New Wave Railways

[Guest nzflyer]

Hi all,

 

Literature, music and academic pursuits are my main focus at the minute, although I still enjoy browsing the forum planning for an eventual return to railway modelling (it will be ages away yet). 

 

I can't help but notice that a lot of punk and New Wave bands of the early 1980s frequented their photo shoots in industrial backdrops, empty lots, with lots of weeds and long grass, rows of council houses, grey skies, and not a lot of colour. My friend has a Smiths poster on her bedroom wall dated Manchester 1983 with much what I've described in it. Another one of my favourite photos is of U2 circa 1980 hanging around a noticeably grey city backdrop.

 

I can't help but think that these images in the pre music video age was one way the bands visually expressed themselves and their surroundings. It showed what their world was like growing up (council houses, grey concrete, run down vibe) and the then current state of things (in the 70s and early 80s, noticeably drab). The railways of the times then, I can't help thinking, must have been in much the same way. A railway I originally planned to be set in the late 60s with lots of long grass, run down rolling stock, and swathes of rust, could just as easily be placed in the late 70s or early 80s.

 

The situation in Britain during the 70s was austere, I know, but to what extent was this encapsulated in the railways of the time?

 

Jim.

[D854_Tiger]

The railways take on their scenery.

 

A rural backwater was just as idyllic in the 1970s as it is now.

 

An inner city station not always so.

 

I went to Camden Town once and decided to venture outside the Tube station in Punky times, I didn't venture very far, I believe it has changed though recently.

[The Johnster]

The 70s and 80s' urban landscape was characterised by a general feeling of neglect, counterpointed all the more noticeably by the new yuppie world of spotless office blocks and gleaming steel, glass, and concrete.  Away from the confines of that world, grass and weeds grew between pavings stones, buddlea festooned the upper stories and roofs of buildings even in busy commercial city centres and shopping streets, paintwork peeled, large areas once occupied by docks, steelworks, factories, shipyards, the whole plethora of industrial Britian 20 years earlier, contained nothing but abandoned and derelict industrial buildings, and roads were uneven and potholed.  Drains were often blocked, and everything was grubby and grey; the punk album covers were an exaggeration, but not untruthful.  The term 'post industrial' came into use.

 

Many railway areas, however, were not as afforested by undergrowth as they are nowadays, nothing having been done to them since track was lifted in the '60s.  Some rural idylls were still rural idylls, but a lot of those that remained were run down, semi derelict, and characterised by rat infested stone or brick buildings boarded up and decaying while passengers huddled out of the rain into graffiti festooned bus shelters which leaked and were draughty; a small station had no dot matrix display board, CCTV, or, often, working lights, and the timetables were more often than not ripped down as soon as they were put up; they were scary places after dark and most people with any sense who had to use them got off the train and away as quickly as they could, hoping their parked car hadn't been broken into, again.  The railway, which got the blame for all this, could do little as they did not have the cash to staff the stations and CCTV was expensive and unreliable; even where it could be provided, any vandals had long gone before anyone turned up to deal with them.

 

As the 80s progressed into the 90s, and industrial sites were cleared for redevelopment, a sort of gentrification took place in many areas, weeds and grass being pulled up, new, neat pavements laid in concrete or tarmac, the stones having been pinched by the contractors and relaid in premium areas, lamp posts replaced, roads resurfaced, and those buildings which survived the developers being stone cleaned and purged of their weeds and buddlea; the modern scene is a reflection of this, almost obsessively neat and tidy.  My street is cleaned every week by my local council; I'd have been lucky to see a street cleaner more than once a year if at all 30 or 40 years ago.

 

On the railway, the turnaround started with the HST, a shining beacon of an indisputable success story in a sea of underinvested semi dereliction.  Railways were associated with The Old, not worth bothering with as everyone and everything went by road now, didn't it, or would do soon.  The HST came on stream just as a political awareness of the unsustainability of the policy of an ever expanding road network was awakening, and led to the introduction of new stock in the 80s and 90s on most services; it is significant that this stock has been, in general, less prone to vandalism than that which it replaced, a function of the regard people hold it in as much as the spread of CCTV and better lighting.

[Rugd1022]

Right now I'm thinking of Joy Division, rain lashed platforms 'up the north' and whistling Class 40s on endless vacuum braked newspaper trains disappearing into a dark, upper quadrant semaphore signalled Wintery gloom...

Edited September 17, 2017 by Rugd1022

[russ p]

Right now I'm thinking of Joy Division, rain lashed platforms 'up the north' and whistling Class 40s on endless vacuum braked newspaper trains disappearing into a dark, upper quadrant semaphore signalled Wintery gloom...

 

That sounds a nicer place than som horrible LED signalled line with overgrown sidings and a 66 once a day in amongst a sea of foreign units in horrendous liveries.

