I live south of the Thames. When the Liz line isn't running, it's often faster (than the Piccadilly Line) for me to take a bus to Clapham Junction, train to Feltham, and bus to Hatton Cross. I always thought it that would be a great option for Crossrail 2 for a train to run from Waterloo along to Feltham and then north to Heathrow.
I think it’s kinda poetic that the Elizabeth line now acts as a hybrid between the Heathrow Express (faster mainline service) and Piccadilly (through service under the city)
The first London Airport opened in 1920 at Croydon. After WW2 it moved to Heathrow where there was more space for the increasing international traffic and jet airliners.
Heathrow was originally a farm and small hamlet. Urban explorers suggest it possible to gain access to the abandoned habitation, until security measures made it impossible. I once worked in an industrial estate too close to the flightpath for comfort.
It worked quite well. You would check-in your luggage at the Terminal and it would be put on a trailer behind the bus,then the container on the trailer loaded onto the plane. So you didn't have to trail all the way out to the airport with your bags.
Another interesting video. I live in Pensacola, Florida and find you videos very interesting. My Grandmother grew up in London, married my grandfather who was Danish and traveled to New Zealand where my mother was born and raised. My mother met my Dad during the war, married and moved to the USA.
I took one look at the thumbnail and remembered the smell. I loved the smell of those old slam door trains. Also more doors meant you didn't have to spend time shouting at people getting them to move down.
Having more doors certainly seemed to get people on-and-off faster than the queueing and crowding that happens with newer trains. Although sometimes a door would get left open or wouldn't be closed properly. Departure would then be delayed until someone shut the door.
There was a branch line that broke off between Staines and Wraysbury, which ran to Hayes and Harlington. I always thought it could have served the Airport too since it ran right by it. I believe they closed it in the 70s. There's no tracks now, but you can walk where the track was. It's all Green belt.
I think there used to be a BA Check In desk at Victoria, up the escalator and at the end of what is now Victoria Place (was it then?), near the exit onto Belgrave Road.
Wasn't the one up the escalator the check-in for BCAL? Your luggage was taken on the train to Gatwick for you. You did the same rude then walked straight in through passport control. (Assuming you weren't flying to Glasgow!)
@@mikkoistanbul1322I think you're right, the check-in area that was actually inside Victoria Station used to be for BCAL flights. But after they merged with BA, you could use it to check in for BA flights departing from Gatwick. I used it myself when I was flying with BA from Gatwick to New York back in 1991, but I don't think it was around for much longer after that.
Hahaha, the airport in Perth Western Australia only got a train station a few years ago. Jago could do all of the extant train lines here in one video.
Interesting to note that there is a 10th span of the Grosvenor River Bridge into Victoria which has never been used that was allegedly built as provision for the Heathrow line
Heathrow Express has changed a lot since they got rid of the Class 332 and were replaced by the Class 387/1 that have ironing board seats. And the Class 332 had such comfortable seats.
I remember travelling with my Dad's to his office above the cargo bays at Heathrow in the early eighties, maybe late seventies. My recollection is at that time the Piccadilly Line just stopped in the middle of nowhere particularly dedicated at the Airport? But I'm fifty-something & the memory is packing up.
The Piccadilly line extension to Heathrow opened in late 1977. I remember my dad and I having a ride on it from South Kensington to Heathrow Central between Christmas and New Year that same year, just to see what it was like. Maybe if you were going to the Cargo area, you got off the tube at Hatton Cross, rather than Heathrow Central?
The two airports in New York City,are still not directly connected into the Subway! JFK,formerly Idlewild,now has the Airtrain connection,from the A train! There was an express service run,JFK EXPRESS,from mid-town to the A train station,with a bus connection to the terminals! Later discontinued! When the Airtrain was put into service,it went from the Long Island Jamaica station,to the airport! Still very much in operation! As to LaGuardia,to date,many proposals,no operations,and only bus services operating! So much for the status of the major New York Airports! Thank you,Jago,as I think the British operations are a couple of lightyears ahead of this side of the pond! Thank you 😇 😊!
They'd have got a link to Idlewild Airport up and running much sooner, but the arguments got so heated that the planners would see shapes... and this left them a little discouraged. (Those who aren't up to speed with indie-rock bands from Glasgow around the turn of the millennium won't get the references, but kudos to those who do 🙂)
Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne Australia has yet to have a rail connection after 50+ years.Recently the proposal popped up in the news then got buried because of cost.
Thanks for the vid. Just one minor point - I had to Google which rail station the Heathrow Express goes to as I don't think it was mentioned in the vid.
Jago, I've often thought that the Northern Line should be extended to Heathrow, with a short tunnel extension from Battersea Power Station to Clapham Junction, then taking over the line via Kew Bridge as far as Feltham, with another short tunnel section there after. It would provide another direct link to the city, and could easily link with the District Line at East Putney and Kew Bridge. It would also enable links from the airport to the south of the city, without going through zone 1
I always thought it would be easier to put in a short link from Brentford to the Piccadilly line. A through tube service from Heathrow to Clapham Junction would provide great connectivity around south and south-west London.
As a Feltham lad, that's Felt-ham, not Felth-am to the uninitiated, the link from the Windsor line seemed so sensible. The line is so close to the south side of the airport it seemed a no-brianer, especially as Feltham Marshalling Yard was becoming vacant so would have been useful as a depot or maybe some kind of hub connecting to the proposed London Orbital Ringway 3 road.
