We all know Jago is (was?) not a diagram guy, but for an early effort, it’s outstanding and very informative. You must not forget that many of us don’t live in London and know its transport network and urban fabric - especially place names - best from, you’ve guessed it, diagrams, so having these visual aids is invaluable.
I was going to say the same. Jago, I know you're not a map man, but with me being from south of the river, my knowledge of the spaghetti that is north line railways is sketchy at best. The map is really helpful to be able to visualise what you're talking about. Please do more!
Hell, I don't even live in _the United Kingdom._ I don't honestly know how Jago got into my feed, but I find these videos strangely soothing and fascinating to watch - and I do love trains.
@@ShadowDragon8685 me neither, I guess I was just talking nonchalantly about “not living in London” on account of having so many friends living there, as if it was just another city next door. 😂
@ShadowDragon8685 Hell. I dont even live in that hemisphere and have never been to London in my life. Yet I find these vids fascinating. So yes, more maps etc are great for those of us.
_"The Goblin Was Actually Built As Three Lines And The History There Is Quite Complicated"_ - I'm comforted by that, I would have been quite unnerved if it were just plain straight forward.
I used this line for decades, from 1984 to get to and from work till I retired in 2021. For most of that time I'm sorry to say the service was pretty diabolical, with infrequent elderly diesel trains of various types, frequently cancelled due to "unit failure". I remember quite a number of times in the autumn of several years the eastbound trains would come into Walthamstow Queen's Road Station, and fail to stop there due to wet leaves on the line, and just slide on through, skidding to a halt well past the platform. It would then have to go backwards into the station. But on leaving again the train would have trouble going up the incline toward Leyton Midland Road, slipping on the wet leaves, and you could smell the smoke it produced while it went at only walking pace. On the section between South Tottenham and Blackhorse Road there were speed restrictions as the raised structure the line was built on seemed unsteady, you could feel the train gently swaying even at slow speeds! Eventually, in order to electrify the line, they closed the whole service for months, laying on a tortuous rail replacement bus service! And when the line came back, they hadn't planned the electrification well and had been unable to fit the overhead wires due to the many low bridges over the line, so they had to close it again. Then they created a self inflicted shortage of trains on the line because they got rid of their diesel trains before the new electric ones were fully tested and ready to be used! Well, at long last the service is now vastly improved, with quite frequent modern trains, but sadly I only got to use the improved service for a relatively short time till I retired! PS1 As I remember, the Harringay Green Lanes station was once called "Harringay Stadium" and there used to be a dog track there. Now a big Sainsburys stands on that site. PS2 When I was little, my dad (who also used the line for many years before me) knew the signalman at South Tottenham Station and one day took me along when he went to visit him in the signal box. I got to see him pulling the heavy levers to switch the semaphore signals, and even got to have a go!
I wonder why they didn't electrify it with third rail. That would have avoided the problems with bridges and tunnels. Edit: Ah, but maybe that would have presented a problem with running freight trains over the line.
The trick of running poor quality trains on inconvenient schedules was the key to implementing the Beeching report. Many lines slated for closure were potentially profitable and had active user groups so the lines would be run down to discourage travelers -- poor trains, inconvenient schedules, badly timed connections and so on. Its difficult to explain the emphasis on road transport at the time knowing what we know today about congestion but there was serious money to be made from investing in roads and little to be made from rail so money carried the day.
You're right that "Its difficult to explain the emphasis on road transport at the time," although the Minister of Transport having an interest in the firm that was building the motorways goes a little towards explaining it...
Folks I knew sometimes referred to it as 'the secret railway' back in the 1990's because few people used it because few people knew it was there. I used it for work in the early noughties when it was run by Silverlink and they were two coach diesel things of dubious reliability. There was no information displays at the station, you had to press a button on an orange box that would eventually croak out what you already suspected: your train was cancelled. Three per hour then, I think. On the plus side, you rarely had to pay because the ticket folks only appeared once in a blue moon, it was often a bit of a shock!
