Book: Railway Memories No. 26 – Steam to Diesel on the GN

[strang steel]

Well, I have ordered a copy and the blurb says 10-14 days for delivery, so hopefully I will have something else to read in a few weeks' time.

[strang steel]

Marvellous, only 5 days later and my copy has arrived.

It certainly looks like good value with lots of interesting photos including a V2 with a copper capped chimney, but I will not spoil it for everyone by revealing all the book's contents.

[strang steel]

I have now read the book and although the photos are excellent, with some relative rarities such as Hornsey depot with a 40, 21 and 20 stabled, plus D0226 and D0227 at Stratford, I was a little disappointed in the text which seemed to be a little lacking in everyday anecdotes.

Maybe I was expecting too much, and a more Peter Townend 'Top Shed' approach; but it is only towards the back of the book that these begin to appear, almost as an afterthought.

Worth the money though, just for the photos.

[Mickey]

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[strang steel]

It would be nice to think that some photographers recorded all that detail through the 60s and early 70s Micky, but I fear that as with many other lines, people only really began to wake up to the wholesale changes taking place after quite a lot of the infrastructure had gone.

I suppose that I will have to make to with the Peter Coster books, David Percival's Kings Cross Lineside 1958-84, and a video taken about the time the electrification to Royston began (I think, I have not watched it for ages).

[rockinjohn]

Not to many mentions of the small signal cabin @ the junction of the E.R&M.R routes underground, Hotel Curve?small lonely & only the rustling of rats for company in the quiet moments, imagine the noise of passing trains, I think it was manned 24hrs on weekdays only?once found the door after inquiring, with steps leading down to the box on the Concourse of St.Pancras Station,Would have loved to have visited this box just once.

[StevieG]

Not to many mentions of the small signal cabin @ the junction of the E.R&M.R routes underground, Hotel Curve?small lonely & only the rustling of rats for company in the quiet moments, imagine the noise of passing trains, I think it was manned 24hrs on weekdays only?once found the door after inquiring, with steps leading down to the box on the Concourse of St.Pancras Station,Would have loved to have visited this box just once.

rockinjohn,
The door and steps you refer to (not on the concourse though) sound like the access to St. Pancras Tunnel box (ex-MR), which was just an intermediate box on the ex-MR/LMS/LMR lines, not controlling any junction.
The below-ground junctions of the Up and Down 'Met.' lines from the ER with those of the LMR were not parallel with each other or in the same location, and must've been somewhere out front of the original KX GNR station frontage, approx. below either Euston Road or the now-demolished 1970s KX concourse/travel centre building: For many years prior to the 1970s those junctions were controlled from LT's Kings Cross C signal box, on KX 'Met.' (later Midland City / Thameslink) station.

[rockinjohn]

Hi Steve G thanks for reply, not bad I got the wrong Region&Signal box!You can tell the railway fans from the real workers,Well it was for sure the entrance @platform level with a circular staircase,on the road which ran alongside the station& Somers town goods yard.was a cobbled loop ramp up to the concourse level for the delivery of Newspapers&Magazines I would deliver the Sunday Times Magazine there in the 70's for rail dispatch,now maybe that door was in that small loading dock,but from (young)memory the door was on the concourse far wall,as pointed out by a staff member,also possibly a walk after reaching the bottom of the staircase to the box.

[StevieG]

Hi Steve G thanks for reply, not bad I got the wrong Region&Signal box!You can tell the railway fans from the real workers,Well it was for sure the entrance @platform level with a circular staircase,on the road which ran alongside the station& Somers town goods yard.was a cobbled loop ramp up to the concourse level for the delivery of Newspapers&Magazines I would deliver the Sunday Times Magazine there in the 70's for rail dispatch,now maybe that door was in that small loading dock,but from (young)memory the door was on the concourse far wall,as pointed out by a staff member,also possibly a walk after reaching the bottom of the staircase to the box.

Although I worked in an upstairs west side office for a year, I didn't know the whole station all that well rockinjohn, so can't comment on the other precise places that you mention.
But what I do certainly remember seeing at the time (1971), and somehow came to understand had been the access to Tunnel box, was an anonymous, nearly square, small door, with its sill several inches above the 'ground level' there, in the end wall at the bottom of the cobbled slope ramp down from the north end of where daytime taxis dropped passengers off under the glazed overall roof outside the booking office; - i.e. the door faced drivers as they descended the ramp just before turning out into Midland Road.
And I was told at sometime that the bottom of the spiral stairs was beside the Down line in the tunnel, with the box built in a recess opposite, beside the Up line.
Doubtless all evidence of the box and its location and access disappeared when the sub-surface St.Pancras 'box' was built around the tracks at the time of all the CTRL etc. works too the main station, to accommodate the new St.Pancras Thameslink line station platforms, and the old tunnel within 'the box', removed.