I remember getting a bus from Hounslow West tube to Heathrow back in the very early 1970's before the Piccadilly Line was extended. When it WAS I saw how the small profile tubes were not ideal for dealing with the mountains of luggage brought by airline passengers who sought to compete for space with the commuters from Osterley, Boston Manor etc. It was perhaps sad that the little railway that ran between Staines West and West Drayton via Colnrook and Poyle could not have been incorporated into some loop line from Waterloo to Paddington somehow incorporating the airport in its embryo years by means of travelators perhaps? Nowadays of course the only terminal that would have been suitable for that loop idea is Terminal 5. But it is pleasant to imagine how things MIGHT have been
Thanks Jago. One of the advantages(?) of extending the Piccadilly Line from Hounslow was that once Hatton Cross was reached that part could be opened and then use buses for the (relatively short) rest of the journey. I also have a vague, perhaps incorrect, recollection of a proposal to 'upgrade' the link between the Staines to Windsor Southern Region line and the Staines West to West Drayton Western Region line with a branch into the airport in the Colnbrook area. That would probably have required upgrading the Western Region line as, if memory serves, it was single track.
Another great video Jago! Would love to see video on the history of the Gatwick express. When I visited London in 1987 from Canada, the Gatwick Express was the first train I saw. It was a teaser because my relatives had picked me up by car 😅
The Feltham route to Heathrow did exist in the 1960s in a hybrid form in the sense that one could purchase an inclusive ticket to the airport, disembark at Feltham and board a coach to complete the journey. I did this, I seem to recall, a few times. However, checking in at the West London Air Teminal and using the BEA coach was, on the whole, more convenient. As for Victoria-Gatwick, one could check in at Victoria Station where there was an Air Terminal but I think it was restricted to certain airline(s) only. British Caledonian? I definitely did this in 1962.
It still does, in a sense. There are regular buses to LHR from Feltham and you can have the bus fare included on your train ticket. Being from Wokingham originally, I have used this connection many times over the years, I always found it to be a much better option than the ludicrously overpriced RailAir coach to Reading. When I first started using it you had to change buses at Hatton Cross if you wanted to get to T4 but since T5 opened there is a direct service connecting to both terminals, as well as a separate one that goes to the Central Area.
There was once a plan for a coach from the London Air terminal which would ascend to a monorail track, become a monorail train and then descend at Heathrow to drive to your plane.
It would be great to have a video on the building on the side of Victoria station, currently occupied by the NAO, as it used to be owned by the predecessor of BA.
Thanks Jago, illuminating as usual. Having grown up in west London, I can vaguely remember the District Line trains running through to Northfields. I can't remember why the District service to Hounslow was stopped. Had it been reinstated the logical thing would be to have the District trains to serve Heathrow rather than the Piccadilly tube trains. I say this because the subsurface trains would have a greater passanger capacity and could have even bypassed Northfields and South Ealing stations because there is still the four-track section as far as Acton Town. I suppose if the Hounslow service was served by District Line trains, that would potentially have overloaded the central London lines from Earls Court, etc.?
Agree that District to Heathrow would make far more sense... though the single-leaf doors of the D-Stock might have been a little awkward. If it had happened though, at least one of the western branches of the District (and possibly both) would have switched to the Piccadilly in order to balance the service. Ealing Broadway would be no trouble at all as it's a short branch and is already served by the similarly sized Central line trains. Richmond would be slightly awkward as you'd end up with another big height difference between it and the Overground, as seen on the northern bit of the Bakerloo.
I'd say having both connection does help meet the needs of very different groups of travellers. Tourists are more likely to have a hotel or want to go straight into central London. Business travellers would just expense an express service because time is money etc. Now Liz line takes on a mixed role of both Piccadilly line relief for tourists but the suburban connection makes it easier for London residents travelling to the airport. As an aside Farringdon is probably the best starting point for trying to get to a London airport. Liz line direct to Heathrow, Thameslink between Gatwick and Luton, connection from nearby Liverpool Street for Stansted and "London Southend" airport.
“I do not consider Transport ministers to know what they are talking about “ 😂 couldn’t agree more
That's why they are appointed! 😅
The thumbnail of an old slam door train had me reaching for my inhaler. I used to commute on them in the late 80's and always wondered why I got home feeling wheezy. It wasn't until years later I discovered the seats were stuffed with horsehair and as someone allergic to horses this probably wasn't the best thing to sit on for 50 minutes every evening.
What doesn't kill you makes you weaker
Horsehair and springs that could launch you into orbit when you went over points!
@@mjowseySame goes for a non-fatal muscle-waiting disease.
Far more comfortable and less sweaty than modern foam. Underground seats were also horsehair but supply would be a problem today with the lack of longer haired horses around. It is cheaper to maintain as doesn't need replacing when becomes compacted like foam, just remove, wash, fluff up and put back. Maybe a new market for all that hair on hairdressers floors.
I don't think they'd have still been using horsehair by the time of the VEPs...
As a plane-spotting child, I used to enjoy the great adventure of catching the 37 bus from Clapham Junction to Hounslow Bus Garage, where I (or sometimes "we", depending on whether I could persuade any mates to join me) would catch the 111 to the airport. There was nothing better than tucking into some Marmite sandwiches on the roof of the Queen's Building whilst inhaling lungfulls of jet fuel fumes as jets screamed all around you. It does seem incredulous though that I was able to do this between the ages of about 9 and 13 without being accompanied by an adult!
Many things are possible in a homogeneous high trust society.
The 82 was a better choice from Hounslow bus station!
@@sneedchuckington i would say it's more a problem of internalizing 80/90s scaremongering that leads to todays helicopter parents
@@jonharbour9166 Or the A1 Express Bus from Hounslow West. I didn't use it because I think it wasn't covered by Red Rover tickets and had more expensive fares than the 82.
