Necropolis railway possibilities?

[Listerboy]

I've been thinking of the possibilities of the Necropolis railways in London. Would it be beyond the realms of possibility that when they stopped running, that the station was used as a relief to the nearby terminal? 

 

Certain services relocated? 

 

Thoughts? 

[Ron Ron Ron]

Some might say that's a dead stupid idea........

[phil_sutters]

The London Necropolis Railway went out of commission during WW2, when it was bombed. For the rest of the war a limited service was operated from platforms in the neighbouring Waterloo station. So rather than switching mainline services to the Necropolis station, the reverse happened.

[Listerboy]

42 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

The London Necropolis Railway went out of commission during WW2, when it was bombed. For the rest of the war a limited service was operated from platforms in the neighbouring Waterloo station. So rather than switching mainline services to the Necropolis station, the reverse happened.

 

But supposing it hadn't been bombed..... 

[Nearholmer]

The platform was a bit short for most purposes, and not electrified, although that probably wouldn’t have been a big job.

 

Its hard to know which would have been worse, boarding at Necropolis, or alighting at Surbiton.

 

How about running deeply tasteless Halloween Specials?

[Mol_PMB]

Interesting that Londoners had to cross the river before getting to Necropolis (if it was next to Waterloo). I thought tradition had it that one crossed the river a bit later on in the process. 

 

Anyway, I like the concept for a what-if and it seems perfectly plausible. After all, much the same happened with the Eurostar platforms. 

[Iskra]

3 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

Some might say that's a dead stupid idea........

It will only be a skeleton service.

[Nearholmer]

2 hours ago, Mol_PMB said:

Interesting that Londoners had to cross the river before getting to Necropolis

You've been listening too much to cabbies; there is a great deal of London sarf ov the rivva.

[adb968008]

The line still exists.

its used for stabling EMUs when spare at Waterloo, its recently relaid track too.

 

You can see it here fading out to the centre left corner beyond the stabled 455.

 

Edited November 11, 2021 by adb968008

[adb968008]

Heres a couple more I took..

(september 2019).

 

The siding looks to only just fit a 4 car, ending behind the power supply building.

 

The resulting gap in the courtyard & building that houses the Necropolis railway wouldnt add much more to it, so trains must have been pretty short.. 

 

fyi, turning the camera the other way gives you this view..

i doubt that lot would fit in the Necropolis platform.

if it was still intact today I doubt it would be any different to what it is used for now.. its ultimately too short for most service trains, my guess its only used to store a “dead” unit.

Edited November 11, 2021 by adb968008

[C.A.T.Ford]

Or you might model the Kings Cross to New Southgate necropolis line. The service had closed by 1873 despite the shorter journey meaning cheaper fares. The idea it seems was that the lower cost would appeal to the "lower orders" of London society.

 

CAT

[adb968008]

1 hour ago, C.A.T.Ford said:

Or you might model the Kings Cross to New Southgate necropolis line. The service had closed by 1873 despite the shorter journey meaning cheaper fares. The idea it seems was that the lower cost would appeal to the "lower orders" of London society.

 

CAT

And closer to those “lower orders”.

[Nearholmer]

This c1948 map gives you a nice fix relative to the traction substation. The Necropolis station is shown as “ruin”, it’s post-bombing condition.

 

 

The siding at the back of the substation was/is for unloading heavy electrical kit, and it runs across the site of a former turntable, which I think was part of a loco stabling-point pre-electrification of the suburban lines.

 

I used to have cause to visit the substation in connection with various jobs, and always gave a nod in the direction of where the Necropolis Station no longer was.

 

Have you got the Oakwood Press book about the services? It is very interesting, and I’m 99% sure gives details of platform length. It certainly describes the even earlier initial Necropolis Station.

 

 

Edited November 11, 2021 by Nearholmer

[stewartingram]

Waterloo Necropolis staiton entrance, 2011.

 

Stewart

[phil_sutters]

I think that I saw that the building in Westminster Bridge Road having been offices was going to be turned into, no doubt very pricey, flats.

This is a section of a 1879 map which shows the relationship between the main Waterloo Station and the Necropolis station.

[Nearholmer]

I’m pretty sure that shows the initial version, which was further towards the main terminus than the later one, and was even more cramped.

 

Mind you, it is quite hard to get your head round old maps of the area, because so much was changed when the main station was rebuilt and expanded in the early C20th - entire streets were swept away.

[Nick Holliday]

9 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I’m pretty sure that shows the initial version, which was further towards the main terminus than the later one, and was even more cramped.

 

Mind you, it is quite hard to get your head round old maps of the area, because so much was changed when the main station was rebuilt and expanded in the early C20th - entire streets were swept away.

