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Strand and its trains


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  • RMweb Gold

There is definitely a book waiting to be written about it.

 

I pitched the idea to Ian Allan about 25 years ago. They said that there would be no market for it and then, only a few years later, published the London Rail Atlas.

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  • RMweb Gold

Aha!

 

It was later. Here it is c1914.

 

I am pretty good at map reading, it's been a passion of mine from a very young age. But that map has me quite befuddled. Perhaps it would be clearer if I had the wider context to trace the origins of each of the tracks.

 

But what is fascinating  me is what Kevin describes as a "blind tunnel" forming what would have been a better connection from the East London Rly to the rest of the Great Eastern. On that c1914 map, there seem to be platforms just north of the tunnel under the Liverpool St approaches.

 

But most strange of all, no indication at all of this bit of line on the RCH diagrams of that era. There's a cracking cameo layout to be created out of that junction just south of the tunnel.

 

Edit to add:

 

Not as good at map reading as I thought! Understand now, after more caffeine, that Kevin's original map is further south and the platforms that I saw are the north end of Whitechapel ELR. The "blind tunnel" is shown on a 1916 OS map (old-maps.co.uk) and does indeed stop under the GER tracks with an orientation that would indeed have taken it onwards below Mape St. Mape St was a very built-up area but is now mainly a park called Weaver's Fields with only an old GLC school remaining that would have been there in 1916.

 

With all that open land available, I would suggest that TfL have missed a trick. A useful new link could have been created rather than the new Shoreditch link.

Edited by Joseph_Pestell
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JP

 

Are you looking at the right tunnel?

 

The one I’m talking about it ‘T’ on sketch plan below.

 

It was on a route that, IIRC, was meant to go to just north of Cambridge Heath station, but was never completed. Mape Street was, I think, built on the intended alignment when the land was ‘released’, and if you look near Cambridge Heath there is a ‘back passage’ which again seems to fall on the intended alignment.

 

It is a seriously difficult area to understand from maps alone, but fortunately I can remember some of it from the 1970s/80s, when a lot less redevelopment had taken place. Bits of the coal-drop viaduct were still there, and enough at shoreditch to get a feel for the height of everything (high!). It was all ‘brick cliffs’ and gloominess down at ELR level.

 

Now, the ELR breaks out and soars up across this area on a viaduct that joins with the NLR route into Broad Street, but unfortunately the viaduct is enclosed for noise-mitigation, so one doesn’t get a decent impression when riding on a train across it ...... it’s easy to mistake it for a tunnel.

 

Modern map with GER (blue) and NLR/ELR (red) highlighted. You can appreciate the fercisios gradient up from the ELR.

 

Kevin

 

Edited to add RCH map, which makes clear the error of my memory!

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Edited by Nearholmer
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  • RMweb Gold

JP

 

Are you looking at the right tunnel?

 

The one I’m talking about it ‘T’ on sketch plan below.

 

It was on a route that, IIRC, was meant to go to just north of Cambridge Heath station, but was never completed. Mape Street was, I think, built on the intended alignment when the land was ‘released’, and if you look near Cambridge Heath there is a ‘back passage’ which again seems to fall on the intended alignment.

 

It is a seriously difficult area to understand from maps alone, but fortunately I can remember some of it from the 1970s/80s, when a lot less redevelopment had taken place. Bits of the coal-drop viaduct were still there, and enough at shoreditch to get a feel for the height of everything (high!). It was all ‘brick cliffs’ and gloominess down at ELR level.

 

Now, the ELR breaks out and soars up across this area on a viaduct that joins with the NLR route into Broad Street, but unfortunately the viaduct is enclosed for noise-mitigation, so one doesn’t get a decent impression when riding on a train across it ...... it’s easy to mistake it for a tunnel.

 

Modern map with GER (blue) and NLR/ELR (red) highlighted. You can appreciate the fercisios gradient up from the ELR.

 

Kevin

 

Hi Kevin,

 

Many thanks for your efforts there.

 

I had read your map correctly. That never-completed link gives all sorts of scope for an interesting model.

 

I also visited the Shoreditch area several times from the 1960s onwards but had never noticed this unused tunnel route - and I don't think my late father knew of it either.

 

Do you have a date for when it was built? I have just checked my RCH diagram (in the Ian Allan book) and see that it is dated 1906, which may explain why it is not featured as per your 1914 map. I guess that WW1 economies may have stopped completion of the line and yet one would think that its potential strategic use for shifting troops and munitions to the South Coast would actually have encouraged its completion.