In East London it was called the free railway for years because you couldn't pay even if you wanted to as there were no ticket machines and no staff and generally nothing except a near derelict platform and some knackered old trains. The trains were ancient two car diesels and were absolutely packed solid with the poorest people all trying to get to work.
The 150/1 units that you had on the Goblin came to us at Bristol for FGW local services . I was surprised by how good a condition they were internally for units that had worked in deepest london . Probably combined with type experience the units were not bad for reliability & have only left FGW area in the last few years for Northern Trains due to 165 & 166’s from the Thames Valley being moved to Bristol as Electostars are now in the Thames Valley .
@@chrisrichmond403 - they weren't on the GOBLIN for long, they were second hand trains that replaced some really ancient battered wrecks when Transport for London took over running it from the disgraceful company Silverlink. Transport for London promised improvements as part of the new London Overground and gave us those 2nd hand trains for while. We just had them for a while when there was talk of some brand new trains being built for the line. The idea of the GOBLIN having brand new trains was an unheard of phenomenon - the line had never had new trains since it was built in the 19th Century, it always had 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th-hand knackered old trains. The new trains only came when Transport for London got involved and improved the whole thing.
Back in the 1960s my aunt and her family moved out to the great unknown that was Leytonstone High Rd. All of us north London based famalam would troupe out of a Sunday on the Kentish Town to Barking train to see the cousins and maybe go mooching on Wanstead Flats. It was a revelation, especially the section between South Tottenham and Blackhorse Road with the great dark mysterious reservoirs. Then auntie moved to Walthamstow and we discovered the Market! What a thrill that place was with everything from Tubby Isaacs and his jellied eels to spare parts for any make of vacuum cleaner you could think of. We found out that you could get a train from Barking to Sarfend so that was us off again. For us relatively poor north Londoners, that little line brought a whole new world. It passes by the end of my street near the old Junction Rd station and I love it.
I watched this video just before going to bed last night. I dreamed that I and some teenage friends opened up a defunct local train station and started running it ourselves, complete with some distinctive and brightly coloured uniforms. I blame you for this.
Honestly, Jago, I am not a railfan at all. Videos like these should be like watching paint dry for me. But your wry delivery and ability to expound on fun little facts sells it.
I concur. I don’t give a tinker’s damn about rail lines or equipment. For me, it’s about the history of London. The evolution of London rail (especially with regard to the Underground) seems to be more a “coagulation of anarchy” than anything else.
I remember travelling on the Goblin back in the 1980s. A noisy little first generation DMU rattling its way along a semaphore-signalled and seemingly semi-derelict track made it feel like an ailing rural branch line that had come to seek it's fortune in the city but failed.
Now, that's just how I like my railways. Red, raw and rude, macho industrial iron and semaphore levers. None of this wimpy smooth and centrally heated stuff.
When I first traveled on the line the train had an N7 up front. That would be late 50s. A few weeks later I remember my disappointment when a DMU rolled in. We didn't even get the benefit of a forward view, the driver had the blinds down...
In the the 60’s, it was possible to sit in the carriage at the front of the old diesel train just behind the driver ‘s cabin, separated by clear glass. Big thrill to watch the driver and almost sit with him.
As a railway buff, this is one of my favourite railway stories, because it demonstrates so well the castiron rule "invest in a railway and people will use it". In this, the Goblin is iconic. The fat and greasy bluebottle in the ointment is HM Treasury, which refuses to put public money into projections, however well researched and founded, and insists dogmatically on reference solely to the to-date performance of the underinvested facility (whatever). This lockhold ensures the downward spiral Jago correctly refers to. But the Goblin is a winner, and I hope that the extension to Thamesmead can build on this. It is b.t.w. the reason why the Barking Riverside station is raised on stilts (ready for the new bridge over the Thames).