I did the Green Line 727 bus from Crawley to Heathrow, for much the same reason as you, back in the mid 70s, aged about 13 upto 16..Would a kid be allowed to do something like that now?
I travelled to Dublin in 1967, we checked in at the West London Air Terminal, our luggage was put in a special trailer attached to a special type of Routemaster Bus with a big engine and high speed axle, and we travelled at high speed to London Airport, (not known as Heathrow then), and were transferred, along with our cases, onto a BEA Vickers Vanguard, (four engine turbo prop, fantastic aeroplane, like the Viscount that preceded it, what a sound), and landed at Dublin.
Vanguards and Viscounts used to fly over my house daily back then. Being 6 miles from Gatwick and under the flightpath meant I became interested in planes !
The sound of those props overhead was brilliant.
@@nigelarmstrong252 Yes, great sounds. Rolls Royce Dart on the Viscount and I think Tyne on the Vanguard. Viscounts lasted until the 'nineties out of Southend, and some Vanguards carried on after being converted to cargo 'planes and renamed the Merchantman.
I worked at WLAT from 78 to 80. I don't recall much other than the two old buskers at Gloucester Rd tube station (one with a banjo) and the BA staff social club where we had a drink (or two) most lunchtimes. It's now an unremarkable Sainsbury's.
Thank you for pointing out that air travel used to be expensive! People love to post pictures from the olden days, showing how great flying used to be and how well air passengers dressed. Sure. But that was before airlines were created whose explicit goal it is to make flying affordable for everyone. Even to those with limited financial means. And due to this competition, the legacy airlines (such as BA) had to respond likewise.
Hurrah for Freddie Laker!
The tube is a dreadful means of getting to Heathrow, with no luggage space. I lived in Croydon for 4 years (I survived the experience) and much preferred using Gatwick than Heathrow because a proper train was used, with luggage space.
The new Heathrow Express is essentially a commuter train, with little luggage space for large suitcases. The _HE_ website suggests: "Leave your luggage in the ample racks near the doors" with a picture of a tiny rack, with a tiny lightweight case being lifted onto it. What a p155-take.
I want to be able to keep my bags where I can see them, and close to me. I used to travel HuntingdonLeeds quite a bit in the '70s, and when HST came in the Mk3 coaches were perfect for the traveller - with luggage space between seats and overhead racks deep enough to take my 65l rucksack. The modern coaches on the west coast line, which I use every few weeks, is dreadful if you have cases.
Modern trains revolve around commuters, not travellers, and it is mainly travellers who are going to the airport.
You don't get much luggage space on trains either.
Another interesting video. Prior to the rail connections, for a while, I think there was a fleet of Routemaster buses painted silver and had luggage trailers. These were used to convey air passengers from central London to Heathrow - a curious way to start a journey by air.
There was. The RMA class, differing from standard RM's in that they had a front entrance and staircase.
Yes, via West London Air Terminal, where people checked in, near Gloucester Road tube. Now a Sainsbury's
@@stuartparks8094 BOAC used the Terminal / Office Building at Victoria (Now national audit office)
I remember the West London Air Terminal with its branded buses with a little luggage trailer on the back. But when you say they were painted silver, are you getting them confused with the ordinary Routemaster buses that were painted silver for the Queen's silver jubilee in 1977?
RMA's painted in BEA light blue and white. SRM'S for Silver jubilee RM"s.
A line to Feltham and Victoria makes so much sense in terms of the amount of additional track needed. It would also provide an automatic link to the Gatwick Express. In the fullness of time no doubt an inter-airport shuttle could be run. So of course it was decided to build a line for passengers with luggage that uses the smallest loading gauge and doesn't link up to any other airport.
Sadly the decision to build the Heathrow Extension to the tube loading gauge rather than the SSL was made in a spirit of penny-pinching in an era of rapidly-increasing costs...I seem to remember an LT high-up at the time saying it was a short-sighted decision he regretted,but otherwise the financial plug would have been pulled....
@@nickbarber2080
I would argue that the failure to build the Heathrow Extension to Sub-Surface Standards was more costly in the long-term. Especially when it ultimately meant that the Heathrow Express & Elizabeth Line had to be built later down the line.
Just goes to show the dangers of under-investing in Transport Infrastructure.
@@nickbarber2080 Shows how poor they were back in those days of presenting cost benifits. Build a tiny railway or a full size railway that ultmately carried more people so fewer trains and staff were needed. Full size trains running round the north or south side of the Circle Line would have been much more useful. I suppose reinstating the disused junction at Hammersmith would have been out of the question by then. How much better would a full size Victoria line be than a tube line?
It could even have been extended to link up with the GWR main line at Langley. Just think of the benifits that would have brought?
@@kevinrayner5812
Had they built the Victoria Line to accommodate Full-Sized Trains, it would have been possible to extend the line to additional places in South London such as Herne Hill. Instead we will have to build Crossrail 2 to deal with increased demand.
Having used both methods of getting to Heathrow - the tube more than the express route - I can say that I appreciate both!
The Eastbourne-Manchester train always baffled me as a kid in Bexhill in the 80s
There used to be class 47 on a Brighton to Manchester. Didn't know there was a service from Eastbourne.
I did Crewe to Eastbourne yesterday arduous to say the least, bring back Manchester to Gatwick 😊
@@Julian-ck6lf Crewe to Eastbourne? Was that a freight movement?
No passenger via Euston & Victoria very long trip.
@@Julian-ck6lf of course, my bad, I misunderstood that you meant a direct journey! For a moment thought I was missing something big.
As soon as you mentioned Transport Ministers, Ernest Marples and Grant Shapps sprang to mind.
