Memories of Broad Street

[rogercov]

and I am fairly certain this is the last picture I took at Broad Street when all that remained was a small part of the north end of the station
If this is not Broad Street I would be pleased to hear so I can correct my records

Definitely Broad Street. Here's mine from the same era.

 

[R Martin]

I remember when I was working at Willesden MPD in the early 1960's being called out to a fault on a Type 2 Sultzer(24) and control kicking up a fuss because it was a "Residential". I think to Tring. I don't think I fixed it! The Station was a dump, filthy dirty. I was more interested in the type 2 Brush on the other platform.

 

[Mikey C]

I only started roaming London's railways on Capitalcards in the late 80s so missed Broad St closing by a couple of years although I still recall that end of the North London Line being in a pretty grotty state despite the splashes of NSE colour. Looking back even further it seems BR weren't being altogether honest about their true intentions re. the station.

As an aside, while the exterior shots are of 501s, what type of train are the interior shots from (1:33)?

 

[Sprinter107]

As an aside, while the exterior shots are of 501s, what type of train are the interior shots from (1:33)?

The interior of the train on that film is a Cravens dmu.

 

[nlogax]

As an aside, while the exterior shots are of 501s, what type of train are the interior shots from (1:33)?

That'll be one of the Cravens sets from the Stratford to Tottenham Hale services

 

[Mikey C]

The interior of the train on that film is a Cravens dmu.

That'll be one of the Cravens sets from the Stratford to Tottenham Hale services

Thanks

 

[65477]

2021 marks the 50th anniversary of my begining non-commuting railway travel and railway photography. I have decided that it is about time I got around to fully cataloguing the images. Fortunately, prior to 1980, I had kept detailed records of all the slides I took and had already transcribed these onto a spreadsheet. The key was linking the spreadsheet to the actual digitised images. This I have now completed. Thanks to this I can now add a couple more pictures of Broad Street into this thread. This was certainly the first and last time I departed Broad Street behind a loco' - indeed this was the RCTS rail tour on 6th November 1976 which the last day of GN trains in Moorgate (via the widened lines) and to Broad Street.



The loco hauling in was 31249 and the on departure 31183 hauled.

 

[Revaulx]

2021 marks the 50th anniversary of my begining non-commuting railway travel and railway photography. I have decided that it is about time I got around to fully cataloguing the images. Fortunately, prior to 1980, I had kept detailed records of all the slides I took and had already transcribed these onto a spreadsheet. The key was linking the spreadsheet to the actual digitised images. This I have now completed. Thanks to this I can now add a couple more pictures of Broad Street into this thread. This was certainly the first and last time I departed Broad Street behind a loco' - indeed this was the RCTS rail tour on 6th November 1976 which the last day of GN trains in Moorgate (via the widened lines) and to Broad Street.

View attachment 89611View attachment 89612View attachment 89613

The loco hauling in was 31249 and the on departure 31183 hauled.

Fabulous!

That must be the Nat West Tower in the last photo. I’d started travelling across London on my way to university in Canterbury a few weeks before these photos and did so for the next three years. The speed of progress on that building made Crossrail look like a model of efficiency.

 

[yeti]

When I first arrived in London in 1976 I walked/trespassed the line from Dalston Junction towards Broad Street. It seemed possible as the viaduct used to carry three tracks and I thought that late on a summer evening there would be no trains- I was young and a country boy!
Sure enough a train did appear and I got a mouthful from the driver. This I took seriously but how to get off a viaduct?
I climbed onto a nearby factory roof and shinned down a drainpipe.
Strangely I found a transit van key on the roof which coincidently fitted the youth club van were I worked.
There was an air of dereliction over that whole area then and both Dalston Junction and Broad Street was part of it.

