adanapress

Of course on concrete you don't have the problems that Christopher Robin had, "the bears will get you" etc etc but then maybe they don't have A A Milne's books in the U.S. The saddest thing of all was that the real C.R. committed suicide in the end. (Dont tell the kids) This from a a descendant of a refugee from 1776 (I know its off the subject but never mind, just this once.)

Talking about Nestles chocolate from a machine on a station. Three small boys discovered in 1942 ( no choc. in the shops of course ) that the machine on the down platform at Chalkwell was (a) jammed and (B) still had one bar in it. It wanted a threepenny bit I think I recall, and it took weeks of torturing the machine until it gave up and produced a rather bent bar with a sort of cloudy surface effect. This was divided up into tiny bits and distributed amidst the relatively few kids still living in the area. Mr Ford, my Uncle, was Shedmaster at Plaistow not so long after and told terrible tales of the entire fire falling onto the track as poor quality firebars collapsed. He also was to have been involved in the Secret Evacuation plans for the entire population of the area if the Germans had in fact invaded.

That wire fencing along the edge of the wharf, in the pic, is locally extremely controversial. I wonder if it was eventually removed.

One other thing re Aldersgate, there was once meat traffic in appropriate vans, that left Farringdon and somewhere before Aldersgate, went off into a subterranean sidings under Smithfield meat market. And also there was once a east to south curve from Aldersgate down to Snow Hill station, and thence onto Southern lines. Once there were passenger services this way, just conceiveably this might be revivied, as Moorgates relevant two platforms are now unusable, and terminating platforms for City of London passengers are in desperate sort supply..

As someone else hinted, the connection to the main line did at one time go under the main line, I wonder what happened to that track bed and presumably a bridge?

Hi George, I too am blown away by your architectural work. In passing, the connection to the Metropolitan did briefly exist. It was an extension of platform one, the line right against the western wall. Amazingly the small signal box on the Met platform that once controlled that junction (located on the eastbound LT platform) survived certainly through the 50s, and I think even into the 60s. The two long platforms in the original form of L. Street - I think that was Nos 9 and 10 - both had an extension far underneath the Great Eastern hotel to unload coal for the central heating and to take away laundry to a central laundry location far far away. When electrification came, that chain or two was cut back, the buffers re-located, and the entire hotel jacked up a foot or two for electrification clearances, at least that is what we were told the raising was for. Previously passengers had to use a very grotty passageway across the heads of those two lines and there was also a link passage to the Met in that area. I seem to recall that there was a storage line between 9 and 10 as well, but I'm not sure.