All board, the Mail Rail is ready to leave! There has been quite a buzz surrounding the opening of the London’s newest underground passenger line. Initial timed weekend tickets sold out months in advance when they were first released, but after a patient wait I have now finally […]
It doesn’t take long once you’ve walked through the doors of Crewe Arms Hotel that you clock its railway connections. In reception, there’s a screen showing departures for the vast mainline station across the road, while the wall opposite the check-in desk has a black and white picture […]
If you have visited London Bridge station recently you will know it is one big building site right now. While half of the shiny new concourse is now open, there are still six platforms that remain out of use (most of which won’t be open again to 2018). […]
The best way to understand why London’s East End docks closed for good in the 1980s comes if you take a 40 minute train journey east from Fenchurch Street. At the Port of Tilbury, piled up one of top of another are vast containers which are awaiting onward […]
When the capital’s first railway – the London and Greenwich – opened in 1836, Deptford became an overnight haven for commuters and day trippers. Passengers could reach southeast London from the company’s London Bridge terminus in a matter of minutes and some 20,000 travelled on the line during […]
Sunday morning and the towpath of the Regent’s Canal was a hectic place to be. Joggers – headphones plugged in and sweating from the heat of the sun – and cyclists fought for their share of the narrow space between the water’s edge and towering brick-built buildings. Things […]
If a proposed scheme had gone the way a group of businessmen had wanted 170 years ago, there wouldn’t be a Regent’s Canal today. The eight and a half mile stretch of water between Little Venice, near Paddington, and Limehouse Basin would have been drained and converted to […]
“We went like a shot from a gun,” wrote an excited railway passenger in 1835. “No sooner did we come to a field than it was a mile behind us.” Charles Young was travelling on the pioneering Manchester to Liverpool line just five years after its opening and […]
If you live in London or visit regularly then there’s a good chance you’ve been to Victoria train station. It’s a useful place linking the capital with the likes of Dover, Brighton and Gatwick Airport. But although Victoria has a wide range of shops, bars and food outlets, […]
Past In The Present 