Communication Based Train Control a central computer at Hammersmith communicates via fibre optic back bones to wayside radio units in the tunnel that send comms to the trains via WIFI
If Bodeans restaurant ever reopens, their toilet is downstairs and when you go down there you can hear the trains rattling by. There is a locked door and in my head it goes straight onto the old Mark Lane platform.
There's a Passing Alley in EC1 which apparently used to have a slightly different spelling .... But the best street name in all Greater London surely has to be Crooked Usage, up in Finchley N3.
I fell asleep on the Circle Line once. I went round about 3times, I was Seething when I woke up because I'd missed my train from Liverpool Street to Norwich. 🤔
On page 119 of "London's disused underground stations" by j e Connor published by capital transport in 2001, there is a photo of the wooden buildings of the original tower of London station on the east side of trinity Square photographed in c. 1901
Sorry @michael miller, possibly we have different editions. My copy of the book deals with Shepherd's Bush on page 119 and the photograph is of the market offices that used to be the entrance for the old Shepherd's Bush station. The Tower of London station is mentioned on page 120, but there is no photograph.🤔 I did a google search for 'Tower of London station' and found a picture of a wooden building that the linked website describes as '... the rear and looks towards Trinity Square.'
@@michaelmiller641: found this - www.metadyne.co.uk/DistrictPages/MDR_romanwall.html - and someone else has referenced it in another reply. Is it the same as in your copy of the book?
An especially Good Friday when there is a new upload from Jago. I live in London and I do a lot of street photography; Jago's videos are giving me a great number of new places to visit once Lockdown restrictions are lifted. Thanks Jago.
An interesting Video Jago, thank you. After studying the old map shown during the sequence about the first station I was fascinated to see how so much of the area around Tower Hill has changed Whole streets have disappeared ( and urinals!) new streets and buildings have appeared and the Tower itself along with All Hallows Church have both stood like sentinels among this change. Tower Hill was a great place in the 1970s as it was the City of London's equivalent of Speakers Corner. I remember seeing Lord Soper there many times. He attracted huge crowds, nearly as many as " Johnny Eagle" a street entertainer who's act was a bit of old fashioned "strongman" act combined with an escapologist act. He would tear up Telephone directories, bend iron bars around his neck and arms and invite members from the watching Throng to tie and chain him up before putting him in a sack from which he would escape! My lunch hours were always entertaining back then and the crowd was a great mix of bowler hatted city gents, office girls billingsgate Market porters and tourists visiting the tower. Modern life seems so dull in comparison.
Thank you for posting - thoroughly enjoyed you reminiscing. I lived on the other side of St. Katharine's dock in the noughties and walked to St. Paul's every day to work back then. I returned in 2019 and concur, everything's even more sterile now...
No High Path, it is not only you! having worked in the City since 1972 the changes that have been wrought not only on the fabric of the city but within the society that inhabits it have transformed them both immeasurably. Some good things have come along but at the same time so many not so good things have occurred. I have of course set the "rose tint" setting on my monitor to high!
Jago, can I appreciate you for having a nice upload schedule. I live on the other side of the world, therefore a lot of other youtubers post their videos after midnight at my place. Thank you so much for posting a lot earlier than others, keep up the great work.
I really like those little entrances to stations. If you have a few around an area and its not a super high capacity station then its very cool. Just like popping into a shop, but you are going underground to be whisked away.
I remember in the 70s, Mark Lane still looked like a station with posters etc. As a kid I always looked for it, just as I now look for St Mary's and other abandoned stations.
You are right there was a poster for a Roger Moore film entitled 'The Man Who Haunted Himself' left behind which could be easily seen from The District Line as you passed. Was there for years and years, quite spooky!
Delays on the Underground can result in signal stops between stations and you occasionally get slightly more than a fleeting glance at some of the dark ghostly closed platforms.
@@frglee That is always a highlight for me, bonus ghost tube infrastructure. The signal issues used to be really common in the 80/90s but TfL seems to have got handle on them now and the extra views seem to have diminished as the tube is just too reliable now.
Funnily enough, this is the last place I visited before the UK went into Lockdown I. I never knew the history behind this abandoned station but I always thought the building was rather strange. Thanks for another fascinating video, Jago.