Never a truer word spoken than with regard to the vicious circle of under-use, under-funding and progressive decay and degradation. The Goblin was lucky. A good example of the ultimate outcome can be found in the old Crystal Palace High Level line, closed in 1954. Even after the loss of the Palace itself in 1936 the line after WW II should have become a bustling commuter route linking a major transport interchange at the Palace end to both Holborn Viaduct and London Victoria. Instead users were driven away by ailing infrastructure, poor train services, lack of investment and a total bureaucratic indifference to the potential of the route in favour of simply allowing it to fall apart.
Jago's bit about how lack of investment works was so nice to hear. I often feel alone trying to defend investment into railways, so it's nice knowing like minded people exist and that I'm not alone.
It's like people who claim that HS2 isn't an investment into existing railway lines - when the first paragraph of the business case says completely different!
I had been following the upgrades on the Gospel Oak to Barking line and as soon as the class 710 came into service, I high tailed it to out of the way Gospel Oak simply to take a short ride. That's the sort of thing that happens to people with a lot of time on their hands and a schoolboy's enthusiasm for all things transport.
If the Overground ever does go ahead and divide itself into lines like the Underground (mostly for ease of readability) I reeeeally hope they officially call it the Goblin Line (colour: light green maybe? lol)
I'll put a tenner down right now on 'somebody starting a campaign saying that 'Goblin' "obviously" relates to, and therefore instantly offends, X/Y/Z social, racial, religious/ se*ual orientation' Also tempted to throw another 20 on 'focus group formed costing a couple grand to come up with non-bigoted color scheme which ends up being a near indistinct to 99.999% of us color but is totally different and therefore way less oppressive to XYZ's'
They really need to. I haven't lived in London for years now, but last time I visited the Overground had gone bananas from when I knew it. It really needs separating out into it's own tube style map so it makes some degree of sense.
@@C2K777 A while back I saw an article about a murky mix of brown,green and grey that had officially been voted the "worst colour in the world". Perhaps that would be the one they end up opting for.
I used to live in a council block overlooking the Goblin, and have fond memories watching the silent orange trains run past every odd minutes - top London views!
As a young train spotter I used to use it from Woodgrange Park to Harringay Stadium. (as it was then) We would walk up to Harringay West and watch the trains out of Kings Cross. In those days it was a DMU and we could sit behind the driver as though we were in the cab. The stations were mostly wooden platforms and, even then, like a piece of history. Many happy memories. Thanks Jago.
Great video, the same effect you editorialise is happening right now with bus routes, due to COVID bus companies and councils cut back on routes or frequency, and people stop taking buses as they are no longer convenient, causing further cutback on routes. This risks becoming permanent as people rarely move back to public transport unless there is a very strong reason to.
In Western Australia the public transport system uses zonal fares with nine fare zones. To encourage people back onto the trains the state government has capped the fares at two zones (e.g. If you travel one zone you pay full fare, every zone after that you pay the full fare as if you travelled two zones.) as a means of encouraging people back onto public transport, only time will tell if it works or not.
@@Graham-ce2yk that's pretty cool, hope it does. In London TFL has frozen fares and proactively restored routes & frequency, resulting in minimal drop off, but elsewhere in the UK it is a different story.
