Air Raid Precaution Railway Control Centre

[WessexEclectic]

Article on BBC website 21/12/18

 

Interesting report from Historic England

 

Frustratingly, the HE report is silent as to when/why (apart from the events of 1990...) these centres were wound up/disused. Anybody know any more info?

[Bucoops]

Article on BBC website 21/12/18

 

Interesting report from Historic England

 

Frustratingly, the HE report is silent as to when/why (apart from the events of 1990...) these centres were wound up/disused. Anybody know any more info?

 

I can't shed any light but it made fascinating reading. I'm planning on modelling Shenfield at some point in 1939 - and it looks like the control centre there (which I knew of) was built just prior to the beginning of the war so I may have to include it. I always assumed it was added after Sep 1939.

[caradoc]

Interesting article, thanks for the link WessexEclectic. I was aware of WW2 Emergency Control Centres, but not of any from the Cold War era. There have been such installations since then, too, albeit very briefly; For the Y2K concern/panic an Emergency Control Room for Scotland was set up at Yoker Depot, in case Control at Buchanan House in Glasgow went down. Nothing of significance happened of course, but at least the night was a good earner for those staff booked out just in case !

[Fat Controller]

More recently, one was built at Beckton to act as a standby control room for the DLR, so that there wouldn't be a single point of failure during the Olympics.

[Southernman46]

More recently, one was built at Beckton to act as a standby control room for the DLR, so that there wouldn't be a single point of failure during the Olympics.

Beckton is now the "normal" CC with Poplar CC as the back-up site - a routine CC swap happens every couple of months or so to test the system - the first proper emergency Beckton - Poplar move occurred this year due to issues with the signalling control system.

 

Poplar CC due to its age is not hugely Popular with the CC staff during the routine swaps .......................

[roythebus]

The report from Historic England looks like it'll take a long time to read, but a quick scan through sounds interesting. I've recently read the book on war damage to London's main line Railways. that was a lengthy tome mostly listing details of all known enemy damage caused.

 

What struck me was firstly how quickly repairs were effected and how quickly lines were up and running, something that would be almost impossible in these H&S days, and how few (comparatively) lives were lost in WW2. Some 360,000 in the military and 68,000 civilians. I was led to think it was a lot higher than that.

 

War preparations for WW2 were being made as early as 1936 with stockpiles of rails, sleepers, bridge girders being made at various locations. There is little mention of emergency control centres though. There are details of routeing of secondary phone line trunk routes that were available.

[The Stationmaster]

The report from Historic England looks like it'll take a long time to read, but a quick scan through sounds interesting. I've recently read the book on war damage to London's main line Railways. that was a lengthy tome mostly listing details of all known enemy damage caused.

 

What struck me was firstly how quickly repairs were effected and how quickly lines were up and running, something that would be almost impossible in these H&S days, and how few (comparatively) lives were lost in WW2. Some 360,000 in the military and 68,000 civilians. I was led to think it was a lot higher than that.

 

War preparations for WW2 were being made as early as 1936 with stockpiles of rails, sleepers, bridge girders being made at various locations. There is little mention of emergency control centres though. There are details of routeing of secondary phone line trunk routes that were available.

 

And not just wartime - the pace at which lines were reopened following the triple collision at Harrow in 1952 is quite revealing compared with what happens nowadays. (the reopening times in the Wiki page linked below are taken from the official Report so are accurate)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrow_and_Wealdstone_rail_crash

[08221]

Interesting to read about the B2 control centre at Bletchley.

 

Does anyone happen to have any photos, details of its location, etc, please.

[luckymucklebackit]

An interesting read, coincidentally I was thinking about the current centralisation of control (specifically at the West of Scotland Signalling Centre at Cowlairs) in a building that is by 1960s standards a very vulnerable to any form of enemy attack (I am including terrorism in that category).  The effect on the capability of the system to operate if any attack took place surely would be catastrophic

 

Jim

[Trog]

 

War preparations for WW2 were being made as early as 1936 with stockpiles of rails, sleepers, bridge girders being made at various locations.

 

I had a job in the late 1980's where we used an ARP long timber bridge deck that had been in stock since the war.

 

Not sure if you would be....

 

a). Allowed to a walk out over the canal on the long timbers to install and clip up the rails these days.

b). Allowed to open the line and use the bridge for about a week before the deck planks were installed. Could have given anyone walking in the 4' at night quite a surprise as they stepped off the abutment.

 

 

The really funny bit is that my efforts and the adjacent older disused spans are now grade 2* listed.

Edited January 5, 2019 by Trog