Edited by Joseph_Pestell
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The map extract that introduced this topic is from the 1893-1895 series and shows both the dead-end tunnel - with track in the cutting - and Mape Street. It's unclear how far the track goes into the tunnel as the map doesn't show the underground lines.

 

I think the Mape-Street spur was entirely owned by the ELR and did not, in 1906, involve a junction with other lines: hence not show in the RCH list of such. Adding the Spitalfields hoist presumably turned it into a junction for accounting purposes.

Edited by Guy Rixon
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  • RMweb Gold

The map extract that introduced this topic is from the 1893-1895 series and shows both the dead-end tunnel - with track in the cutting - and Mape Street. It's unclear how far the track goes into the tunnel as the map doesn't show the underground lines.

 

I think the Mape-Street spur was entirely owned by the ELR and did not, in 1906, involve a junction with other lines: hence not show in the RCH list of such. Adding the Spitalfields hoist presumably turned it into a junction for accounting purposes.

 

On the RCH diagrams, all junctions within the geographical area are shown - not just those where two different companies meet. So I guess that it is just an omission.

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Wikipedia says:

 

“To avoid this reversal, a line was planned from the ELR north of Whitechapel to the GER at Bethnal Green. Acts for this were passed in 1866 and 1868. When the GER route to Hackney Downs Junction, now Hackney Downs, was constructed in 1872, the route was altered to connect at Cambridge Heath, with an abandonment Act for the previous route in 1871 and two new Acts in 1876 and 1877. A short length of the latter tunnel was built, and from October 1900 additional capacity was offered by a wagon lift, carrying two ten-ton wagons, from the Great Eastern coal depot at Spitalfields to a siding laid in the tunnel stub.”

 

So, I think the blind tunnel dates from the early 1880s, probably contemporary with St Mary’s Curve at Whitechapel, which was completed, and allowed Met trains onto the ELR.

 

One would have to delve into the dating of Mape Street to understand whether my hypothesis that it was built on the alignment when powers were abandoned is correct. There’s barely any of it left now, because it was bombed flat in the war, then turned into a public park. There is one building left, which is now a local history centre, but I’m not minded to go delving, having too many other things on the go.

 

Map below is pre-railway, c1848, and Mape Street is on it, so maybe the railway was meant to run under the existing street, rather than the order of events being as i postulated. We need a copy of the amending act .....

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Edited by Nearholmer
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And, here it is on an 1868 map of proposed railways, showing the iteration that would have gone to Bethnal Green. This is before the ELR was completed in this area.

 

Mape Street already exists, but spitalfields coal drop viaduct, which predates 1868, has not been included.

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Edited by Nearholmer
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And, an attempt at the bones of it in 3D. The arrangements at the points where the deep lines go below the viaducts are guesswork, based on the typical, and I’ve omitted a lot at original ground level.

 

Let layout-building commence!

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And, back to topic, with another bit of the 1868 map.

 

Interesting how the railway is offset to one side of the existing street. It suggests that street widening, paid for by the railway company was part of the deal.

 

Also, what is the significance of the buildings highlighted in dark grey? They seem to be the larger, more important buildings. Possibly the ones that the railway project must not touch. There's one on the corner of Agar Street and the Strand, and historically that was gone by 1908 when the BMA HQ was built there.

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The background map is an ordinary street map, so the grey buildings are simply more prominent places, I think.

 

It’s from one of the several attempts to coral all the multiple railway proposals onto one map, and I’m not sure that alignments should be taken as exact, it isn’t like a ‘deposited plan’, which would show centre line and limits of deviation. That chicane onto Hungerford Bridge definitely doesn’t look serious to me.

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Photo in July 1981 showing just how close Shoreditch E London Line station was to the main line into LV -

attachicon.gifelon-13-14.jpg

 

 

I remember travelling into Liverpool Street in the '60s and I'm pretty sure there was still a physical connection between the ELR and the GER at that point... But then you know what they say about the '60s!

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  • RMweb Gold

I remember travelling into Liverpool Street in the '60s and I'm pretty sure there was still a physical connection between the ELR and the GER at that point... But then you know what they say about the '60s!

I was not there (well only aged 12 in 1969) but you are right that the track was still there, as indeed it was at New Cross and New Cross Gate.

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Folks,

 

Save up and buy this book http://lightmoor.co.uk/view-book.php?ref=L8351&section=CatNew

 

I picked up a copy this afternoon, and am leafing through it on the train home. It is absolutely excellent. If, like me, you tend towards one company, it serves as a good intro to the others, and it is lavishly laid-out, with lots of colour reproductions.