There's a nice rags to rushes aspect of not just the GOBLIN, but pretty much the entire Overground network. Prior to TFL taking them over and rebranding them to become part of the Overground, they were underused, rationalised and often vandalised stations. With TFL investment, it made the lines more attractive than they have been since even before the Reshaping of British Railways report of 1963, aka the Beeching Report
This line was a sanity saver and money saver for me when I had to commute from Plaistow to Highgate, late 90's. I started off doing it all by Tube, which involved several line changes and the nightmare of rush hour King's Cross, (don't stop moving or you'll be trampled) and rattled to pieces on the grotty dirty Northern line carriages. I discovered the Barking to Gospel Oak line which avoided Zone 1, therefore cheaper and despite the frequent evening cancellations from Gospel Oak, I enjoyed the nostalgic swaying rhythm as we went past the Reservoirs, windows that could be pulled down for a cool breeze in the Summer and rare encounters with lunatics. We knew it as "the Chimney Pot Line", passing at roof level through South Tottenham, Leytonstone, Leyton etc. Often saw a bloke with an oil can and a greasy boiler suit tinkering at Gospel Oak, as it was still the Diesel days! Sometimes had train spotters in the carriage, admiring the old fixtures and fittings, pressure gauges etc. Got held up one morning by a Swan on the track near the Reservoirs. Train stopped, Driver tried in vain to shoo it away by getting on the track and waving his arms about. Tried spraying a Fire Extinguisher near it, no joy and it became obvious it was injured. Some of us were rooting for the Driver and the Swan, some sh*tes told the Driver to "just run it over!" Eventually, Animal Warden from Lee Valley came to rescue it off the track, and we carried on! I sometimes waited at Gospel Oak for an hour due to cancellations, but the alternative "modern" Hackney line was awful - packed to the rafters, stroppy passengers and idiots trying to get their bike in despite the crush.. It was busiest in the morning with a lot of schoolkids, a Ticket bloke who was usually OK with you buying your ticket off him, unless he had an off day.. I'm glad I changed jobs before the chaos of upgrading, it was generally a welcome end to the day to doze and admire the views, all above ground. I'm sure it's efficient and reliable now, but at the time, I loved it!
I grew up in the 90s in Gospel Oak and took the goblin every summer to get to Southend. It was always "scary", with older trains that you had to manually close the doors, but I vividly remember two things. One sticking my head out of the window and nearly getting it lobbed off by a tunnel wall, but secondly some lovley driver once let me sit in the cab all the way from barking back to gospel Oak - quiet the experience for a ~7 year old!
My favourite Overground line! I used to live in Gospel Oak and now I live in East London and the Goblin is sooo useful! And, definitely the most comfortable Overground line, not the least because of the new trains.
You really haven't properly experienced the Goblin without suffering the cancellation of two successive half-hourly services at a wet, wind-swept platform atop a viaduct in January only for the next service to be a single car slam-door DMU already comically - and dangerously - overcrowded with passengers from Barking and Woodgrange Park. But on the other hand the re-opening to freight has meant that now we get traffic from all over the country coming through heading to the Thames Estuary ports and a few for the Ripple Lane Exchange Sidings thence on to HS1 and the Channel Tunnel.
I remember the goblin in the 80's when it ran underneath our school. We spent many a happy hour near the line,in those days it had 2 carriage diesel units that used to splay the smoke out of what looked like upright exhausts that looked similar to a lorries exhaust . Fond memories of the line between Gosoel oak and junction Rd and its tunnels. Great Video as always Jago.
As a kid I used to walk down there from my grandma's place in Chester Road, and spend a bit of time standing on "the old wooden bridge" as my family always called it (I guess it's long since been replaced with something more durable). I was always puzzled at how they could have a railway apparently running right through a school like that.
@@Krzyszczynski Yeah we used to climb the wall by the bridge and climb down onto the lower set of tracks that routed off towards King's Cross and the tunnels. Something about that area had some great times there.
Hi Jago I remember in 1962 I think travelling on the Goblin just one stop from Crouch Hill to Uppet Holloway. While waiting for the little diesel railcar at Crouch Hill I was gob(lin) smacked when a big steam hauled passenger train came thundering through. It was a St Pancras_Tilbury boat train! Made my day. Thanks for Your excellent update
I could never understand why Blackhorse Road wasn't built as a proper interchange station when the Victoria Line was built. The tube station opened in 1968, but the original BR station across the road remained until 1981 (when the present platforms, linked into the tube station, were built). It wasn't until recent years that I realised the Goblin Line was due to close under Beeching - which is why 1960s LT planners didn't bother making provision for it in their new station.
You've done it again! A photograph, without warning, of He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named-Without-Vomiting, aka B...B...Bee... No! I cannot bring myself to write it! Luckily, I had nothing in my hands to throw at the television!