VOTE JAGO JULY 4TH !!!!!
He’d be a great prime minister
London mayor candidate
Make The Rail System Great Again
@@davidsummer8631 Yeah and quite a bit less expensive fares.
@@jdchsdjhj Imagine what that seditious chancer would do to public transport.
I well remember when the Heefrow express started but was not yet completed we were bussed out to a field where there was a wooden stand built beside a railway track. A posh new train arrived and we were whisked into Paddington in jig time. The trip cost just £5 and I loved it.
I am surprised that you did not mention the Staines and West Drayton Railway. Even though the tracks have been lifted, most of the alignment survives and it runs almost right up the back of the Airport. There have been proposals to re-open this route as a link to the Airport from the south. Maybe this would have been used in the Victoria to London Airport proposal.
I love the Piccadilly Line for a reason 💙
Oi! Now you’ve got to tell us the reason. 😉
The train unfolding itself on the bridge at 2:51 is a lovely detail.
I remember getting the underground to Hounslow then getting a bus to Heathrow, a right bloody nuisance
As well as getting to the West London Air Terminal to get a flight from Luton
The A1 non stop bus continued from Hounslow West even after the line's extension to Hatton Cross opened in 1975. It was finally withdrawn in late 1977, when the further extension into the airport opened.
Enlightening to hear about the old city check-in method of flying. I was in Hong Kong in 1997 and it was how they did things. Very civilised. Put your bag in in the morning, wander around sightseeing then jump on the train for your plane in the afternoon.
2:27 I was in Feltham once…accidentally after realising I was on the wrong bus.
Different world, half crown red rover and London Buses were ours all Saturday or Sunday. Generally we were safe and adventurous.
For the future their is also the "Heathrow Southern Railway" project, which is the latest idea to make use of the rail platform space that was built into T5 when it was constructive. So a lot of long term planning was put into the design of T5, but not a lot has happened since.
I remember checking in at both the British Airways and British Caledonia desks based in Victoria then getting a train to Gatwick in the 80s. I think TWA was in Kensington. But yes that huge BA building behind Victoria station was there until the late 80s if I recall? What memories😊
Love your work Jago
we learn something new about London everytime thanks to this man :D
Amusing to see the efforts to tart up the slam-door sets shown at the start and also here 2:32 by painting "go faster" stripes on them. A favourite ploy used by some rail administrations to make older trains look "modern and dynamic". Go-faster stripes were also popular on some motor vehicles which in practice could definitely not go faster!
Thank you Jago, another great to start Sunday.
Remember I teased that I had a sort of a personal connection to the Piccadilly Line link to Heathrow? It's actually more a... missed connection. Here's the story... the story of how a suitcase saved the lives of myself and my mother.
It was the year after my 18th birthday. My mother was an attorney (we're Yanks, so it's just "attorney", we don't do the separate barrister/solicitor thing you Brits do) and making... reasonably good money, comparatively speaking (nothing like you'd see on the telly, mind, but it spends nonetheless). Enough so that we could afford to travel internationally for about two weeks, about twice a year or so. This was our second international trip. The first had been to London, sometime in early 2004, and the second in mid-2004, around certain nearby parts of the UK. This was a... somewhat expanded version of that second trip, going to Brighton and a few other spots in Britain proper, up into Edinburgh, and then off into Continental Europe, where we went on a bus tour of southern Italy and spent some time in Paris as well, as I recall, before returning to London on our way back home.
Well, to make a long story short, we had already sent home two very large cardboard boxes of souvenirs at... quite considerable expense, especially considering that the exchange rate was almost two USD to a Pound Sterling, at the time (it was actually about $1.80-1.85 to £1 depending on the day, but we were not mathematicians and so just mentally doubled the cost of everything). For the record, true to form, UPS not only charged us a genuinely exorbitant sum for the effort, but smashed everything to bits -- and indignantly refused to cover the damages. But, that's beside the point... we actually had _such_ an out-of-control trinket collection habit, that even after all of that, we still wound up literally buying a spare suitcase off a London street vendor simply to house all the stuff we couldn't fit into the rather prodigiously American sized luggage we'd brought with us already.
We were to fly out of London at Heathrow, of course (otherwise, this story being here would make precious little sense, if any), at somewhere around 10am. Mind you, I am autistic (Asperger's), and I also do NOT suffer mornings well at all. So, it was a bright and early Thursday morning in July, likely just about half past 8am, and I was utterly miserable, and I was not in the least bit shy about making sure the entire lobby of our hotel knew that as my mother tried to both shut me up and check us out of the place, at which she was far more effective (predictably) at the latter, than the former. I don't remember exactly why, but we were held up waiting for... something, and between me channeling my inner pester superpowers like Nermal from _Garfield_ in the Sunday Funnies, and the kind and gentle auditory ministrations of the hotel concierge (who no doubt simply wanted my fat American terror self out of his lobby absolutely as fast as humanly possible, and could someone kindly fetch him a cuppa for his nerves afterwards, please), my mother was eventually persuaded that, instead of hoofing it through the Underground as we'd originally planned, we'd be better off taking one of London's famous Black Cabs.
Well, as it were, as we were rushing through Heathrow at breakneck pace (as my mother always insisted), with me desperately trying to catch my breath on a particularly lengthy escalator, Mom pointed to a television feed on a screen just above us. I was somehow more interested in trying to shove oxygen into the near-vacuum that my lungs were currently entertaining, but she was insistent. It was a news feed, and someone had just blown up a double-decker bus... it turns out that, by sheer coincidence, our flight home was on 7 July 2005, the day of the infamous London Tube Bombings. We later worked out that, had we taken the Tube as we'd planned, we'd almost certainly have been in Kings Cross St Pancras just in time to, erm, quite literally have had a blast of it. We would've died in that explosion.