Thanks to the NLS Overlay facility, this shows where the old Necropolis station was, relative to the modern sprawl.  Rice's Mews is a nice homage to one of our more influential model railway personalities.

[Oldddudders]

17 hours ago, adb968008 said:

The line still exists.

its used for stabling EMUs when spare at Waterloo, its recently relaid track too.

 

You can see it here fading out to the centre left corner beyond the stabled 455.

 

My recollection is that there were several berthing sidings there in relatively recent times, each 8-car, called, imaginatively, Waterloo South Sidings. Did WARS revise the layout, or was it when the Region became paranoid about remote signing-on by drivers, and closed lots of hole-in-the-wall berthing locations?

 

All those sectional buildings are modern successors to similar structures which housed training facilities. In the Autumn of 1966, I spent 9 weeks there learning ticket office, parcels and goods clerical procedures. More recently I believe it had been the Southern Region driver training school. 

[Nearholmer]

Yes, there was a large “hutment” there, rather like a displaced army camp, mostly for training, but odd small departments were housed there too. I spent a period based there c1978, working with Work Study  on the Sisyphean task of cataloguing every piece of electrical equipment in the Waterloo complex, down to numbers of sockets and the nature of portable appliances, in each room.

[stewartingram]

I remember going there for a track safety course in the noughties (whilst a contractor working on the Underground, which of course meant access sometimes to NR metals).

My memories of attending there were thus:

1. The portacabins seemed mainly derelict. Classroom work finished, we were taken through a gate in the fence to the sidings; there was an electrified (rusty) siding leading up to the substation. Our instructor demonstrated the use of an iron bar to trip the current - didn't let us have a go though! We were also walked up to bridge just outside the station, and made to stand close to the track. This is when we practised our "salute" to the driver as the train came, andwitnessed the effect of standing very close to it as it passed....

2. I entered the site from ground level, via a large metal staircase (similar to a fire escape), at the entrance to the adjacent yard. The yard was the base of DuckBus, who use modified wartime DUKV vehicles on London tours which include a river cruise.

And it was within walking distance of my base under the Waterloo station in the arches.

 

Stewart

[ejstubbs]

15 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I’m pretty sure that shows the initial version, which was further towards the main terminus than the later one, and was even more cramped.

 

You are correct.  The LSWR wanted the space for more platforms so paid to have a new station built on the other side of Westminster Bridge Road: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Necropolis_railway_station#Waterloo_expansion_proposal

 

Site of the first station (from OS 25inch map surveyed 1872):

 

 

Site of the second station (from OS 25inch map revised 1914), also shows the turntable you mentioned in one of your earlier posts in this thread:

 

 

Westminster Bridge Road hasn't moved between those two surveys.  Note also Homer Street marked at the bottom of each map, just to the east of the railway tracks (though it actually continues under them to join Carlisle Street to the west of the railway).  Allen Street appears to have renamed Centaur Street when the new station was built, and Hercules Terrace became Newnham Terrace (which seems a shame, since retaining its old name would have created a sort of classical mythology theme for the area).  The other streets to the north of Allen Street/Centaur Street were lost to the new station and MPD.

[Torper]

If you haven't already done so, might I suggest that you look out for "The Necropolis Railway" by Andrew Martin.  It's actually a detective novel written in a slightly idiosyncratic style, but it has loads of stuff about the Necropolis Railway and is a good read (well, I enjoyed it).  Some Amazon readers thought it had too much railway detail and terminology - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Necropolis-Railway-Murder-Mystery-Stringer/dp/057122878X/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 but if you don't mind a used but very good condition one Abebooks has it at £2.28 inc. postage.

 

DT

[Brian Emeney]

The management of the dead was a major problem in 19th Century London and a number of frankly bizarre solutions were proposed (including a huge pyramid shaped mausoleum). It's interesting that none of the other major London cemeteries considered a rail link to their sites - or did they?

 

[St Enodoc]

We had a cemetery railway in Sydney. It served the huge Rookwood cemetery at Lidcombe. The Mortuary Station near Sydney Central is a heritage-listed structure and at Lidcombe there remains a short siding on the alignment of the former line into the cemetery itself.

 

http://www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au/lost-rail-rookwood.html

 

https://pastlivesofthenearfuture.com/2012/07/08/rookwood-necropolis-railway-lidcombe-nsw/

[grow45]

@Listerboy.  I am in the process  of sorting through my late Father's railway book collection and one of them I came across a couple of days ago was the Oakwood book on the Necropolis Railway.  If it is of interest I am happy to stick it in the post in exchange for a donation to the Scottish Railway Preservation Society Morayshire fund  -   SRPS Morayshire Fundraising

 

Happy to send it to anybody else but only fair Listerboy gets first call on it.

 

Edited November 13, 2021 by grow45