British Rail Network SouthEast-Holborn Viaduct 1990 

I remember how long the booking hall was. Lovely EPBs oh please take me back in a time machine!

I claim to be the last intending passenger to miss his train departing from Holborn Viaduct. Bad weather delayed my service on Midland Mainline. I charged through the ticket barrier at St. Pancras and ran and ran through tunnels, up stairs, down stairs........ All to no avail. I approached the entrance to find three or four senior Ticket Inspectors keen to get back to a warm office, pulling the concertina gates shut and locking up and leaving with na'er a backward glance. I was more upset than p***ed off: very sad to have failed to say "Goodbye".

Those 8 car trains are a tight fit. It's a station I sadly never visited, I'd have been 26 years old when you filmed that. I loved the 2 and 4 EPBs, 2 HAPs and 2 SAPs along with, the already withdrawn by this time 4 SUBs. I used to like the occasional mixed formations of a 4 VEP + 4EPB on the Guildford via Cobham line.

This oozes nostalgia, can even smell them units while watching this. The drivers at 7oaks used to let me do the brake test etc on these before returning to here or Vic on plt.4 in 80's as a teen. . . Nice to see no.5524 again, 'snapped' most of it passing Tonbridge on 30.4.92 with no's 6229/5281 and 5518 on thier way for scrap, hauled by 47339. . . Top vid again, oh the memories here from 70/80's!

My commute station when I first started work - I forgotten just how dirty and old these trains were (and the permanent condensation on the windows!) - it was like going forward in time 50 years when we eventually were switched to Thameslink services.

I can smell those musty seats now. As an enthusiast I miss the slammers. As a commuter, I'd much rather a 375 (or 395) than a VEP or even CEP.

1990 - life made sense then.

This takes me back. I used to work in an office building a few yards along from this station, but did not have much occasion to use it since my home station was Lewisham. Still very occasionally I took a train that stopped at Peckham and waited for a train from Victoria.

I did Holborn Viaduct in and out once, to ride over Blackfriars Bridge and sample the station before closure. I know many lament the passing of the slammers, but back then a 4EPB was about as low as you could go. Smelly seats. Dirty and oil everywhere. Slow. Chased lovely loco hauled instead. Then when slammers became endangered, everyone said how wonderful they were. Odd, we humans. Thanks for recording these scenes.

WoW great memories of comutting from Beckenham to Holborn Viaduct from the mid seventies until closing, also witnessed the removal of the Ludgate bridge

Brilliant - for some reason I find this bit of railway utterly fascinating. Particularly as there used to be an intermediate station at Ludgate Hill. Blackfriars is visible in the distance where the trains pass underneath an office building. Would make an excellent prototype for a model railway.

Nothing like the sound of classic motor whine and thumping air compressors, like in the slam-door EMU stock.

Fantastic video. As the first unit leaves you can hear a kind of creaking sound from the SR unit which I haven't heard in 25 years.

Excellent. In B R days there was an Area Manager located at Holborn. I walked through the tunnel shortly before track was laid. Thanks again, great memories.

Great video - from a time when EPBs were the order of the day! ...And 319s were the new kids on the block ;-)

Holborn Viaduct had a weirdly narrow platform, a Victorian timepiece surrounded by 60s architecture. The compartment stock in the video must have been some of the last on the network. Thanks for the memories.

We had slam doors in Bournemouth up until 2006 I think. Kind of miss them.

Great video! Good that you captured a moment in history, especially, as you say, most of this has disappeared or built over. Who'd have thought back then that you'd be able to allow anyone in the World the chance to watch what you filmed that day!! Thanks for the memories - I was an apprentice at Slade Green in the 70s, working on EPB units! I, too, managed to walk through Snow Hill tunnel before it opened for trains because I worked for BR. Happy days. 👍

I could swear I saw this vid on here already, years back.

Holborn Viaduct had a rather eclectic set of services, both South Eastern & South Central destinations.

There were a lot of non-refurbished SR Bulleid Designed Class 415 4-EPB electric units carrying the 1980s standard blue & grey livery at the time.

What a wonderful video! I was there at the end for the last scheduled train out of HV (though there was a railtour out a few mins later if I remember correctly).

There was something about them ol' SR EMU's, the modern joyless, soulless, plastic rubbish today just does not come close.

Holborn Viaduct, the bridge itself, not the station, is my favourite bridge in London

Those lovely slammers ! In proper BR livery ! So much better than the toy child like colour schemes, and trains of today.