For the record... Mom came down with some chronic non-terminal illnesses in the summer and fall of 2007 and is now badly disabled because of them. My autism turned out to be disabling in its own way, and although I graduated college (you'd call it Uni, over there Across the Pond) in 2009, I began drawing what you'd call a disability pension within a year after, having applied not long before being granted it. I'm 38 now, just turned it a few days ago, and I now live some three miles (a bit less than 5km) from Mom, in a tiny apartment (flat) in a tiny town in the Southern United States where there's nothing of importance, nothing to do, and I absolutely hate it (but can't afford better... alas, my heart will forever pine for a flat in London). I still have the suitcase, although it rather sadly hasn't seen much use since. That said, whenever I pass it and I have the opportunity to remember, I stop and give it a smile. After all, it did save our lives once.
Glad you liked the story, Jago :3
London - By the 1930s it was understood that for an airport to be successful it needed good transport links.
Melbourne - Plan for the first airport rail link, taking passengers 20km in the wrong direction to only gain 5km before changing trains, delayed until at least 2033.
I grew up in Croydon and the Gatwick Express for most of the time of British Rail was an Intercity train, using class 73 locomotives and (I believe) Mk2 carriages with a GLV at the other end. After those trains got long in the tooth they were replaced with EMUs and there were three different classes of EMU in a few years.
I was on the tube today - a rare occurrence these days and thanks to your videos I spotted so much more detail along my journey. Do keep up the good work!
I was only vaguely aware of Heathrow shuttle buses from diecast toys of the real thing, and vestiges of the old booking in facilities in the 1970s. Impossible to imagine modern traffic levels permitting such a timetable.
Imperial Airways began to tout Fairey's test field at 'Heath Row' in the 1930s as a replacement for Croydon, Heston and Northolt, with longer runways to rival those at Tempelhof and Schiphol. The Great Western offered to build a spur from Hayes into a central terminal area, which would have left the main line sooner than the branch laid years later from Airport Jc.
AFAIK this was the first scheme for an LHR rail connection. In the 1970s there was some talk of a triangular junction between Feltham and Ashford (Middlesex) in the Bedfont area, enabling trains from Waterloo to run through the proposed Terminal 4 to the central area, plus services from Staines and points to the south west. But all plans for a southern 'Airtrack' approach to LHR have been stymied by the plethora of level crossings between Richmond and Wandsworth, while using the Hounslow loop would lengthen the journey time.
Neither has the chord at Airport Jc which would facilitate trains from Reading and Slough to LHR been installed. The Elizabeth line ignores the existence of the world's busiest international airport.
The Great Western was way ahead of British Railways which always seemed rather lukewarm about planning to serve Heathrow when there was more free space and it would have been easier to do. I suppose the West London Air Terminal didn't help. Having lived in Hampshire and Oxfordshire, the idea of going all the way into Central London, then wiggling over to Gloucester Road, then a bus to the airport, boggles the mind. Railair isn't great, but it's way better than that ... as is driving there directly (or being driven) if you can afford the parking/taxi. But always hankered to westward and southward rail connections.
Railway politics without the politricks? No sabotage, or slap fighting and everybody's right? Gold star⭐
I distinctly remember my days of 73 bashing on the Gatwick Expresses that BA & American Airlines allowed passengers to check their luggage in at Victoria station before catching the train.The luggage was carried in the. MLV that formed part of the train
Very nteresting to see what routes were considered, often ones I'd never have thought of.
Imagine if they had built both the branch from Hayes and Harlington **and** from Feltham as one continuous through-running rail service...
I'm a bit of a dreamer, me.
I've done Heathrow to Croydon in as little as 70 mins, Admittedly it was late night and all the connections fit perfectly timewise (Tube to Hatton X, bus 90/285/490 to Feltham, - South western railway to Clapham and then Southern to East Croydon.) National Rail suggests taking Elizabeth line to Farringdon and then Thameslink. Whilst this is the most convenient route, especially if you have lots of luggage, it takes longer, sometimes much longer if there are cancellations.
This is so exciting! I've never been the reduction to anyone's cost estimate before. Usually I'm the cost overrun.
Not forgetting the Art Deco magnificence that is the Imperial Airways terminal in Victoria.
It's always interesting to read about these type of projects. By that I mean projects which everyone knows are essential, but take 20 years to build, and even then end up being sub-optimal.
The BR proposal sounds a lot like the proposed Heathrow Southern Rail Link. So perhaps we could see the proposal return again.
One of the reasons it never took off (SWIDT?) is the large number of Level Crossings on the "Windsor Lines" between Clapham Junction and Feltham. An extra 4-6 trains per hour in each direction would mean the barriers would only be open to road traffic at those crossings for a few minutes in total each hour. Now like any train nerd, I always hope the barriers will come down in front of me if driving over a level crossing... but if it happens every 2-3 minutes the novelty might wear off!
I remember , as a boy, checking in for a flight at what I think was still BOAC or it might have just become BA at their offices within walking distance of Victoria Train Station ( I think the NAO uses the building now).They had a check-in desk just like the airport and no queues (unlike the airport) and afterwards you would sit around and wait for a complimentary coach to drive you through to Heathrow. As some who lived in Beckenham at the time , it was really convenient . I wish they did it today , it was a heck of a lot easier than trecking across to Heathrow using public transport from SE London today.
At one time, BA had a check-in area inside Victoria Station itself that you could use if you were flying from Gatwick. Checked bags were loaded onto the Gatwick Express. I remember using it myself when I was flying with BA from Gatwick to New York back in 1991.