When I was young, back in the 1970s, I recall the dirty old diesel trains, that looked like rejects from other lines. Two carriages, often overcrowded, and often delayed. If only they had modernised back then. Now there are the new luxury electric trains with 4 carriages, and the extension coming soon to Barking Riverside. I don't know if they still run a few trains to Hampstead Heath still, but that was the case a few years ago. Instead of going to Gospel Oak, the train could bypass that station and end up at Hampstead Heath. I also wonder what happened to the branch off to Kentish Town?
I also remember when Leyton and Leytonstone's stations were quite literally redone in the early 90s, and then subsequently left unstaffed and gradually allowed to rot. Utter shame.
As I worked in Leyton in the late 70s, I did sometimes use the Gospel Oak-Barking line. More out of morbid curiousity than for any real transport needs. Derelict gloomy stations, oily rattly and slow diseasel multiple units and a generally rundown air. It never seemed very busy then and even seemed to me that it didn't actually go anywhere much., connecting a series of poorish residential areas, industrial estates and the odd shopping centre and was of very limited use for commuting into central London. Nice to see it all much improved these days and somehow finding its raison d'etre.
'... and even seemed to me that it didn't actually go anywhere much ...'. That was my impression as I tried too decide at which station to hop off after my litle ride on the newly introduced Class 710.
@@eattherich9215 It was useful IF you could be sure it was running as it made links the buses did not without ackward changes - or do an all routes lead to Stratford and Walk.
There's a welcome wit to all of your videos but this one in particular is just great journalism. Really well produced, expertly presented - more more more more more please
The most abused line has to be the West Ealing - Greenford shuttle. 1, 2- car DMU an hour, which after lunchtime misses the Purple line connection by 2 minutes, meaning a 13 minute wait for the next one. Do come and visit our neglected service sometime.
I think that branch should be electrified, and the trains that are currently timetabled to terminate at Paddington should go there. Would take a lot of pressure off the Central Line.
@@katrinabryce It's perfect to be an extension to the District Line. Just pop a short tunnel West Ealing to Ealing Broadway. Just £50 million to extend the District Line all the way to Greenford. But instead, some short sighted is intending to put battery trains on the branch line. FFS
@@davidwebb4904 I would Overground it to Ealing, then TfL Rail lines to branch off toward Olympia via the old Cross Country line to Clapham Junction thence to Beckenham Junction for a SW London line service.
No, that was in Peterborough in 1968, replaced with traffic lights in 2008. The one near Benfleet station will be the oldest one. An online search will show you it.
I live at Seven Sisters and in 2001 for ten weeks I worked at Forest Gate - the Goblin Line from South Tottenaham to Wanstead Park was great when it worked, but all too often trains were cancelled and the short journey was a daily nightmare (or a nightly daymare). The only relief was being able to look into the City Farm at Leytonstone.
Remember seeing the little diesel units at Walthamstow in the early 90's. Looked miserable. If they could have packed one more passenger on to these I swear the gravitic mass would have started sucking in the surrounding area :-)
Nah, it's fine. The bodyshell would have warped before that happened, so it wasn't anything to worry about. Actually that was the overloading marker for the old DMUs. If they were overfull, the doors wouldn't close securely as the bodyshell warping out of shape would mean they didn't latch and the handles would stay at the 45 degree position*. That's when you had to get the police out to physically remove people, because by that point there was already a near riot going in. * This is genuine; I experienced it as a guard on the Birmingham CrossCity line, which was infamously unreliable to an extent that would have led all London commuters to curl up in bed and cry, on a number of occasions in the late 1980s/early 1990s. A standout memory is getting to work early for an evening shift starting after the p.m. peak, being asked by the Traincrew Supervisor to book on immediately and go down to a train in platform 8 with the words "I have no idea what train it is, it's absolute chaos, just take it all stations to Lichfield, OK?", and discovering a three-car DMU vice booked six which had been standing for 45 minutes (during which time there should have been four other four- or six-car trains but hadn't been any) and which was absolutely swamped. The only reason people weren't sitting on the roof is that they would have been fried by the 25 kV overhead lines... A dozen *civvy* police were there (BTP being conspicuous by their absence as usual), physically stopping people from trying to get in and pulling people out until the station staff could get the doors to actually close and fully latch. I couldn't get near the guard's van, which must have had well over 50 people in it, so I had to work from the back cab which was a definite no-no... Lots of people have rose-tinted glasses about how wonderful BR was. I don't.