 

[PeterC]

Did anyone ever see Paul McCartney around the station. I believe he was a great fan and even recorded an album called "Give my regards to Broad Street"

I saw the filming taking place when travelling one evening but didn't find out what it was for until later.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

When I first arrived in London in 1976 I walked/trespassed the line from Dalston Junction towards Broad Street. It seemed possible as the viaduct used to carry three tracks and I thought that late on a summer evening there would be no trains- I was young and a country boy!
Sure enough a train did appear and I got a mouthful from the driver. This I took seriously but how to get off a viaduct?
I climbed onto a nearby factory roof and shinned down a drainpipe.
Strangely I found a transit van key on the roof which coincidently fitted the youth club van were I worked.
There was an air of dereliction over that whole area then and both Dalston Junction and Broad Street was part of it.

Yes - apart from the direct City area - the area up towards now ever so trendy Hoxton etc was very run down , as industries closed down or migrated to the so called green fields of Hertfordshire etc. This was probably London's lowest point in terms of the inner suburbs. Plenty of material available on it, if you look hard enough - ( I doubt your trespass appeared in any official log report - it certainly would today )

 

[Andrew S]

That was always the urban truth about Ford vehicle locks, there were only a small finite number of key patterns, so a Ford owner's key would fit a proportion of other Ford vehicles. I didn't worry about it, my first car, a Morris Marina could be opened with a paperclip and leaning heavily on the drivers door.

 

[Springs Branch]

Not just Fords - back in the day, the same thing applied to Vauxhalls too.

In the mid-1970s, one of my mates had recently passed his driving test and had been entrusted with a key to his family's Vauxhall Viva.
Down the pub one night, he was recounting this same story - that Vauxhall produced only a very limited number of different keys. He said three, which the rest of us didn't believe.

Walking home after closing time, we passed a large used car lot, well populated with Vauxhall's fine products.

Those being the days before CCTV or other effective security measures, we wandered around at will trying his key in any Vauxhall we came across - purely in the interest of research, of course, we never attempted to start or steal from any vehicle and locked it up again (though, if caught, the magistrate still might not have been too sympathetic).

The "success" rate was about one in three.
Disclaimer: don't try this today children!

 

[pdeaves]

True story 1: my grandad once drove off in a car he thought was his, until finding the contents of the glovebox was unfamiliar.
True story 2: my parents and my gran had the same front door key. This was not deliberate and was only found by using the wrong one by mistake.

I suppose there are only a finite number of usable lock combinations available before the difference in tumbler length gets lost in the cutting tolerance.

Anyway, back to Broad Street. My memory is 'not Broad Street'. One of my railway regrets is never going into or travelling to or from the station. In my youth I always ignored it in favour of Liverpool Street, which was much more interesting and you could go to more places. Broad Street always appeared as somewhere to avoid at all costs. If only I knew then what I know now!

 

[Mikey C]

True story 1: my grandad once drove off in a car he thought was his, until finding the contents of the glovebox was unfamiliar.
True story 2: my parents and my gran had the same front door key. This was not deliberate and was only found by using the wrong one by mistake.

I suppose there are only a finite number of usable lock combinations available before the difference in tumbler length gets lost in the cutting tolerance.

Anyway, back to Broad Street. My memory is 'not Broad Street'. One of my railway regrets is never going into or travelling to or from the station. In my youth I always ignored it in favour of Liverpool Street, which was much more interesting and you could go to more places. Broad Street always appeared as somewhere to avoid at all costs. If only I knew then what I know now!

The station met its fate a year or so before I started going to that area regularly, so I sadly missed it. I did get to see the rebuilding of Liverpool Street (and Broadgate) which was very interesting though

 

[Bletchleyite]

Thanks for this. Funny how memory plays tricks.


I've heard that something similar could happen at Harwich PQ when there was still a through train to Liverpool as well as one to Liverpool Street.

It's still an issue at a few station (e.g. Norwich) to this day. I believe they changed the displays to say LIME ST LVRPL or something like that to reduce it.