Have you tried using the Elizabeth Line to get to Heathrow from SE London?
@@andybaker2456 BA briefly introduced a similar service at Paddington in 2001, not too long after the Heathrow Express, which was originally affordable, came into service. Unfortunately the additional security measures that were put into place following 9/11 brought it to an end, which remains a real shame.
That Vickers Viscount! Great plane. In the '80s Richard Brandson's Virgin Airways opened a feedline between Gatwick and Maastricht Airport, just 5km from my home. Initially Virgin used the very loud Bac 1-11, but after a short while changed to the Viscount. Unfortunately I never flew with the Viscount, nor with the Bac 1-11 I used the fast train link from central London to Heathrow. Faster than the tube anyway.
Loved the shot of the BAF Viscount. Travelled on those as a youngster many a time
My first ever flight was on a British Airways Viscount from Heathrow to Guernsey, August 1979.
Hello Jago, (this video reminds me of the Underground poster “Fly the Tube - Take the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow Airport. It’s the only way to fly” that featured 4 aircraft front sections with Tube train bodywork. The poster featured the red circle with the blue bar roundel with white text HEATHROW CENTRAL and a plane silhouette within. There was another poster that features a paper dart made from the UndergrounD map and a green rolling hills landscape with the “Fly the Tube to Heathrow “ text. Yet another poster that I haven’t seen before is “The Heathrow Connection” “Links directly with Terminals 1, 2 and 3.” Nice artwork of front ends of Jumbo and Tube train from 1983, showing people alighting from a Piccadilly line train onto a plane. This poster, promoting the Heathrow extension displays the all red roundel. Best wishes from Oxfordshire.
i think Jago showed them at Acton Depot on the Pic Line vid
Having used the Heathrow Piccadilly line and then District line to Victoria, and thence to Sussex , with 2 large 23kg bags and a cabin bag, I have to say that the Piccadilly trains are woefully inadequate, even on a 6am departure..The District line trains have a little more space, but I suppose that the Elizabeth line trains are the way to go now..(when iI did LHR-Victoria last, the purple trains were not yet operational).. Comparing it to other cities, specifically Amsterdam or Paris, the RER trains from CDG are not much better, but the trains from Schipol into Amsterdam are much practical...I am amazed at the plethora of government committees over the years, its a wonder anything happened at all! Keep em coming, Jago! are you sure you dont want to be Minister of Transport?
I remember the "Gatwick Express" trains that ran from London Bridge, 4VEPx3 with fluorescent gutter banding and Gatwick Express/RapidAir lettering down side of leading coaches and these units were tweaked with more powerful traction motors and either one stop or no stop to and from Gatwick these things would fly and the only trains running out of London Bridge on Xmas day earning staff a cool 5x overtime bonus and BR used to pay a hotel to lay on a banquet Xmas day for staff and their families to have Xmas dinner in London Bridge power box (trust me it wasn't worth the fuss...) but the problem was yes trains ran Xmas day but tubes and buses didn't, taxi's didn't so getting from London Bridge to wherever was just not happening lol Many a hapless arrivee would soon discover there was zero hotels nearby, the nearest was the exorbitant priced one next to Tower of London which was usually full over the holiday or up in the west end so shank's pony it was with luggage to try and find a hotel and getting cornholed for the price chucked in for free...
I used to take the X22 bus from Heathrow to Feltham to Waterloo when I was staying on Old Kent Road. It was the most convenient way to get there.
This was rather fascinating. It seems so many transport plan were first envisaged many decades before they came to fruition. I also agree that transport ministers, in fact I'll go further and say politicians in general do not know what they are doing when it comes to transport. They put in policies that benefit them, to the detriment of large portions of the populous.
When I was a kid my grandfather took me on the tube to the original observation deck at Heathrow airport which the airport then closed
Thanks for that amazing piece of information about London underground. I really love your videos. Thanks again
Jago how about something on the public helicopter between Gatwick and Heathrow? I seem to recall that it failed as the CAA insisted it used runway "slots" at Heathrow. But not at Gatwick, if memory serves me correctly. Plus the residents of Esher complained....
I remember being desperate to do a flight on that helicopter! But if I recall correctly, a one way flight was £15 if you weren't connecting between flights. My dad refused to fork out the cash, saying that it was too expensive. But I later found that he was just terrified at the thought of flying on a helicopter! 😄
Remember my dad taking me to Heathrow in 1974 on the 140 bus, RT then, under the subway it was great. Wondered why there was no rail line. The BR map showed Feltham to be nearest. Then Hatton Cross opened and then Heathrow on the Piccadilly line. It's progressed quite a way since then. Think 81B bus route was one of first to Heathrow.
It seems so strange to me that I used the Heathrow Express just after it opened. It was just one of those things I just figured had been around for decades by the time I used it.
As always, timely on a Sunday, like a Sunday roast.
Far more reliable than the British railway network!
I live south of the Thames. When the Liz line isn't running, it's often faster (than the Piccadilly Line) for me to take a bus to Clapham Junction, train to Feltham, and bus to Hatton Cross. I always thought it that would be a great option for Crossrail 2 for a train to run from Waterloo along to Feltham and then north to Heathrow.
I think it’s kinda poetic that the Elizabeth line now acts as a hybrid between the Heathrow Express (faster mainline service) and Piccadilly (through service under the city)
Sometimes, I think of Heathrow as this historical place but (fun fact) it’s younger than Kolkata’s airport
The first London Airport opened in 1920 at Croydon. After WW2 it moved to Heathrow where there was more space for the increasing international traffic and jet airliners.