Watching your videos always makes me realize how much I love London and how much I miss visiting it. Thanks for giving me content about one of the places I love the most.
Fascinating, I never realised that THAT was where the old station was, but then it was an tiny, humble entrance that you'd barely have noticed it even when it was open 😁
Before coming an avid viewer of your missives - if such can be called "a missive". You have tranformed what so easily could be a home for anoraks into a fascinating and humourous lecture (?) on London's transport system Thank you for your insights and researches.
Tower Hill is a perfectly normal name. Presumably perfectly normal people pass along the platforms and perfectly normal pigeons parade performing perfectly normal pigeon alliteration. All perfectly normal beasts, nothing to write home about. But Seething and Mark are at opposite extremes of the scale.There's an Arnold Lane in Nottingham, before anyone asks, and Pink Floyd's was Arnold Layne. Y, I don't know, but there you go.
It's a very nice station at Richmond. Some nice tracks to and from there too eg one that loops to Kingston and the line all the way from Waterloo/Clapham is beautiful in Summer.
leading on from Richmond the story of the proposed extension of the District from Richmond onto Kingston and the extension on Wimbledon onto Sutton with all the fun and games with the South Western and then Southern Railway blocking the schemes would make great stories telling! Poor Sutton never got either a District Line connection nor a Northern Line connection and now Tramlink extension has been cancelled. All Sutton has is the loopy Thameslink loop!
I like LT posters, and some posted in tube trains had cartoons of historical figures using the Underground, along with some message about cheap fares or something. One had a jolly Henry VIII at a ticket office asking for a cheap day return to Tower Hill - which was often defaced with: 'and a single for the wife'.
You forgot to mention the much earlier Roman station whose remains can still be seen in the current Tower Hill station. Or so I was told by a local tour guide once.
I walked past that building earlier today ...there are a set of steps leading down from the arch to the left of the entrance that definitely have that 'underground' smell ! Thanks for the video Jago - I wouldn't have noticed - or cared - without it !
It actually is a pretty grand old looking station, if you consider the entirety of "Mark Lane Station Buildings" to be the station house! And what great railway station would be complete without a bar? :)
My most visited abandoned station. When I worked on the Strand and lived in Canning Town Id change from Tower Hill to Tower Gateway twice I day and always stared out the window at the abandoned platform and metal girder stairs of Mark Lane.
My dad used to call Tower Hill Mark Lane up to the point that the old station closed. I must admit it took me several years to start calling the old Charing Cross station Embankment.
Quick tip from a photographer, to avoid reflections, put the camera lens up as close as you can to the window, if the lens has a rim around it, or if you're using your phone, you can put it on the glass, and you'll have no reflections at all.
I actually worked in the abandoned Tower Hill station back in 2017 when I was on engineering before I joined stations. I had to get two transformers down to the disused. That was a fun shift!
1:15 Two examples of siege weaponry and how they update over time. In the foreground we have a castle known as the tower of London. In castles, they utilised siege weapons, including the trebuchet, the catapult, battering rams and siege towers and eventually cannons. In ancient Greece, Archimedes designed a new siege weapon which focused sunlight onto ships to start fires. In 2014, the city of London decided to build one of those behind the Tower of London and called it 20 Fenchurch Street or the Scorchie Talkie.
Once, walking past that pub after an afternoon thunderstorm, I got drenched by a passing car going through a huge puddle. (this was before all the bus/cycle lane shenanigans). Briefly, there was a perfect silhouette of the "dry" me on the pub window. And many, many laughing faces behind it. I was soaked down my right side, and bone dry down the left. As the sun was now out, it generated some odd looks for my ride from Tower Gateway to Mudchute.
Mayhaps,LfT,should name a station,"Waltzing Lane",or "Changing Lanes",after all the bus works!! Just a suggestion,and a bit after April 1st!! Thanks for your attention 👍!
I found a picture of the wooden Tower station here www.metadyne.co.uk/DistrictPages/MDR_romanwall.html. Love your videos, rarely have reason to comment!
Thank you Jago,as always Ive been to that bar in the mid 90s and before must have been a bank since i remember the logo was overimposed on the old brass inprint on the stone,All Bar(nk)One,i think as pleasing the patrons,most coming from that trade No idea that was a station before,London is wonderfully multilayered
I'd love to see a video on the London Stone. Admittedly that might just be a picture of that little alcove in the wall. Also, the New River. I always fancied walking the full route of that. So far I've done the bit from Angel to, er, slightly further along from Angel.