 

Based on the LBSCRy and Underground/Met content, the views of whatever your 'home railway' is might be c80% familiar, but I'd bet the rest aren't.

 

It even has a photo showing the area we were disecting yesterday, showing a GER train coming up out ofLiverpool St onto the viaduct at Spitalfields.

 

Kevin

Edited by Nearholmer
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For completeness, the photos that compound linked to. They show that my sketch has the hoist in slightly the wrong place, so I might try again later. [Edit: no, my sketch is about right. The photo of the bottom of the hoist is looking South, under a bridge that I omitted from the sketch. The lines into the blond tunnel are to the right of the bottom of the hoist. The photo of the top is, confusingly, looking North.]

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Edited by Nearholmer
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  • 1 month later...

While struggling with the details of Strand's goods yards, some progress has been made on vans to carry the perishables traffic.

 

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This is a Y2 fruit-van of the GWR. Its body is from a GWW/Geen kit. The axleguards are by MRD, arranged with one fixed and one rocking axle. These are about the only suspension I've found that works for vehicles with 3'6" wheels are clasp brakes. The brake shoes and hangars are from a Mainly Trains fret, but the levers I think are by Wizard models. Springs are my own print, but the other fittings are from the original kit. 

 

This one was due to get painted this evening but now, looking properly at the photo, I see that I need to clean up and re-prime first. This one will be grey.

 

I have finally sorted out a lettering method for this van: I've ordered alphabet transfers from Fox and will have to make up the entire legend letter by letter. Pray for my soul.

 

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This is a "Grand Vitesse" of the SER, as repainted by the SECR. It's a Roxey kit which has been lurking half-built while I sorted out some suspension.

 

Roxey provide rigid suspension or a form of inside-bearing rocking axle that I don't much like, having built a similar van to that scheme before. This model has more of the MRD axleguards, arranged to rock at one end. I quite like these axleguards for SER NPCS for a number of reasons: they approximate the right shap of the W, which is tighter at the top than the RCH pattern; they accomodate 3'6" wheels (some filing out needed for P4, but nothing too hard); they hold the axles without end-float; and they have half-etched bridles which can easily be distorted to the bowed pattern used by the SER.

 

The roof support is Milliput packed in above glued cardboard "shuttering" and then carved down to profile. I don't yet know how I'm going to make the final surface of the roof. Options are: find and fit the vacuum-formed plastic from the kit (which is what the Milliput was originally meant to support); plank it with plywood and rub smooth; plywood, but covered with paper; cardboard "doped" with superglue to stiffen the corners; or just make a metal roof.

 

One thing I don't have to do is line it. The SER lined their vans; the SECR did not. Therefore, the lake finish, after from dusting and transfers, will be pretty much as shown. 

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The transfers are a mix. The main legend - that which nobody sells as a made-up transfer - is written out letter by letter in Franklin Heavy 2mm, by Fox. It's reasonably close to the style used by the GWR, but the ideal size would have been about 1.7mm. The weight notations are HMRS pressfix.

 

I've assumed, without photographic evidence, that the lettering stayed the same when the van was repainted from red to grey c.1904. The red Y2 will not be a problem here. After these two are done, I have a Y1 van to finished, based on a disappointing Falcon Brass kit, and that probably does have different lettering; currently I have not photos of a Y1 in as-built condition.

 

The yield of letters on the Franklin sheet is such that I can do three vans from two sheets, so I might build another Y2 if I can get hold of the kit. Also on the long-range plan are V8 and V12 banana vans, if I can ever come by some photos.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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The SECR Grand Vitesse van is now almost-sort-of finished. I was hoping to finish it this evening, but domestic events and a business trip to France early tomorrow morning have stopped me. Still to do are the handrails, painting the roof, and the second vacuum-pipe. Also making up some decent wheel-sets (Exactoscale) to replace the fluxed-up AGW cast-offs used during construction.

 

The eventual solution to the roof is two layers of good-quality white card, about 0.25mm per layer. The first layer is bonded to the roof sub-structure (milliput) and the top layer bonded to layer one. The secret weapon here is "Rocket" card-glue by Delux Products, which I've had in stock for a while but never used. It bonds card to almost anything, including plastic, grabs very quickly and sets in a minute or less. It can even bond the rain strips, which are plastic strip to the card. Highly recommended.

 

The paint, BTW, is purple lake and is a lot redder in most lighting conditions. It is not painted in the austerity brown of the Maunsell period.

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