I remember Holborn Viaduct.

Have you got any footage from Primrose Hill/Broad Street Stations? Or any from the Croxley Green Branches

Is this now City Thameslink with the Snow Hill tunnel? Used to commute via here back in the day.

My London Terminus from 1973-79 when I worked in Bedford Row, and travelled on the Sidcup line via Lewisham, Nunhead and Loughborough Junction.

Great video such memories. What is the double track line running besides the station can't find it on my 1970s atlas? Thanks.

where are those iconic trains gone

As a brighton trainman I used to guard the thameslink 319 s to Farringdon before DOO was pushed down to gatwick. So that coulda been me on the back of the Tonka Toy. Lovely to see, epb s were great

no more people getting off before the train stops nowadays (except maybe the bakerloo line) and soon no more slam doors

How come they never gangwayed between the carriages on these trains? I know it's part of their unique character, but just always wondered why the didn't connect the cars up for passengers to walk through. Great video!

Did not realise there was low-level and terminus versions of Holborn Viaduct, was the original plan for the latter to always be a terminus with a hotel or did the East Kent Railway / LCDR have other plans in mind prior to their financial problems?

City Thames Link!!

Can I ask what line this was then? If Thameslink are heading towards Farringdon on the right what trains were these?

Doesn't Birmingham also have a Snow Hill tunnel?

now this section is just a boring Thameslink service

wow…all with a video camera that probably weighed three to four kilos. i can see why they stopped with compartments, it’s a danger to passengers to be able to open the doors while the train is still moving even if it’s stopping at the station. i know people are used to riding in them, but even so they were still a danger that could be used for getting money through lawsuits and false claims of dangerous actions by crews

Whos playing WD LEGION

EPB's OR NOT EPB's - LOOK AGAIN !!! Some of those "EPB's" are NOT EPB's, but HAP's, with toilets & 1st class (2:18) + Express gear ratio NOT Suburban !!! Further these "Slam door" units often reached 300,000+ miles BETWEEN FAULTS. A feat not achieved by ANY post BR built train. None of which have yet surpassed 150,000 miles between faults !!! Indeed slam door stock was far "Greener" and cheaper to operate than ANY Post BR built design. BR(SR) "Slam Door" EMU's had only ONE competitor in the WORLD that achieved such high reliability rates of 300,000+ miles between faults, & they were/are a number of Japanese EMU types. Further it was the Southern Railways 1933 London-Brighton 3rd Rail mainline Electrification, that introduced 4 Aspect signalling (to the World), with 2 minute headways, and regular interval working, that resulted in a 150% increase in passenger numbers within a year. As a result a number of overseas railways, rushed to Britain to see "the impossible". The Japanese National Railways (JNR) & some Japanese Private Railways being those to make major in depth studies of how this was all possible. And one of the things they learnt was "DO NOT over engineer the rolling stock if you want to make a profit. A concept totally forgotten by the Post BR "Franchised madness". Hence train fares in Britain are now some of the most expensive in the WORLD !!!! THE NECESSITY OF SLAM DOORS !!! Why did the Southern stick with slam doors when even the LMS & LNER had begun building EMU's with Sliding doors before WW2? Answer: Because 10 Slam Doors per suburban coach side, allows over 500 people to detrain & retrain from an 8-car formation in less than 30 seconds. And 30 second station stop allowances were necessary if you had trains arriving at 2 minute intervals, themselves necessary in the London Suburban area during rush hours. So on today's idiotic Franchised network, using suburban units with only two double sets of sliding doors per coach side, ONE minute (minimum) is needed at station stops. Meaning suburban journey times are now longer than they were in 1946. And as many Railway Companies have discovered, sliding doors on densely used commuter networks means a serious increase in door faults which itself causes more delays to trains. And in Britain this problem is made worse by the fact that the "Train OWNING" Franchises no longer allow the Driver, who works for a "Train OPERATING" Franchise to touch anything except the driving controls !!!! So today's Drivers (in Britain) are no longer trained on "faults" or any of the trains equipment, resulting in yet more delays and a huge increase in operating costs. As there are Financial penalties "for every minutes" delay between the "Franchises" & Network Rail which is of course Government owned !!!!! I can travel from Narbonne in France to Lisbon in Portugal by train, for half the price of a London to Manchester train ticket !!!

It wasn’t the case that slam door trains were dangerous….it was the case of how stupid and thick the human race can be….one person jumped out of the train before it stopped and gained at least 5 seconds….wow what a time saver.