Been down that subway a few times, the grill within the old building was the out entrance, only the eastbound platform exists, the westbound now part of track bed from the current station.
I hear that different types of electrification have been used on the tube. Some only had a third rail and I heard they considered powering the sub-surface lines with overhead lines.
Been waiting for a video on Mark Lane!!! I got to visit the abandoned station as part of my work experience with TfL three years ago. Took many photographs. Behind those lights on the old platform (3:13) (which belong to a concrete hut filled with wiring and electrics), were some rooms in a line - originally station offices or waiting rooms, with one still containing a fireplace. The remaining original titling on the platforms was green and quite a few Sixties posters still remained. One from 1965 advertised a newsreel called Ordinary Fascism; another for Zenith Motors; another titled ‘in the pink’, referencing the City Girls Employment Office Ltd, 63 Fenchurch Street; another advertising an Arts Council exhibition on Max Beckmann (admission: 3s 6d); another for Crystal Palace motor racing. I remember finishing that trip with lunch at the canteen at 55 Broadway. Very fond memories!
Quite like hearing about abandoned stations in and around London. You could do Broad Street which was next door to Liverpool Street and Moorgate. And the Primrose Hill station in Camden, North London.
I always enjoyed iirc West Hampstead station: You pop out of what feels like a hole in the wall on a steep twisting "village road with small high street" - gives a feel of what it might feel like if the Tube turned up in English villages as well as London, imo. The walk up from Camden to Hampstead in Summer is beautiful too.
An interesting one Mr H. I always thought Tower Hill was a slightly disappointing station. Being connected, on paper, with Fenchurch St, rather than the two being joined, isn't a great start. Then, calling it Tower 𝑯𝒊𝒍𝒍, instead of Tower Bridge or Tower of London, makes things worse. I wonder whether more business people or tourists use the station? The Tower, Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast must all be in the top 10 tourist attractions in London, so it might be quite a tight contest.
All these street names from history and beyond are going to start a compulsion in me to start buying maps from the OS iffin I didn't know their not on your Patreon list I would suspect some skullduggery ;-))
@@highpath4776 That is a such wonderful site. Many hours of pleasantly aimless browsing looking at the differences between 1901 and 2021, using the opacity feature to allow you to follow long dismantled railways to see if you were right when you were following what you thought was an old railway while browsing Google maps satellite view, or playing pointless games like "spot the wagon turntable" on the 25 inch maps. Yes, I know, I'm a sad individual! (For anyone who hasn't tried it, search for NLS maps, select the geo-referenced option, choose Ordnance Survey maps then 25 inch for the most amazingly detailed stuff)
If history had been different, "Seething Lane" would have been full of angry passengers, all squashed together... sweating, unable to read their huge newspapers in the dim light, refusing or unable to pay 20 shillings for a drink from WHSmith. I suppose even in the 1880s the District Line had SOME standards and knew not to cross the yellow line and exacerbate things by calling their cheap rush built, too small, too dim, too hot station... "Seething" LOL.
Are you sure the Metropolitan District Railway wasn't just trying to build the smallest, most crowded station on the network for as cheap as possible because that's what it seems like to me...
I never knew this while visiting All Bar One, Bodeans and the Wetherspoons quite regularly! So how close is the downstairs restaurant of Bodeans to the tracks? It must be close.
I am old enough to have used the old Tower Hill station in the days when fares were cheap, even for kids, can anyone remember the man that did the escape from the bag in chains act ?
@@JagoHazzard Visions of Jago buildings houses of cards or similar along some OO track in my mind here. I think i was in London when the Jubilee opened but I was probably in forced labour unable to go to the openings, such is the mercenary society of the financial district.
I'm pretty gobsmacked that they'd ever had the mask over their nose in the first place; must be a London thing. Out here in the provices most mask wearers seem to believe they are chin warmers or very occasionally voice mufflers. The only time they ever put their masks over their nose is if they're about to pass someone official or said official is looking directly at them. :(
20 Fenchurch St, the Walkie-Talkie. Famous for setting cars on fire when the sun shines on it. Not one of the greatest pieces of architecture in the metropolis. :)
