Time travel at Lowestoft

[hayfield]

Thought I had gone through a time warp when arriving at Lowestoft Station, low and behold a British Railways station sign welcoming me. Arrived from Oulton Broad North in a 2 car unit, travelled back in a single 315 unit which at times seemed to struggle to get going. Also seemed to have an old fashioned signal box.

 

The station could make an interesting branch line modelling project as a compact branch line terminus

Edited June 10, 2018 by hayfield

[cnw6847]

I believe the station sign at Lowestoft is listed.

 

Lowestoft is a shadow of its former self

[hayfield]

I believe the station sign at Lowestoft is listed.

 

Lowestoft is a shadow of its former self

 

 

That makes a pleasant change, the station is quite nice, as was certain parts of the town, we walked along to the south beach and found a very pleasant tea room(flying fifteen) on the seafront. which was in stark difference to the town centre. Seems to be a town in two halves 

 

Will se what Google throws up regarding the old station

[Ravenser]

Thought I had gone through a time warp when arriving at Lowestoft Station, low and behold a British Railways station sign welcoming me. Arrived from Oulton Broad North in a 2 car unit, travelled back in a single 315 unit which at times seemed to struggle to get going. Also seemed to have an old fashioned signal box.

 

76DFE4E9-8F49-42C1-81AF-AB194FBB90A6.jpeg

 

The station could make an interesting branch line modelling project as a compact branch line terminus

 

I take it you mean a 153?   A 315 is a dual voltage 4 car EMU , as used on inner suburban services. I hadn't heard 3rd rail had reached Lowestoft yet...

[stewartingram]

Or even 25kV o/h for the 315!

 

Stewart

[RichardS]

That makes a pleasant change, the station is quite nice, as was certain parts of the town, we walked along to the south beach and found a very pleasant tea room(flying fifteen) on the seafront. which was in stark difference to the town centre. Seems to be a town in two halves

 

Will se what Google throws up regarding the old station

Always has been a town of at least two halves, Lowestoft. Always the poor relation to Yarmouth except for deeper sea trawling when it's fleet outlasted GY for a time until that too succumbed to falling fish stocks and rationalisation and economies of scale etc.

Seafront - South Lowestoft pleasant but no longer has putting greens, boating lakes, miniature railway etc.

North Lowestoft - dying shopping centre.

Main claim to fame is that Hannants is based at Oulton Broad - which actually isn't Low'Stuf (Norfolkese) anyway.

 

It's a shame.

[Zomboid]

Aren't the Darkness from Lowestoft? Which I believe is actually in Suffolk...

[hayfield]

Aren't the Darkness from Lowestoft? Which I believe is actually in Suffolk...

 

 

Think they were drinking outside Wetherspoons when I was there

[lmsforever]

• Used to have to visit Lowestoft once  a month in the late seventies to do an inspection at the canning factory never stayed in the town always in a smashing pub on the outskirts.Even then the town was pretty horrible especially in the depths of winter shame a popular resort in the fifties has gone downwards Yarmouth seems to have kept its appeal.

[RichardS]

Aren't the Darkness from Lowestoft? Which I believe is actually in Suffolk...

Indeed it is. Though I don't think anybody has suggested otherwise. It's a sort of frontier town politically in Suffolk but probably closer to Norfolk socially. I doubt many workers commute to Ipswich.

 

Two interesting railway aspects were the branch line into the fish docks and the sleeper depot where sleepers were creosoted etc. I think the little sentinels worked at the sleeper depot at one time.

[hayfield]

Indeed it is. Though I don't think anybody has suggested otherwise. It's a sort of frontier town politically in Suffolk but probably closer to Norfolk socially. I doubt many workers commute to Ipswich.

 

Two interesting railway aspects were the branch line into the fish docks and the sleeper depot where sleepers were creosoted etc. I think the little sentinels worked at the sleeper depot at one time.

 

 

I think it would make a lovely model and the swing bridge at Oulton Basin North with the lock gates and road draw bridge either in the fore or back ground would make a great little cameo, could even use a bit of modellers licence and squese in Oulton Basin South station approach

[IWCR]

I  used  Lowestoft  several  times  late  80's  or  early  90's,  at  that  time  there  was  a  steam  loco  tender  parked in  the  station  with  a  hole  cut  in  the  side,  presumably  being  used  as  a  coal  bunker?.  I  think it  had  gone  by  my  last  visit.