@@atraindriver I find it strange when you see people in movies on top of trains either fighting or crouching, within a foot of the OHL and not get fried ..
Another great video. I lived in South Tottenham as a uni student in 2013/14 right next to the station and used to use the Goblin all the time, especially to the National Archives in Kew. It's incredible how much freight uses the line - especially at the night. I recall seeing lots of Tesco branded wagon (presumably taking imported food to the Waltham Cross warehouse).
I really liked this one, i grew up with this line at the bottom of my garden, on the section between Barking and Woodgrange Park. I even remember Woodgrange Park with staff and station canopies..... The line has one of the quirkiest junction names on the whole railway network, Junction Road Junction! It's where the line to the Midland Main Line heads down while the line to Gospel Oak heads upwards away from one another. Junction Road is the street name up above, a lot of railway junctions take their names from the roads nearby. When i was a freight driver the route was known as the T&H and was restricted weight wise on the eastern end due to the viaducts. The Purfleet stone job was around 2500 ton and wasn't allowed over the section from Tottenham to Woodgrange Park but was ok to come back that with the empties. Semaphores were still used on the line until around 2009. It even had the last remaining semaphore Intermediate Block signal on the whole national network between Harringay Park Junction and Upper Holloway, all other remaining IB signal are colour light. The East Ham to St Pancras service made for an interesting oddity as well, you could leave East Ham on a train in both directions to go to St Pancras (the Hammersmith Metropolitan Line being the other). And before it ceased running, the North Woolwich to Palace Gates service passed through South Tottenham but didn't actually call there!.....
The first time I saw Woodgrange Park station there was a building on the platform, I think it may have been a signal box but I’m not sure now. Tucked behind it on the ground was a large enamelled station name board. I don’t know if it had been taken down or just fallen down. Would be worth a lot of money now.
@@srfurley That was the signal box at the Country End of the Barking platform. I have a feeling the large enamel name board is the one my late father rescued, somewhat faded but still blue.... lol
From Holloway....... ....to Barking? My dear Ms Hibbert, simply shoot oneself in the head. Decidedly quicker and saves one the horrors of being in either place 😉😁
Quite by chance I travelled on this railway back in the bad old days, when it ran to Kentish Town, and I remember how dark and dingy everything was. There was also a slot on one of the BBC's post-evening news programmes at the time (Nationwide?) about it, including an interview with a member of staff at one of the stations, who complained that he'd seen about 4 passengers that day. I also remember it becoming a victim of its own success once TFL had taken it over, and I note that a lot of work was done by the User Group to get decent funding and modernisation.
If it was known as the Kentish Town to Barking Line back in the day would that be the Kenblin? Honestly no just wanted a way to insert that in, Great video Jago! Also the station at Blackhorse Road was just after the bridge of today's current station so it wasn't that far away
Nice to see this. My mate Graham was involved in the Users' Group for this line which is still active. You could have mentioned the part campaigning has played in the improvements over the years including electrification and the new trains. He's there at about 13 minutes in Geoff Marshall's video about them.
