Boat Trains

[KingEdwardII]

1 hour ago, chrisf said:

Liverpool St to Harwich enables overnight travel to the Netherlands and beyond

Yes, true - you get an overnight "floating hotel" for an 8.00am start from Hook of Holland.

 

On the other hand, I checked the routes to Interlaken from Rotterdam and from London by train and it is just as quick to get to Interlaken from London "direct" as it is from Rotterdam (both journeys involve changes). All assuming you don't want to fly, of course, which seems to be cheaper as well as faster.

[Oldddudders]

I certainly used Harwich - Hoek for the first few times I ventured abroad alone. The Hook Continental,19.30 from Liv St, was easy and convenient. The next morning the 07.30 Lorelei Express took a somewhat more leisurely pace down into and through Germany than the preceding 07.10 Rheingold TEE, but was more affordable, too! 

 

The 5th year, 1971, I was with a mate who didn't get free/reduced rate travel, so we flew Swissair to Basel. Being a bit unfamiliar with flying - then and now -  there was a novelty in checking in to the Station Hotel at Kandersteg before dinner the same day! About 25 years later, Deb and some walking friends checked in to the same hotel. 

[phil_sutters]

22 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

Dont forget the Frome to Bristol via Radstock service that connected with a boat train from Weymouth & took the passengers for 'The North' to Bristol in time to get the last train North.

 

the only 45XX turn that carried Class 1 lamps

Sorry it is not a 45xx. Presumably this was taken by my father with his head out of a window of the train heading the other way. Smuts in the eyes and smoke up the nostrils, those were the days.

Edited January 30, 2022 by phil_sutters

[47164]

In the late 1970’s/ early 80’s the departure board at Liverpool st for the evening Hook Continental… was always wooden slats!   And often… may have only been on specific day’s ,was enterprising maintained to list Moscow as a final destination for connections .. I wonder if any other Uk station captured anywhere so distant ?

[brushman47544]

On 22/01/2022 at 21:53, Metropolitan H said:

Finally in the 1980s, I came back overnight from Paris via Le Havre and Newhaven - then home to Milton Keynes on a direct train from the Newhaven Quay, which I think went on to Manchester.

 

Regards

Chris H

I’m not aware of any ferries between Le Havre and Newhaven. Newhaven has always been Dieppe, which was my annual summer holiday route throughout the sixties. Boat trains from Victoria to Newhaven Marine were loco hauled - Hornbys and 73s until CIGs took over. There was a daily through train to/from Manchester Piccadilly for a couple of years in the 80s,  running via the WCML so that will have been the train you caught.

 

My first experience of a Boat Train was early/mid 60s, from Waterloo to Southampton. Presumably Western Docks because the ocean liner was P&O’s Oriana and I think P&O ships berthed there not in the Eastern Docks. I wasn’t going on the ship though. My grandmother was going to Australia and my parents managed to blag us onto the boat train at Waterloo. No idea if the train was steam hauled or a diesel - the photo I have of us at the quayside shows the ship not the train.

[bécasse]

27 minutes ago, 47164 said:

In the late 1970’s/ early 80’s the departure board at Liverpool st for the evening Hook Continental… was always wooden slats!   And often… may have only been on specific day’s ,was enterprising maintained to list Moscow as a final destination for connections .. I wonder if any other Uk station captured anywhere so distant ?

Victoria, there were connections to Moscow via Oostende too.

 

My office in the Shipping & International Services Division was responsible for dictating which destinations should be displayed for each boat train departure - and we always used the correct local spelling for the place name so Moscow was actually displayed as MOSKVA.

[Oldddudders]

48 minutes ago, 47164 said:

In the late 1970’s/ early 80’s the departure board at Liverpool st for the evening Hook Continental… was always wooden slats!   And often… may have only been on specific day’s ,was enterprising maintained to list Moscow as a final destination for connections .. I wonder if any other Uk station captured anywhere so distant ?

Maybe Blackfriars? I vaguely recall that had exotic destinations well beyond the Catford Loop on the wall in a stairwell?

[phil_sutters]

35 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Maybe Blackfriars? I vaguely recall that had exotic destinations well beyond the Catford Loop on the wall in a stairwell?

St. Petersburg seems the most distant.