Nice  to  know  the station signs  still  in  place.

 

Pete

[Legend]

I think many towns in the U.K. are suffering. It’s a shame about Lowestoft . Mid to late 60s my family went to Great Yarmouth camping . All the way from Scotland which was quite a trip in these days pre M74/ M6 etc . Every time I go over Shap in my car, hardly noticing it, I give a wry smile remembering my Dad being worried if our old mini bus would make it over snap or to Scotch Corner over Stainmore.

 

Happy days on holiday. I loved Yarmouth , but Lowestoft was always my favourite. The boating pond with the canoes , the miniature railway , a bridge that rotated . All magical to a 5 year old . We visited a trawler and a lightship moored in the harbour. I think there was another park on the South shore that also had a boating pond on it ( now this sounds stupid but were the boats electric like dodgems?) The only downside was that I remembered one of the hotels on the front had caught fire and everyone was very sad about that.

 

Great Yarmouth , Gorleston and Lowestoft , loved them all . I’m sorry if they’ve now become run down . Doesn’t Lowestoft still have a good model shop, is it Parrs on London Road? I do remember visiting it while on holiday all these years ago .

Edited June 10, 2018 by Legend

[RichardS]

I think many towns in the U.K. are suffering. It’s a shame about Lowestoft . Mid to late 60s my family went to Great Yarmouth camping . All the way from Scotland which was quite a trip in these days pre M74/ M6 etc . Every time I go over Shap in my car, hardly noticing it, I give a wry smile remembering my Dad being worried if our old mini bus would make it over snap or to Scotch Corner over Stainmore.

 

Happy days on holiday. I loved Yarmouth , but Lowestoft was always my favourite. The boating pond with the canoes , the miniature railway , a bridge that rotated . All magical to a 5 year old . We visited a trawler and a lightship moored in the harbour. I think there was another park on the South shore that also had a boating pond on it ( now this sounds stupid but were the boats electric like dodgems?) The only downside was that I remembered one of the hotels on the front had caught fire and everyone was very sad about that.

 

Great Yarmouth , Gorleston and Lowestoft , loved them all . I’m sorry if they’ve now become run down . Doesn’t Lowestoft still have a good model shop, is it Parrs on London Road? I do remember visiting it while on holiday all these years ago .

 

Don't get the impression that GY & LT are dirty wastelands - they are not - both ports support the oil, gas and windfarms industries and Yarmouth at least still has merchantmen visiting the

port.

 

The seaside of all three is still quite nice but no where near as vibrant as in the past. Beaches are pretty good and Yarmouth particularly still has a lot of 'commercial' attractions for families.  

 

The principle problems are economic - many of the people are not wealthy, the jobs can be seasonal and low paid and this impacts the shopping areas. The towns are all at the end of the road, the communications are bad, industries that remain are small and very niche, there is no major manufacturing to speak of. The outlook for many young people is not hopeful. Both GY and LT were categorised as 'deprived' and allegedly allocated money. GY has invested a lot in the seafront and this weekend has a largish airshow for the first time.

 

The long gone electric motor boats were in Kensington Gardens (which are in Kirkley I think; next place down the coast before Pakefield) - they' weren't dodgems really but I suspect some did bump them. Like Dodgems though they did collect current from an overhead web via a sort of mast. In retrospect it appears quite a dangerous arrangement.

 

Parrs model railway shop is on London Road South. I think Mr Parr retired a while back but his daughter was continuing to run the business. Did art materials as well.

 

Hannant's of course was the other shop with a model department in London Road North. The toy/model shop closed but the business operates out of a warehouse in Oulton Broad - in the scale model market (kits and bits.)

[hayfield]

Richard

 

I bet there are quite a few who earn very good salaries/income in both GY and LT, there is a bit on the BBC website of a woman who set up a jewelry business with 500 dollars, the company is now worth 1 billion. I guess its having the mind set to try and make something happen, rather than allowing things to happen. 

 

I used to play golf with a lad who had a couple of salad packing companies in East Anglia, sold them on to one of the big guys and bought farms in South America which grew salads which were flown in during the off seasons. Hopefully the lack of foreign pickers will increase wages for the local seasonal workers

 

I went past Wetherspoons about 2 pm, a couple of likely lads sat at a table full of empty beer bottles, more than I drink in a month let alone 2 hours.Can't be that poor if they can afford to drink that much  

[Legend]

Nice to know the towns are fighting back. I always remember taking the local bus in Paisley and seeing the inscription by the door Eastern Coachworks, Lowestoft . In the 60s it was inconceivable that the Scottish bus group would buy a foreign bus!