I used to use the GOBLIN regularly. I lived in Barking and was attending the Institute of Archaeology. I hated Barking and soon moved out to Hornchurch, but while I was there I regularly took the GOBLIN to Gospel Oak then bussed into Bloomsbury. It was far cheaper as I could use an outer zones travel card, and using both termini I always had a seat airline style on an air con train and the route made for a far more interesting ride than hot, stuffy and overcrowded district line and the awful interchanges in Zone 1. I loved the quirky little line. When I moved to Hornchuch I took to using the Shenfield Metro service into Liverpool St, but it was never quite as interesting or enjoyable way to travel, especially back then on the ancient pre-TFL EMUs.
Hi Jago, Upper Holloway Station is my local stop, about 6 minutes walk from my home. The line has now improved beyond recognition over the years. My parents used to take me to my aunt, (who lived in Wanstead Park and my nan who lived in Upney. One station up from Barking). I just about remember steam trains being on the line and its downfall to one train 20 minutes past the hour every hour from Upper Holloway to Barking on those clapped out Class 117 Diesel Multiple Units. I also remember the old station platform gas lamps, Haringey Stadium station, (when there was one) and the old Blackhorse Road station, from many years ago.
yes i too remember this line as we used to use this line form Wanstead Park to Leyton High Road and going the other way to visit relatives at Barking. The line was dreadfully run down and I remember when part of the parapet collapsed and fell onto someone's car on the way to Leyton and one of the tracks were hanging in mid air. Also when you walked under some of the bridges there were great cracks in the abutments and one of the bridges in Forest Gate was actually propped up for many years with road closed beneath it. I also remember the gas lights in the 70s and the stations built out over the pavements there were proper waiting rooms but were replaced by bus shelters I only wished I was there to save a few signs or those gas lamps I assume they were all scrapped. The service was never reliable with as you say frequent breakdowns having said that they did run the boat trains from Tilbury to St Pancras until the Kentish Town curve was closed and the service diverted to Gospel Oak. Great Video though
The snag with this line was that it always looked as if it didn't connect to anything else useful. Blackhorse Road has helped, and now the Tube map flags up the easy walk from Tufnell Park. The old service to Kentish Town (Northern line) and St Pancras (Piccadilly/ Victoria/Northern/Circle/Metropolitan/H'smith and City/Thameslink/everything else line) might have been useful to retain. You can provide a good service on a line but it's no use if it doesn't take people where they want to go. But the orbital routes have become increasingly useful, and hence deservedly popular.
I used to use it when I lived at Blackhorse Road Walthamstow to travel up to Barking then to Southend. I loved this little train line. I would probably still use it if I lived still in Walthamstow. Good little line.
I live right next to crouch hill station and remember being excited when they finally started to electrify the line! They had to close several of the bridges to raise them to fit the cables underneath. The new trains they have on there are lovely too
Used to go from Blackhorse Road to Barking as a kid to see my grandma, this would have the early 90s. Me and my sister used to ask my mum if we were going on “the train that sounds like a bus”.
When I started using the Goblin, the trains were so scruffy that it looed as though someone had been mixing cement on the carriage floor. the new trains are excellent.
Used to travel on this line from Barking to Leytonstone as a child to visit family when it was still steam As Barking was (still is?) the end of the line the train used to come in and then the loco used to run around the train and we'd watch it couple up Then steam was replaced by Dmu's and occasionally the driver would leave the blackout blind rolled up and we'd sit at the front and get the drivers eye view
We use to go Crouch Hill to Southend in the 1950s and early 60s. Class 3 MT tank locos and old MR red coaches. Crouch Hill as late as 1958 was gas lit. The porter came along at dusk and turned them on individually. At about the age of 10 curiosity got the better of me and I turned a few on. When (who knows when with Covid) I get to the UK next I am going to ride this line Barking to Gospel Oak just for old time sake and get out at Crouch Hill and Leyton Midland Road (got off here to go see the Orient play) for old time sake and take some photos. Thank you for this many happy memories!
The GOBLIN carried a named train, at least in the 1960s. This was the Swedish Lloyd Express, from St Pancras to Tilbury, connecting with a ferry to (I think) Gothenberg (Goteberg).