I have a vague recollection that there was a short period sometime in the past five or six years, when DFDS put on a third ferry out of Newhaven, at the height of the Summer season, and that went to Le Havre. The regular service is twice a day to Dieppe and back.

Edited January 30, 2022 by phil_sutters

[Andy Hayter]

1 hour ago, bécasse said:

Victoria, there were connections to Moscow via Oostende too.

 

My office in the Shipping & International Services Division was responsible for dictating which destinations should be displayed for each boat train departure - and we always used the correct local spelling for the place name so Moscow was actually displayed as MOSKVA.

Which should of course have been:

MOCKBA

 

 

[Tom Burnham]

34 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

St. Petersburg seems the most distant.

Yes, distinctly further than Brindisi, which is probably the second most distant.  Of course, neither is as exotic as Sheerness...

 

[The Stationmaster]

7 hours ago, phil_sutters said:

Sorry it is not a 45xx. Presumably this was taken by my father with his head out of a window of the train heading the other way. Smuts in the eyes and smoke up the nostrils, those were the days.

And no longer carrying Class A lamps ...

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

Which should of course have been:

MOCKBA

 

 

Yep, that was what the timetable I used to keep on my office wall said.  It listed all the stops and times for the Moscow - Berlin through train, in Russian; I wonder if I've still got it?

[Michael Hodgson]

3 hours ago, bécasse said:

Victoria, there were connections to Moscow via Oostende too.

 

My office in the Shipping & International Services Division was responsible for dictating which destinations should be displayed for each boat train departure - and we always used the correct local spelling for the place name so Moscow was actually displayed as MOSKVA.

I remember once visiting Manchester Victoria a good many years ago and in among the routine announcements of slow trains to old northern industrial towns hearing a very long announcement for the Harwich boat train with connections for Warsaw & Moscow etc ... change at Moscow for the Trans-Siberian!  I think that the classic service had formerly originated in Glasgow/Edinburgh.

[keefer]

We've had services East, West and South but how about one going North?

Before it became a name for railtours and luxury landcruises, 'The Orcadian' was a service between Inverness and Wick which connected with Orkney & Shetland Steamship Company ferry services to Stromness in the Orkney Islands.

It even carried a distinctive headboard and in BR days offered a 4hr journey, rather than the 5hrs of other services.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcadian_(train)

 

https://railscot.co.uk/img/37/483/

 

Not sure of the formation but was usually a Sulzer Type-2 (cl.24 or 26)

Edited January 31, 2022 by keefer

[DY444]

11 hours ago, brushman47544 said:

I’m not aware of any ferries between Le Havre and Newhaven. Newhaven has always been Dieppe, which was my annual summer holiday route throughout the sixties. Boat trains from Victoria to Newhaven Marine were loco hauled - Hornbys and 73s until CIGs took over. There was a daily through train to/from Manchester Piccadilly for a couple of years in the 80s,  running via the WCML so that will have been the train you caught.

 

My first experience of a Boat Train was early/mid 60s, from Waterloo to Southampton. Presumably Western Docks because the ocean liner was P&O’s Oriana and I think P&O ships berthed there not in the Eastern Docks. I wasn’t going on the ship though. My grandmother was going to Australia and my parents managed to blag us onto the boat train at Waterloo. No idea if the train was steam hauled or a diesel - the photo I have of us at the quayside shows the ship not the train.

 

<Pedant Mode>

71s rather than 73s

</Pedant Mode>

[The Lurker]

13 hours ago, Tom Burnham said:

Yes, distinctly further than Brindisi, which is probably the second most distant.  Of course, neither is as exotic as Sheerness...

 

In times long gone, Sheerness presumably would have had its own LCDR boat trains - I believe there was a ferry to Flushing from there. And of course the South Eastern thought having a pier at Port Victoria was a good idea too....

 

As a kid  in the late 70s, early 80s we used to refer to almost any fast train through Paddock Wood as a Boat Train.  We went up  to London to catch one once, to connect with a hovercraft from Dover. The journey in France was the overnight sleeper to the South of France.

[Oldddudders]

7 minutes ago, The Lurker said:

As a kid  in the late 70s, early 80s we used to refer to almost any fast train through Paddock Wood as a Boat Train. 

