North London Line and GOBLIN in 1987

[keefer]

Recently came across two cab-ride videos on YouTube that i haven't seen before, both from 1987

First, a cl.501 from Richmond to N.Woolwich via the NLL. Line generally run-down and tired-looking but signs of some regeneration? Tracklaying on the (north) lines around Dalston Kingsland. The electric lines no longer go into Dalston Jcn as the lines to Broad St. have been closed since 1982(?). The new line at Navarino Jcn has just been laid, allowing Eastbound trains access to Liverpool St. In this video the NLL is the two south tracks, these now are a turnback for ELL Westbound at Highbury & Islington and at various other points there are changes to which lines/platforms are used. Of course, the East end of the line has changed/changed hands with DLR and Elizabeth Lines

Second, a DMU trip on the GOBLIN from Barking to Gospel Oak. I haven't watched this as much but presumably this line stayed more like this for longer - what looks like a rural country branch line in the heart of London!

What's remarkable is that these lines have always been (during BR days) 'Cinderella' lines, hanging on with a not-very-great service using knackered hand-me-down stock - just waiting for the axe to fall. Similarily the West London Line, Add to this the East London Line which was a 'stand-alone' Underground line which ended at Shoreditch (now buried).

And yet now they are a vital part of the modern Overground, with line & station improvements, new stock, electrification etc.

Hard to think that such a useful resource should be shunned for so long - i realise that a lot of what's changed has come down to who pays for what but it was a chicken/egg situation.

Increased patronage requires better facilities but those facilities will only come about if there is increased demand!

 

 

[43110andyb]

Having used (played) the Sim-Sig simulation for the area it’s great to see it via the cab footage!

[keefer]

i was just thinking, even the technology to record these!

Probably a fairly big video camera either on a tripod or just sitting on the secondman's side of the desk.

Notice the 'shoogling' of the unit in the NLL video even on a straight bit of track, probably typical for the time!

[Oldddudders]

The NLL had been a sad place forever. In the early '70s a chap called Alec Maguire, an incomer to BR in the mid-sixties, with a sales background, got his hands on it and gave it a bit of an uplift, but it drifted for a while thereafter. Being thrown out of its City terminus, Broad Street, to enable the Rosehaugh-Stanhope Development called Broadgate, hardly helped. But NSE got its teeth into it, and with a new connection at Richmond the 501s were usurped by SR 2-EPBs from Selhurst. And really from then on things looked up. But none of us could have forecast the thriving railway it is today.