This is literally my main line, 3 minutes away from my house and it takes me right to college and work, only wish it connected to Stratford. But Leytonstone station is only 15 minutes away and i can easily get the bus. Its my favourite line because of how useful it is for me personally
Nice to see this. 🙂 When I worked in central London in the latter half of the 1960s, one of the guys in the office used this line on his daily commute from/to Leyton. He was a member of the "Barking and Kentish Town Line Joint Committee" (if I remember correctly), a passenger group formed to stop the line's closure (also if I remember correctly) and would introduce himself as such when ringing to complain about that morning's service.
Jago : Hi & _thanks_ for this segment's maps! They are quite helpful and are _greatly_ appreciated, _especially_ by those of us who are coming from "grid -- challenged" places, e.g., NYC, USA ! /Mike
Nostalgic video for me as I used to live next to South Tottenham station. I can confirm it is a trainspotters dream line and I'm not even a trainspotter. I saw all sorts of trains go through including steam.
I used to get on this train from Barking to Woodgrange Park after getting off of the District Line. The conductor wouldnt normally start doing their rounds until after the curve so if you sat at the very front of the 2 carriage diesel train sometimes youd be off of the station before the conductor reached you.....allegedly of course.
I would've liked to know more about it's war time role as it diverted military n essential supplies away from central london . My mother used it then and they called it the ghost line because it was dimly lit. .
Used this line in 1971/2 from Leyton to Barking when I worked in Boots. I remember the old Blackhorse Road station, on the opposite side to the present one. You couldn't determine where the east bound platform ended. It just merged into the embankment.
Thanks for that video Jago. I have never travelled that line but I did use the North London Line from West Hampstead during the 70s and 80s passing through Gospel Oak many a time. I worked for Camden Council and was based in a depot in Ingestre Road right by the railway lines at what would have been Highgate Road high and low level stations. From the bridge crossing the low level lines you could see the signal box which was still in use then (early 1980s). As an aside the North London Line was very unreliable back then, 3 trains an hour. Many a time I would be late for work as 3 trains in a row were cancelled. It was really being run down then.
I remember watching the 2-3 carriage diesel trains from our garden, I grew up close to Wanstead Park Station. I also remember the freight trains carrying anything from natural gas to cars, this was in 1970s and I see that my old friend the Gospel Oak line has gone places.
The amount of times I have attempted to make use of the line, returning from a party in Tottenham to Barking, while at university you understand, early on a Sunday morning to discover that the train was not going to run that morning. Now I live in Tottenham, and generally still avoid the Goblin line.
BR ran through trains to "Sarffend" back in the day. Summer SO I think. I can remember the train coming into Leytonstone with an N7 up front . Locals referred to Leytonstone overground as Leytonstone Midland. Same at Leyton, which was on Midland Rd. Ta Jago.
I remember regularly using this line in the 1980s for an obscure home-to-work journey. The trains were ancient, groaning diesels which always felt about to expire. It's great to know it was finally electrified.
Great vid. They should cross the Thames with it and push into South East London so that there is a better Route from there to North East London which is not always easy to do without having to go via the City. There are some pretty large gaps in South-East London that are not served by rail and it might be a chance to fix that.
Dejavu! Same happened with the Rainhill line. Running clapped out DMU's running over worn out rail. Only took Merseytravel 150 years to electrify the entire line along with GM Travel to Manchester. I remember travelling from Lime Street to Gloucester via Manchester to spend a couple of days with ex wife when we were both students 30 years ago. The 12 Coach Class 56 Clunked along at 50 MPH, and used every subsidiary branch line between Liverpool/Gloucester and going back to Liverpool I managed to shave a whole hour off the journey on week days. Only took six hours! :))
Wo, wo, wo, there. Hang on a minute! Somebodies introduced electricity to Liverpool?! Well I never. Next you'll be telling us the locals have gotten themselves automobiles. Offt what a crazy world we live in. ( Said with tongue firmly in cheek and nothing but love for the marvellous 'City of Scousers'