@@RoyCousins Yes, I remember that from a previous video on the channel.
Heathrow was originally a farm and small hamlet. Urban explorers suggest it possible to gain access to the abandoned habitation, until security measures made it impossible. I once worked in an industrial estate too close to the flightpath for comfort.
A great overview. And I'm really inspired by your way of explaining.
Fantastic video sir!
"-you have never used, because it was never built"
That one guy who can travel to alternate universes:
Ha!
The Man in High Barnett
I love the way that, whenever the talk comes around to transport in London, common sense seems to put on it's trilby and walk out the door...
0:57. I used to work on that Viscount when I was a volunteer at Brooklands.
How interesting that people would go to a certain building and then carried to the airport by bus.
It worked quite well.
You would check-in your luggage at the Terminal and it would be put on a trailer behind the bus,then the container on the trailer loaded onto the plane.
So you didn't have to trail all the way out to the airport with your bags.
Wonderful video, very well expressed thanks Jago
Another interesting video. I live in Pensacola, Florida and find you videos very interesting. My Grandmother grew up in London, married my grandfather who was Danish and traveled to New Zealand where my mother was born and raised. My mother met my Dad during the war, married and moved to the USA.
Jago, thank you, I'm so glad to hear I was right. I've always wanted reassurance on that point.
I took one look at the thumbnail and remembered the smell. I loved the smell of those old slam door trains. Also more doors meant you didn't have to spend time shouting at people getting them to move down.
Having more doors certainly seemed to get people on-and-off faster than the queueing and crowding that happens with newer trains. Although sometimes a door would get left open or wouldn't be closed properly. Departure would then be delayed until someone shut the door.
There was a branch line that broke off between Staines and Wraysbury, which ran to Hayes and Harlington. I always thought it could have served the Airport too since it ran right by it. I believe they closed it in the 70s. There's no tracks now, but you can walk where the track was. It's all Green belt.
And the top end (from about the M4 onwards) still exists and carries freight trains (I've been along it on a railtour).
@@iankemp1131 Thanks. I'll have to look out for the turn off around Hayes 🙂
I think there used to be a BA Check In desk at Victoria, up the escalator and at the end of what is now Victoria Place (was it then?), near the exit onto Belgrave Road.
Correct. It's the one I used a few times in the 1960s.
Wasn't the one up the escalator the check-in for BCAL? Your luggage was taken on the train to Gatwick for you. You did the same rude then walked straight in through passport control. (Assuming you weren't flying to Glasgow!)
@@mikkoistanbul1322I think you're right, the check-in area that was actually inside Victoria Station used to be for BCAL flights. But after they merged with BA, you could use it to check in for BA flights departing from Gatwick. I used it myself when I was flying with BA from Gatwick to New York back in 1991, but I don't think it was around for much longer after that.
A good airport needs 'good transport links' just like Bristol hasn't.
I love that the transcript calls Hounslow West, Houndo West, as if it's some deliberately shortened metro station in Australia.
Thankyou Jago for another informative video.
Hahaha, the airport in Perth Western Australia only got a train station a few years ago. Jago could do all of the extant train lines here in one video.
Melbourne is still waiting, and it's been so long it's become a city-wide joke!
@@roxiewynter8152 that's nuts.
Interesting to note that there is a 10th span of the Grosvenor River Bridge into Victoria which has never been used that was allegedly built as provision for the Heathrow line
Heathrow Express has changed a lot since they got rid of the Class 332 and were replaced by the Class 387/1 that have ironing board seats. And the Class 332 had such comfortable seats.
"At the time, money was tight..." When has that ever been otherwise?
Let’s all vote for SIR. JAGO HAZZARD on July 4th 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇺🇸.
I remember travelling with my Dad's to his office above the cargo bays at Heathrow in the early eighties, maybe late seventies. My recollection is at that time the Piccadilly Line just stopped in the middle of nowhere particularly dedicated at the Airport?
But I'm fifty-something & the memory is packing up.
The Piccadilly line extension to Heathrow opened in late 1977. I remember my dad and I having a ride on it from South Kensington to Heathrow Central between Christmas and New Year that same year, just to see what it was like. Maybe if you were going to the Cargo area, you got off the tube at Hatton Cross, rather than Heathrow Central?
The two airports in New York City,are still not directly connected into the Subway! JFK,formerly Idlewild,now has the Airtrain connection,from the A train! There was an express service run,JFK EXPRESS,from mid-town to the A train station,with a bus connection to the terminals! Later discontinued! When the Airtrain was put into service,it went from the Long Island Jamaica station,to the airport! Still very much in operation! As to LaGuardia,to date,many proposals,no operations,and only bus services operating! So much for the status of the major New York Airports! Thank you,Jago,as I think the British operations are a couple of lightyears ahead of this side of the pond! Thank you 😇 😊!
They'd have got a link to Idlewild Airport up and running much sooner, but the arguments got so heated that the planners would see shapes... and this left them a little discouraged. (Those who aren't up to speed with indie-rock bands from Glasgow around the turn of the millennium won't get the references, but kudos to those who do 🙂)
My sister was in Salt Lake City a few weeks back. Green line to downtown in 15 mins. Ticket is $2.50. So that's pretty good if ask me!
Now that is a deep cut…..
And I won’t tell you what this means, ‘cos you already know.
Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne Australia has yet to have a rail connection after 50+ years.Recently the proposal popped up in the news then got buried because of cost.
Excellently researched as ever.
Thanks for the vid. Just one minor point - I had to Google which rail station the Heathrow Express goes to as I don't think it was mentioned in the vid.