 

Thanks for confirming the electric boats- it was a distant memory, I did wonder if I was making it up!

[roythebus]

Remember Lowestoft was the home of Eastern CoachWorks until it was taken over by British Leyland and closed down. They made bus bodies for the Tilling Group companies in the 50s and the famous London Transport GS single decks and the private hire RFW coaches, both of which I have restored over the years.

[Wickham Green]

 

Two interesting railway aspects were the branch line into the fish docks and the sleeper depot where sleepers were creosoted etc. I think the little sentinels worked at the sleeper depot at one time.

.... not to mention the infamous powered 'Grampus' wagon !

[D1059]

 

The long gone electric motor boats were in Kensington Gardens (which are in Kirkley I think; next place down the coast before Pakefield) - they' weren't dodgems really but I suspect some did bump them. Like Dodgems though they did collect current from an overhead web via a sort of mast. In retrospect it appears quite a dangerous arrangement.

 

 

We treated them as dodgems when I was a kid !!

 

H&S must have put paid to the original overhead mesh current collection I guess - the staff would collect the money like dodgems too, stepping from the small 'islands' in the lake onto the backs of the boats and holding the collector pole !!  By the mid 70s the old electric boats had been replaced by battery versions. Was very sad to find they had gone completely when I visited in the 90s

[RichardS]

We treated them as dodgems when I was a kid !!

 

 

 

Probably why they had to replace them. 

[RANGERS]

Nice to know the towns are fighting back. I always remember taking the local bus in Paisley and seeing the inscription by the door Eastern Coachworks, Lowestoft . In the 60s it was inconceivable that the Scottish bus group would buy a foreign bus!

 

Thanks for confirming the electric boats- it was a distant memory, I did wonder if I was making it up!

 

In the 1960s anything built in Lowestoft (even Leyland come to that) would have been regarded as foreign to the SBG!

 

Ironically that the choice of the Volvos they took from 1975 was influenced by the presence of a production plant at Irvine and therefore deemed to be home produced, but I'm not sure how much B58 production actually took place there, not a lot I'd suspect. The B10M was built there on and off over a fairly lengthy period and became a popular choice for a number of SBG subsidiaries so it could be claimed to be 'home produced', even if the Alexander bodies had been succeeded by Blackpool built Duples and ultimately Scarborough built Plaxtons, although post privatisation they did return big time.

[RichardS]

Richard

 

I bet there are quite a few who earn very good salaries/income in both GY and LT, there is a bit on the BBC website of a woman who set up a jewelry business with 500 dollars, the company is now worth 1 billion. I guess its having the mind set to try and make something happen, rather than allowing things to happen. 

 

I used to play golf with a lad who had a couple of salad packing companies in East Anglia, sold them on to one of the big guys and bought farms in South America which grew salads which were flown in during the off seasons. Hopefully the lack of foreign pickers will increase wages for the local seasonal workers

 

I went past Wetherspoons about 2 pm, a couple of likely lads sat at a table full of empty beer bottles, more than I drink in a month let alone 2 hours.Can't be that poor if they can afford to drink that much  

 

Of course there are some who are more wealthy always have been always will be. In Yarmouth those who run the amusement arcades etc and possibly those working offshore would be good examples

 

But as you will see from the House of Commons briefing paper dated April 2018 - link below- this shows both the Great Yarmouth and Waveney constituencies have high unemployment (coloured dark read on the first map) compared  to the rest of Norfolk and Suffolk and most of the south of England. In fact GY is the 10th highest rate in the country at 7.4% (just behind some of the inner cities!) and witnessed a 14% yearly increase while Waveney is 5.5% and witnessed an 18% increase. 

 

http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8286/CBP-8286.pdf

 

Obviously the more who are unemployed to begin with the lower the % increase in unemployed compared to areas of higher employment which might have similar numbers finding them selves out of work.

 

The second link provides data for average income for taxpayers in Norfolk and Suffolk by district council. Great Yarmouth, Waveney and Fenland are the three lowest. The whole region is 15% below the national average.

 

http://www.edp24.co.uk/business/norfolk-suffolk-average-income-below-national-rate-breckland-broadland-yarmouth-waveney-north-south-norfolk-kings-lynn-1-5469373

 

In the tax year 2018/19 any adult earning the national living wage of 7.83 and working 29 hours per week or less will not be a tax payer (TR 11850). Young adults would be working for longer as the NMW is less for them. A lot of people here are part time and earn the minimum.