 

[alholmes]

And here's the last train, just a few minutes before departure, on 27th June 1986.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Unless the tall chap with glasses on the platform is wearing a tabard (which I don't think he is), there doesn't seem to be any trace of stewarding! I also wonder where the chap in the suit carrying a briefcase is going - I at first thought that he was an ordinary passenger, but if he is, where's he going?

 

[alholmes]

Unless the tall chap with glasses on the platform is wearing a tabard (which I don't think he is), there doesn't seem to be any trace of stewarding! I also wonder where the chap in the suit carrying a briefcase is going - I at first thought that he was an ordinary passenger, but if he is, where's he going?

Those were all just ordinary punters - the few staff on the station didn't object to people going down on to the track for a final photograph, and the signalman had the signalbox open to everybody to visit. I'm sure the chap with the briefcase was just a passenger coming down to take a picture.

 

[Mikey C]

Those were all just ordinary punters - the few staff on the station didn't object to people going down on to the track for a final photograph, and the signalman had the signalbox open to everybody to visit. I'm sure the chap with the briefcase was just a passenger coming down to take a picture.

Wow, a different era where people were trusted to walk next to the track. A track with a LIVE third rail

 

[Gloster]

Wow, a different era where people were trusted to walk next to the track. A track with a LIVE third rail

Ah, but the juice rail was on the other side of the line. So it is quite safe, as you weren’t going to cross the line.

 

[xotGD]

Ah, but the juice rail was on the other side of the line. So it is quite safe, as you weren’t going to cross the line.

And the people wandering down on the right of the picture...

 

[Gloster]

And the people wandering down on the right of the picture...

Well, there is plenty of room for them to keep well clear of the live rail while wandering along. Anyway, its only 630 volts...

 

[edwin_m]

And the people visiting said signalbox, not to mention whoever took the photo.

 

[Bald Rick]

Given that there’s no marker lights lit on the unit, perhaps the con rail was off! (Perhaps due to reports of trespassers one the line...)

 

[nlogax]

Given that there’s no marker lights lit on the unit, perhaps the con rail was off! (Perhaps due to reports of trespassers one the line...)

Was going to comment on that - even in the H&S wild west of the 1980s I can't see people being let on the track with a live rail. Absolutely fascinating photo though! The past is a foreign country.

 

[Whistler40145]

Does anyone know what was the last loco hauled train to visit Broad Street?

 

[alholmes]

Well I never expected this much reaction to one of my pictures. The picture above of the last train was taken by me. It was 35 years ago, so my recollection of the day is a bit hazy, but as a couple of posters have said - things were different back then, and attitudes were different to H&S rules. I suspect that in this case, as there weren't that many people present there was a certain amount of tolerance, unlike nowadays where there'd be a lot more people turning up. I cannot imagine such a scene nowadays.

This 'last train' wasn't at the usual timetable change, I think it was about a month later than originally planned due to delays in getting everything ready to divert via the Graham Road curve into Liverpool Street. So there was far less publicity than there would be nowadays, and of course there was no social media back then.

I don't recall people crossing the actual track, or the live rail, but there was nobody there to stop anyone from doing so - people just seemed to apply common sense. It was possible to access where I was stood from the old platform where the signalbox is situated, and walk around the back behind the buffers. After taking that picture I then boarded at the back of the train for the departure, and recall seeing people beside the track filming and photographing the departure. I don't believe the power was isolated, as the train would've only been in the station for 15-20 minutes, and nobody was making any attempt to clear people away from the track - and people were still trackside when the train departed. I've other pictures from the day where the marker lights don't appear illuminated on that train and others - I recall it was a blisteringly hot and sunny day, so could just be a trick of the light.

Here's a few more pictures from the start of the evening peak, before other passengers turned up, showing the remnants of the station on the final day.

 

[EbbwJunction1]

Thank you, alholmes .. very interesting.

 

[Irascible]

If a series of photos could sum up the state & image of the railways at the time, those surely must be in the running ( especially the one looking back at the box & the construction site ). No wonder the section up to Dalston looked so decrepid a few years later when I arrived, it'd got a head start!