The end of the old GN suburban as we knew it 1976

[hq1hitchin]

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[Andy W]

Cracking - some excellent stuff in there and really good for a super 8 original taken on an awful day. Part 2 is equally as interesting.

If you like block-enders, Brush 2s, Cravens, Rolls Royce units, brand new 313s and some significant GN/NLR locations in 1976, this is a must see!

[strang steel]

That is nothing short of superb.

It is a shame that comments have been disabled for the clip on Youtube because I would like to thank Robert Gadsdon for creating such a great record of how it was 40 years ago. Even the weather is how I best remember it.

[Mickey]

I wonder wot ever happened to the water colour pictures that use to hang on the compartment walls of the Inner suburban stock?. There was usually x3 pictures mounted in a glass fronted frame in a row above the seats on both compartment walls so x6 per compartment.

I always liked looking at those water colour pictures most of them were very good pictures usually of either the countryside or the seaside.

[Andy W]

They gradually disappeared by hands unknown. As soon as they acquired "value" they started to go in droves. I'm not sure how many, if any survived until the very end. Certainly when I was helping flog the last block enders off in 1977/8, they looked as if they had been gone for some time.

I have four of them, mounted on blockboard hanging on my stair wall at home - a legal purchase at a Deltic Preservation Society AGM some years back, I hasten to add!

[Mickey]

Now that you mention it i believe a lot of them if not all of them did go missing from carriage compartments in the last 2-3 years before the 'block enders' were finally withdrawn.

It wouldn't surprise me if there is a book somewhere with all the water colour pictures that appeared in these carriage compartments in it?.

The legacy from those water colour pictures that were hung in the 'block ender' compartments for me is that i have always from the late 1960s liked water colour pictures which i trace back to those particular water colour prints that were hung in the 'block ender' coaching stock.

[JeffB]

Two cracking films. Brings back loads of memories. I worked them lines with diesels and N2s and L1s.

[robertcwp]

Strictly, this probably does not belong here but...

I purchased a copy of the proposed carriage workings (SX) for the GN electrification dated March 1960. Of course, the electrification was not finally authorised until 1971.

The format makes it almost impossible to scan but the stock requirements are interesting. Electrification would have been to Cambridge including the Hertford Loop but there is no mention of services up the main line north of Hitchin.

Three types of unit were proposed:

‘Modified Glasgow 3-car’ – 112 sets
‘Southend type 4-car’ – 27 sets
‘Main Line type 4-car’ – 18 sets

So, 157 sets in total including maintenance spares (14 3-car, 5 Southend and 4 Main Line).

When the line was eventually electrified (as far as Royston) there were 64 313s and 26 312s, the latter allegedly including enough stock for Huntingdon and Cambridge should extension of electrification be approved.

A look through the workings shows lots of shuttles between Moorgate (GN&C) and Finsbury Park, with some through services but lots of inner suburban trains running to King’s Cross, including three 9-car trains in the peaks to/from Welwyn Garden City.

Outer seems to be all 8-car with the Southend type on Hitchin/Baldock workings and Main Line type on Royston and Cambridge services.

There is no indication of whether the Main Line type would have had buffet cars.

Hitchin via Hertford trains seem to have been listed as inner-suburban type.

[Andy W]

All maintained in the new EMU depot in East Goods - I have the electrification track diagrams for most of that scheme. The carriage washer road would start just about opposite where the Emirates stadium is now.

Clarence Yard would only have seen electrics if the main line was electrified. The shed would have been extended towards the ECML to accommodate the locos.

Interestingly that scheme shows how fast S&T technology moved in that decade. It showed power boxes at regular intervals down the line - KX was to be on the site of the Pass Loco and the next one was to be situated at the north end of Clarence Yard.

It was only the reduction in freight traffic on the ECML as a result of the National Freight Plan that freed up Ferme Park Up to become Hornsey EMU.