Jago, I've often thought that the Northern Line should be extended to Heathrow, with a short tunnel extension from Battersea Power Station to Clapham Junction, then taking over the line via Kew Bridge as far as Feltham, with another short tunnel section there after.
It would provide another direct link to the city, and could easily link with the District Line at East Putney and Kew Bridge.
It would also enable links from the airport to the south of the city, without going through zone 1
I always thought it would be easier to put in a short link from Brentford to the Piccadilly line. A through tube service from Heathrow to Clapham Junction would provide great connectivity around south and south-west London.
Your cinematography is excellent. You are the Michael Ballhaus of YT.
As a Feltham lad, that's Felt-ham, not Felth-am to the uninitiated, the link from the Windsor line seemed so sensible. The line is so close to the south side of the airport it seemed a no-brianer, especially as Feltham Marshalling Yard was becoming vacant so would have been useful as a depot or maybe some kind of hub connecting to the proposed London Orbital Ringway 3 road.
I remember getting a bus from Hounslow West tube to Heathrow back in the very early 1970's before the Piccadilly Line was extended. When it WAS I saw how the small profile tubes were not ideal for dealing with the mountains of luggage brought by airline passengers who sought to compete for space with the commuters from Osterley, Boston Manor etc. It was perhaps sad that the little railway that ran between Staines West and West Drayton via Colnrook and Poyle could not have been incorporated into some loop line from Waterloo to Paddington somehow incorporating the airport in its embryo years by means of travelators perhaps? Nowadays of course the only terminal that would have been suitable for that loop idea is Terminal 5. But it is pleasant to imagine how things MIGHT have been
Ideas to use that alignment do re-surface (ha ha) from time to time...
Thanks Jago. One of the advantages(?) of extending the Piccadilly Line from Hounslow was that once Hatton Cross was reached that part could be opened and then use buses for the (relatively short) rest of the journey.
I also have a vague, perhaps incorrect, recollection of a proposal to 'upgrade' the link between the Staines to Windsor Southern Region line and the Staines West to West Drayton Western Region line with a branch into the airport in the Colnbrook area. That would probably have required upgrading the Western Region line as, if memory serves, it was single track.
I'd love to see your take on the History of the Gatwick Express
Another great video Jago! Would love to see video on the history of the Gatwick express. When I visited London in 1987 from Canada, the Gatwick Express was the first train I saw. It was a teaser because my relatives had picked me up by car 😅
The Feltham route to Heathrow did exist in the 1960s in a hybrid form in the sense that one could purchase an inclusive ticket to the airport, disembark at Feltham and board a coach to complete the journey. I did this, I seem to recall, a few times. However, checking in at the West London Air Teminal and using the BEA coach was, on the whole, more convenient. As for Victoria-Gatwick, one could check in at Victoria Station where there was an Air Terminal but I think it was restricted to certain airline(s) only. British Caledonian? I definitely did this in 1962.
It still does, in a sense. There are regular buses to LHR from Feltham and you can have the bus fare included on your train ticket. Being from Wokingham originally, I have used this connection many times over the years, I always found it to be a much better option than the ludicrously overpriced RailAir coach to Reading.
When I first started using it you had to change buses at Hatton Cross if you wanted to get to T4 but since T5 opened there is a direct service connecting to both terminals, as well as a separate one that goes to the Central Area.
Thanks for the update.Very interesting @GorgeDawes
... And the Feltham to Heathrow link is still very much in discussion as a possibility!
Happy Sunday Jago
Hazzard! Hazzard!
Here we go!
Up track, down track,
Here we go
There was once a plan for a coach from the London Air terminal which would ascend to a monorail track, become a monorail train and then descend at Heathrow to drive to your plane.
It would be great to have a video on the building on the side of Victoria station, currently occupied by the NAO, as it used to be owned by the predecessor of BA.
Imperial Airways/BOAC
Thanks Jago, illuminating as usual. Having grown up in west London, I can vaguely remember the District Line trains running through to Northfields. I can't remember why the District service to Hounslow was stopped. Had it been reinstated the logical thing would be to have the District trains to serve Heathrow rather than the Piccadilly tube trains. I say this because the subsurface trains would have a greater passanger capacity and could have even bypassed Northfields and South Ealing stations because there is still the four-track section as far as Acton Town. I suppose if the Hounslow service was served by District Line trains, that would potentially have overloaded the central London lines from Earls Court, etc.?
Agree that District to Heathrow would make far more sense... though the single-leaf doors of the D-Stock might have been a little awkward. If it had happened though, at least one of the western branches of the District (and possibly both) would have switched to the Piccadilly in order to balance the service. Ealing Broadway would be no trouble at all as it's a short branch and is already served by the similarly sized Central line trains. Richmond would be slightly awkward as you'd end up with another big height difference between it and the Overground, as seen on the northern bit of the Bakerloo.
A few years ago it was possible to check-in for your flight with Austrian arlines in Vienna city centre.
Everyone saying the Slam-doors were bad and me just casually intrested in using one:
I'd say having both connection does help meet the needs of very different groups of travellers. Tourists are more likely to have a hotel or want to go straight into central London. Business travellers would just expense an express service because time is money etc. Now Liz line takes on a mixed role of both Piccadilly line relief for tourists but the suburban connection makes it easier for London residents travelling to the airport.
As an aside Farringdon is probably the best starting point for trying to get to a London airport. Liz line direct to Heathrow, Thameslink between Gatwick and Luton, connection from nearby Liverpool Street for Stansted and "London Southend" airport.
The 727 / 747 linked the airports.
I wish I had done the transfer link from LGW to LHR on the regular helicopter link.