 

On the data it is the southern Suffolk and North Essex districts which are the highest. This is for one main reason - commuting distance to London. Thus a proportion of the taxpayers here are earning London levels of pay which slews the data.  

 

Traditional high-manpower industries such as food processing have all closed in both GY an LT. Bird's Eye peas are no longer packed at Yarmouth or Lowestoft and consequently the farmers who grew them in the East no longer do so.  Food canning at Lowestoft has gone - the Mortons/CWS plants closed long ago, the Pye TV factory - closed, Shipbuilders - Brooke Marine and Richard's (no connection) gone, the North Sea Oil and Gas industry plateaued a long time ago. Eastern Coachworks (mentioned above) gone. The only new industry to really offer any replacement for just a part of all this is the offshore wind farms. There used to be a Ro-Ro service at GY - Norfolk Line - moved to Felixstowe decades ago.  

 

Curiously Pasta is made in GY and exported.  http://www.pastafoods.com/ (It's also made in Norwich)

 

It is impossible to comment on the people drinking outside Weatherspoon's as I know of their personal circumstances no more than you do and to base an assumption about a whole town or the wealth of the residents on such a small example is disingenuous. How do you know all the empties were theirs? Did you ask them? 

 

Individuals everywhere will be entrepreneurial but most people are not, so again to cast aspersions upon the energies of a population by highlighting a small number of notable examples is to slight the majority who are ordinary working people given the chance.

 

I'm not sure how a lack of foreign workers will increase wages for local seasonal workers who must already be paid the minimum wage. Paying them more will cause prices to rise unless the assumption is that the local seasonal workers will work more hours. Which is not unreasonable except for one point - such seasonal work is usally characterised by long hours already such is the nature of the need to harvest or serve the needs of the holidaymaker. The only impact of a lack of 'foreign pickers' will be to cause shortages in the shops and hence a price rise to consumers - it's happened already with some farmers not able to harvest their perishable crops and thus incurring losses rather than being able to reward their workers with higher wages. It's an interesting concept. But next year these farmers will not be growing the cash crops - probably go over to rape or maize. Which don't make make great salads.

 

Just because a person is 'unemployed' does mean they are fit for any or every kind of work. Of course there are lazy scoundrels here as much as any where else. But 'not being in work' does not arise from only one cause. Generalisations are always dangerous. (For example all young people in Essex - drive Ford Cortinas, appear to be orange skinned and rejoice in the names of Sharon and Dwayne. Well the two I met in 1976 were.)

 

While some of these 'foreign pickers' are in the East and South of Norfolk  the majority are in the West (which is the really flat bit called The Fens and Marshland - yes, there is a difference) where the fruit and veg are grown. In the East and Suffolk where the crops are mainly rape, barley (much for malting and some exported from Yarmouth), beet (processed at Cantley  Bury St Edmunds and Wissington) and potatoes - machines are used for harvesting. No longer the ruddy faced cider pickled yokel with scythe and pitchfork tossing sheaves into thresher or,          be-smocked and flailing the grain twixt the open doors of the flint cobbled, thatched barn while those from the workhouse glean the field margins. (Heck I'm sounding like Ian Rice!) 

 

So many people living in the London catchment and the commuter towns of the south east have absolutely no idea what life is like in the extremities of the country for the indigenous residents - Cornwall, parts of East Anglia, the North East, the Fens, parts of the North West, Wales, the Humber area etc etc. Some people in these places - Norfolk and Cornwall particularly - cannot afford to live in the places where they were born because the affordable housing is actually unaffordable to them. Parts of the North Norfolk Coast for example are ghost villages in the winter - the houses owned by rich Londoners as holiday homes and maybe let out in the season to urban foragers and the pretty wellie brigade - but there's no real work anyway.

 

I could go on (and on and on and on - no, really).

 

But one last little fact. You might think Norwich - home of the old Norwich Union Insurance Societies (God rest their souls), a wonderful cathedral, big castle etc was a bit better?  By the 1970's Norwich had the highest proportion of council housing in the whole country. The whole country. Not an inner city, not a conurbation, but a smallish, very old, market city in the middle of the granary of England.   https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/council-housing-in-norwich-i-thought-we-were-ever-so-posh/

 

That's all.