In fact of course there was an hourly, on the hour from CX, train fast Waterloo East to Ashford, which would indeed have flashed through the fast lines at Padlock Wood just like a boat train. 

[Metropolitan H]

17 hours ago, brushman47544 said:

I’m not aware of any ferries between Le Havre and Newhaven. Newhaven has always been Dieppe, which was my annual summer holiday route throughout the sixties. Boat trains from Victoria to Newhaven Marine were loco hauled - Hornbys and 73s until CIGs took over. There was a daily through train to/from Manchester Piccadilly for a couple of years in the 80s,  running via the WCML so that will have been the train you caught................

I suspect you are right - Not sure why I thought Le Havre? Mea culpa.

 

What I do remember was leaving Paris St Lazarre after dinner on Friday, changing to the boat very late at night and getting the train through from Newhaven to MK - to be home for a late Saturday breakfast about coffee time!

 

Regards

Chris H

[C126]

6 hours ago, DY444 said:

 

<Pedant Mode>

71s rather than 73s

</Pedant Mode>

 

I have seen a couple of photographs of this working - one in the Middleton Press book, I think - that show 73's.  Perhaps they ousted the 71's?

[Oldddudders]

1 hour ago, C126 said:

 

I have seen a couple of photographs of this working - one in the Middleton Press book, I think - that show 73's.  Perhaps they ousted the 71's?

When I first saw the NN Boat in 1960, it was indeed Hornbys or E5000s, as the EDLs had not yet emerged. By the time I worked in the Control at Redhill in 1968, and would sometimes take the call from the SM at Newhaven, Geoff Clasby, giving the inbound service's departure details, I'm fairly certain it was EMUs. If in the meantime EDLs had taken over or substituted for the E5000s I wouldn't be surprised. After all, not too long after I watched the service in 1960, Phase 2 of Kent Coast Electrification went live, and that opened up new routes for the ELs to work freight on the South Eastern. 

[Tom Burnham]

7 hours ago, The Lurker said:

In times long gone, Sheerness presumably would have had its own LCDR boat trains - I believe there was a ferry to Flushing from there.

To be pedantic, Sheerness was only the terminal for the Flushing (Vlissingen) steamers for a few months, until the rebuilt pier at Queenborough was ready.  Queenborough Pier had two boat trains a day during its heyday, plus fairly frequent royal specials.  Most North European royalty passed through Queenborough at one time or another, together with celebrities like George Bernard Shaw and Theodore Roosevelt.  Difficult to imagine these days.

[brushman47544]

6 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

When I first saw the NN Boat in 1960, it was indeed Hornbys or E5000s, as the EDLs had not yet emerged. By the time I worked in the Control at Redhill in 1968, and would sometimes take the call from the SM at Newhaven, Geoff Clasby, giving the inbound service's departure details, I'm fairly certain it was EMUs. If in the meantime EDLs had taken over or substituted for the E5000s I wouldn't be surprised. After all, not too long after I watched the service in 1960, Phase 2 of Kent Coast Electrification went live, and that opened up new routes for the ELs to work freight on the South Eastern. 

I don’t remember exact dates but I do remember getting on the morning Newhaven boat train at Victoria one year and our luggage was moved from the brake at the buffer stops behind the incoming loco to the one at the front of the train as it was being left at Victoria. Definitely loco hauled Mk1 stock and at least some coaches were blue/grey, so presumably 1967/68? By then surely 73 hauled?

[Chris116]

My parents took me to Paris in the mid 70's and we went from Folkstone to Calais by ferry with BR and SNCF trains doing the rest of the journey. On the way home it struck us all very forcibly how we had enjoyed an SNCF train complete with restaurant car on one side of the channel and then a rather uncomfortable Southern Region EMU with no facilities on this side of the channel.

 

Around 2004-2006 my wife and I used the Harwich - Hook ferry with trains and boat all on one ticket. Trouble was that going there were delays which meant we arrived at Harwich about ten minutes before the ferry was due to depart. The staff rushed us off the train and onto the ferry with no passport or luggage checks made. On the way home we all queued up for passport control with me on my British passport and my wife told to go to another much longer queue on her USA passport. Once through passport control I therefore stood around waiting for my wife. Twice I was asked why I was hanging around and then as we got to the platform we were stopped because they didn't like the fact that we claimed to be married but had different surnames. The simple fact was my wife kept her maiden name but the muppets had great difficulty understanding this. Thankfully I had a photo in my wallet of us on our wedding day which was the only thing that convinced them.