[StevieG]

" .... Interestingly that scheme shows how fast S&T technology moved in that decade. It showed power boxes at regular intervals down the line - KX was to be on the site of the Pass Loco and the next one was to be situated at the north end of Clarence Yard. "

Although these plans would have greatly changed the signalling of the time (about 26 signal boxes in the first 9 miles from KX) for improved traffic working, that period was one in which power signal box technology had not moved on greatly for at least ten years (witness the likes of others of that era being relatively closely spaced [as we may now think of it], such as Liverpool Street, Bethnal Green, Mile End, Bow Junction, and Stratford; and the also-small control area of the mid-'50s Potters Bar box, (which would presumably have been retaned as just one of the proposed series of installations to which AndyW refers).
The late '50s when presumably these GN electrification works were designed,
were the time of real trialling of remote control of more distant power signalling relay-room interlockings - I think Wilmslow was regarded as a pioneering one of these.
Soon after; the early-mid '60s, saw "Britain's New Railway" (title of OS Nock's book on the then modernisation of the WCML) actually commission power boxes still relatively close together in London and the Home counties - at Euston, Willesden, and Watford, - but this was perhaps the thinking of not too many 'eggs in one basket', as although the complex area of Euston-Willesden-Wembley Central had its controlling 'boxes fairly close by, yet the same period's Watford, and the next 'boxes at Bletchley and Rugby, employed remote control systems effectively, enabling them to control about 25, 20, and 40 miles of the WCML, respectively.

These sorts of ongoing developments made it possible for the 1970s King's Cross resignalling and electrification scheme's power box at KX to control 80 route-miles of the GN (including the Northern City Line, 'Hertford loop' and the Camb. line as far as Royston), and, along with the similar Peterborough power box, for the two of them to handle the first 100 miles of the ECML.

[ Edited 10:55, 12:40 & 13:15, 18/11/12 ; for greater context and further related info.]

[strang steel]

All maintained in the new EMU depot in East Goods - I have the electrification track diagrams for most of that scheme. The carriage washer road would start just about opposite where the Emirates stadium is now.

Clarence Yard would only have seen electrics if the main line was electrified. The shed would have been extended towards the ECML to accommodate the locos.

Interestingly that scheme shows how fast S&T technology moved in that decade. It showed power boxes at regular intervals down the line - KX was to be on the site of the Pass Loco and the next one was to be situated at the north end of Clarence Yard.

It was only the reduction in freight traffic on the ECML as a result of the National Freight Plan that freed up Ferme Park Up to become Hornsey EMU.

Thanks for all the info folks. I never realised that the plans had been quite so advanced.

As they say, you learn something every day.

Presumably, with 112 modified Glasgow-style sets, the inner suburban service was planned to be quite intense?

[StevieG]

( Just a small pointer to my having expanded my post of today's early hours, above, on the signalling aspect of 'Andy W's earlier post.)

[65447]

It wouldn't surprise me if there is a book somewhere with all the water colour pictures that appeared in these carriage compartments in it?.

There is, and has been for quite a while, another edition due next year: Greg Norden, Landscapes under the luggage rack, GNRP, various eds.

Original prints and reproductions are also available: http://www.travellingartgallery.com/lan ... index.html

[Mickey]

It wouldn't surprise me if there is a book somewhere with all the water colour pictures that appeared in these carriage compartments in it?.

There is, and has been for quite a while, another edition due next year: Greg Norden, Landscapes under the luggage rack, GNRP, various eds.

Original prints and reproductions are also available: http://www.travellingartgallery.com/lan ... index.html

There's something for everything nowadays.

The film footage of the last run of these trains in 1976 to me looks out of place amongst the impending electrification masts and colour light signals of the G.N. suburban route at that time, probably a little past there sell by date by 1976 those 'block enders' probably should have been withdrawn a couple of years earlier around 1974?.

I use to like being in a compartment on my own so i could lean out of the window as we went a long, by to days standards H&S would have a heart attack!!.

[bw1165]

I was on that train!

Makes me feel old - but on the other hand, it seems like yesterday.