[Legend]

In the 1960s anything built in Lowestoft (even Leyland come to that) would have been regarded as foreign to the SBG!

 

Ironically that the choice of the Volvos they took from 1975 was influenced by the presence of a production plant at Irvine and therefore deemed to be home produced, but I'm not sure how much B58 production actually took place there, not a lot I'd suspect. The B10M was built there on and off over a fairly lengthy period and became a popular choice for a number of SBG subsidiaries so it could be claimed to be 'home produced', even if the Alexander bodies had been succeeded by Blackpool built Duples and ultimately Scarborough built Plaxtons, although post privatisation they did return big time.

The ones I remember were Western SMT Fleetlines . They weren’t all bodied by Alexander, in fact for years Western operated ECW bodied ones which were the longest buses they had. The other ECW bodied buses were the short lived VRs , but also the Lodekkas were ECW so not exacty rarein the SBG fleet.

 

More memories , I remember Lowestoft had their own buses in Chocolate and Cream

[RANGERS]

The ones I remember were Western SMT Fleetlines . They weren’t all bodied by Alexander, in fact for years Western operated ECW bodied ones which were the longest buses they had. The other ECW bodied buses were the short lived VRs , but also the Lodekkas were ECW so not exacty rarein the SBG fleet.

 

More memories , I remember Lowestoft had their own buses in Chocolate and Cream

 

Not rare, just foreign!

 

The ECW Fleetlines were perhaps the most numerous of the ECW types to gravitate north of the border, there were probably as many as the Alexander bodied ones across all the SBG subsidiaries, and as well as being long lived there, the vast majority of them went on to extend their careers elsewhere. IMHO they were among the best proportioned of the Fleetlines, the curved screen type in particular.

 

In addition to the Lodekkas and ill fated VRs, ECW also provided RELLs (Fife), LS coaches (Eastern Scottish), Ks (Western) and Olympians (most SBG, Strathclyde and Lothian).

 

The Lowestoft (later Waveney Valley) fleet was a quaint outpost, a former colleague of mine who worked there in the late 60s used to regale us with tales of an operation which he described as the "John Steed" of the bus world, immaculately dressed and cool under pressure! Evidently making money was never really an option and losing it had become a way of life. As long as the buses ran on time, the local politicians were content and the losses could be justified but as time went on, staff shortages and a lack of passengers made the whole operation a basket case. The services eventually merged with Eastern Counties.

 

They had only a handful of ECW bodies as being a nationalised concern, ECW couldn't sell on the open market between 1948 and 1966, only the BTC and SMT companies could buy from them. The AEC Swift with ECW standard bus bodies became the standard once they were available and all bought thereafter were this type. A couple of them later joined similar vehicles at Yarmouth Corporation when Eastern Counties took over the Waveney operations.

Edited June 12, 2018 by RANGERS

[hayfield]

I'm not sure how a lack of foreign workers will increase wages for local seasonal workers who must already be paid the minimum wage. Paying them more will cause prices to rise unless the assumption is that the local seasonal workers will work more hours. Which is not unreasonable except for one point - such seasonal work is usally characterised by long hours already such is the nature of the need to harvest or serve the needs of the holidaymaker. The only impact of a lack of 'foreign pickers' will be to cause shortages in the shops and hence a price rise to consumers - it's happened already with some farmers not able to harvest their perishable crops and thus incurring losses rather than being able to reward their workers with higher wages. It's an interesting concept. But next year these farmers will not be growing the cash crops - probably go over to rape or maize. Which don't make make great salads.

 

So many people living in the London catchment and the commuter towns of the south east have absolutely no idea what life is like in the extremities of the country for the indigenous residents - Cornwall, parts of East Anglia, the North East, the Fens, parts of the North West, Wales, the Humber area etc etc. Some people in these places - Norfolk and Cornwall particularly - cannot afford to live in the places where they were born because the affordable housing is actually unaffordable to them. Parts of the North Norfolk Coast for example are ghost villages in the winter - the houses owned by rich Londoners as holiday homes and maybe let out in the season to urban foragers and the pretty wellie brigade - but there's no real work anyway.

 

 

 

 

Richard

 

Employers will pay the market rate for the job, too many potential employees rates go down, too few rates increase.  Will that increase prices or just reduce profits

 

Its  not just areas in far flung areas where the locals are being priced out of the property maerket, look at every large city, its worse now than being in the country