[phil_sutters]

On 22/01/2022 at 19:03, The Johnster said:

  A particularly interesting one, and by interesting I mean certifiably insane, was the situation at Cardiff, where if you wanted to book through to Paris the ticket office would route you by the fastest journey at the time you bought the ticket, which at some times of the day at some states of the tide in the Bristol Channel meant a routing via the Barry Railway from Cardiff Riverside to Barry Pier, Barry Railway steamer to Burnham-on-Sea, SDJR to Bournemouth, LSW to Poole where you boarded a French Chemin de Fer du Ouest steamer for St Malo, train to Gare du Montparnasse.  It may have been the quickest route but you'd have been better advised waiting a few hours for Calais-Dover or at least Newhaven-Dieppe!  I wonder if there was a routing from Swansea via Ilfracombe...

The SDJR provided the principal regular ferry services from Barry to Burnham Tidal Harbour in its own ships or ones it leased or chartered, after a brief initial period between 1858 and 1860, in which the Cardiff Steam Navigation company provided the services across the Bristol Channel. Again towards the end of the passenger services the route had to be serviced from the other end, with the Bute Docks Authority providing ships for 1882 and the first few months of 1883, after which Samuel Little of Newport for a brief period until, in 1884, the SDJR bought the 'Sherbro' which ran successfully until the operation was wound up in 1888.

The Poole to Cherbourg route was also provided with SDJR owned or chartered vessels. That service only lasted until 1867.

Chris Handley's 'The Maritime Activities of the Somerset and Dorset Railway' covers these passenger services, as well as the freight services in and out of Highbridge and Bridgwater. 

Edited February 1, 2022 by phil_sutters
Additional info

[The Stationmaster]

On 31/01/2022 at 06:26, keefer said:

We've had services East, West and South but how about one going North?

Before it became a name for railtours and luxury landcruises, 'The Orcadian' was a service between Inverness and Wick which connected with Orkney & Shetland Steamship Company ferry services to Stromness in the Orkney Islands.

It even carried a distinctive headboard and in BR days offered a 4hr journey, rather than the 5hrs of other services.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcadian_(train)

 

https://railscot.co.uk/img/37/483/

 

Not sure of the formation but was usually a Sulzer Type-2 (cl.24 or 26)

Heading north there was, of course,  'The Norseman' from Kings Cross to Tyne Commission Quay to connect with the ship to Norway.  I believe at one time it only stopped intermediately at York to pick up passengers when heading north or to set down passengers when heading south but I haven't checked to see if it was more widely advertised in its later years. 

 

In the north there was 'The Hebridean' from Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh which obviously would have connected with the ferry to Kyleakin and presumably with a ferry to the Hebrides although it doesn't appear to have been specifically a boat train;.

 

Heading west there were boat trains (some named - including 'The Irish Mail') from Euston to Holyhead,  Euston to Heysham to connect with the Irish ferry and also at one time the ferry to the Isle of Man,  Glasgow to Stranraer to connect with the ferry,  Euston to Liverpool to provide a link to the Isle of Man ferry (I think it ran to/from Lime Street so wasn't a proper boat train).

 

One thing mentioned by 'Chris 116' is worth noting - BR through ticketed onto all the BR owned ferry services plus in many cases also providing through ticketing onto other railway administrations.  So you could, for example, buy a 'train ticket' at many stations which, for  instance. would get you to the Channel islands or Belfast or the Hook of Holland.  And fortunately for those if us with free passes they would take us to the 'foreign' port on a BR ferry service with no need to get a continental pass/privilege ticket if we weren't going any further but we did have to pay something called 'Port Tax' (to get a separatePort Tax ticket) on most routes.  

 

Rather helpfully those of us whose service stretched back far enough are still entitled to some degree of reduced rate (and in a few instances free) travel on some of the ferry services which were once operated by BR - in just the same way that some of us can travel free on various LUL sections which were once owned by the Grouped railways or, in a few cases, which paralleled their routes.