I can almost smell the coal fires ,diesel fumes and proper fish and chip shops of the world you portray, swap joy division for pink Floyd ad a 1750 allegro and I'm totally sold on it!.... How do I upload myself?

Sam Tylor in life on mars didn't know how lucky he was!

Edited September 17, 2017 by russ p

[Rugd1022]

Jim, I can thoroughly recommend this book by Andy Sparks, available s/hand on Amazon, it's a visual feast of grim '70s railway angst...

 

 

Another one worth a look is David Percival's 'Diesel Morning' from Lineside 25 Publishing, most of it is '60s and early '70s but it's a visual treat, with plenty of grim northern infrastructure.

 

 

 

 

[rosetheromani]

I went to Camden Town once and decided to venture outside the Tube station in Punky times, I didn't venture very far, I believe it has changed though recently.

I loved Camden in the 70's - one of the best music venues in the whole of Britain was the former London and North Western Railway Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, saw Joe Strummer before he was in the Clash play there as a support act. Yes a nice and seedy area. So Punk and the railways combined sort of.

[Fat Controller]

I believe Stiff Records actually did a tour by rail promoting the likes of Lena Lovich and Wreckless Eric.

[Rugd1022]

A slice of '70s northern grimness at Preston, photo by Martyn Hilbert...

 

 

 

[russ p]

Other than the weather I wish I was there now!

I remember teesside in the late 60s and 70s and that was very grim but I always looked forward to trip beit car or train through the industry and hayed it as it all disappeared and replaced by shiny light industrial units

[PatB]

I greatly regret that I shall probably never again smell Newcastle-upon-Tyne early on a winter evening. The heady mix of traffic fumes, beer from pub doorways and the hot oil of chip shops had a certain piquancy unequalled elsewhere in my experience .

[CloggyDog]

I believe Stiff Records actually did a tour by rail promoting the likes of Lena Lovich and Wreckless Eric.

 

The Be Stiff Rail Tour Has been reminisced about on these boards before:

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/77326-stiff-records-tour-train-1978/

 

https://urbanimage.photoshelter.com/gallery/Stiff-Records/G00005jZtqSvoaSs/C0000rdY.ZwU_gYw

 

Edited September 18, 2017 by CloggyDog

[ForestPines]

I recall in about '84 there was an article in Railway Modeller on how to model a realistic contemporary building, complete with graffiti and decay; the prototype chosen was Redland, on the Severn Beach line.

 

A few years later the indie label Sarah Records produced a run of singles whose sleeves were illustrated with successive pictures of the stations on the Severn Beach line. I think they may have included a free poster of Temple Meads at one point too.

[Reorte]

Born in the 70s, so can't really remember that period in any sort of detail, but there was a railways station smell that I now wonder if it was to do with thedisinfectant used to wash areas where people were careless. It wasn't anything to do with diesel fumes (some of those stations would've been on electrified lines). Dimpled square tarmac features in my memory for some reason. Stations don't seem to smell the same these days (no great loss!). With a few exceptions I feel that there was definitely a run down feeling to them, although with a lot more life and personality than now, not that one has to exclude the other - that most don't feel like they're about to fall down any more is definitely an improvement.

Edited September 19, 2017 by Reorte

[tractionman]

Right now I'm thinking of Joy Division, rain lashed platforms 'up the north' and whistling Class 40s on endless vacuum braked newspaper trains disappearing into a dark, upper quadrant semaphore signalled Wintery gloom...

 

Bands like Magazine, The Cure, OMD, Joy Division, with a post-punk, melancholic sound, always conjures up in my mind the very late seventies/early eighties, and urban railway scenes like those described here, and captured in some of my favourite photographic albums, such as those by Andy Sparks, as well as the Strathwood 70s Spotting Days books...  pure nostalgia!

 

cheers,

 

Keith

[Steamport Southport]

Having grown up in the 1970s it wasn't just the grimness that stuck out but that everything was so bright and gaudy.

 

Most of the cars for example were painted various shades of orange, yellow, red, green and don't forget the Ford Cortina's painted to look like the Starsky and Hutch car. 

 

 

 

Jason

[Guest nzflyer]

Interesting points you all make. I love the photo of the Class 40. 

[Rugd1022]

Bright gawdy colours on certain cars I remember all too well, but let's not forget the huge number of brown Cortinas, Datsuns and BL products devouring Britain's roads in the '70s and well into the '80s. On the railway, corporate blue was pretty much everywhere, there was still plenty of steam era infrastructure about of course, only lightened up slightly by the odd depot applied deviation from the all consuming standard livery of rail blue, like the famous Finsbury Park white window surrounds on their 'racehorse' Deltics, here's 'Pinza' up north at York on a wet and gloomy day...

 

 

And a spot of appropriate graffiti...