The Golden Arrow and the Night Ferry 

I worked at Dover Marine and was taught to drive on the the Golden Arrow and Night Ferry in both directions ,Thanks for the memories of 50 plus years ago ,i'm soon 74,,

As a child I would travel between London Victoria and Bromley South to visit Grandparents, one of the highlights was seeing the Golden Arrow steam train roaring through Bromley South.

I recall seeing the Wagons-Lits coaches outside Victoria, when going on holiday to the South Coast..this would have been around 1970, I were fascinated to see French coaches in London..

Bringing back some happy memories of both the the GA and the NF. I worked at Victoria Continental Ticket Office between 1965 and 1979. NF allocations were held at Thomas Cook offices (as they were partners with CIWL, with just a small allocation at Victoria. The plans were brought around 6pm for use at Victoria and then handing over to the conductor for the berths to be made up either as Singles or Doubles. Could go on quite a lot more !

So many lost golden ages. Thank you for helping to keep this one alive. 👍🖖

The Nightstar was a sleeper service through the tunnel to various continental destinations. With trains actually originating in Swansea, Plymouth Glasgow and London and terminating in Paris, Brussels and Frankfurt from memory. A fleet of coaches and sleepers using the body of the BR mk4 coach was ordered, built and even tested through the tunnel by Class 92s and BB36000s on the continent. The service was axed in the end and the coaching stock was bought by VIA and named their Renaissance fleet

Long ago I was a kid on holiday (by car), staying one night in Wimereaux. I persuaded my Dad to give me a quick look at the station and by what to him seemed like amazing luck we got there just before the Fleche D'Or roarded through, passing the Stationmaster who stood to attention as this giant steam loco went passed. Later on the same holiday we popped in to Dijon Station and watched the Trans Europe Express 'Le Mistrel' call there. I think by that point dad had realized I'd discovered timetables and was planning these chance meetings! A year or two later (I think 1969) I went on the Golden Arrow and Fleche d'Or from London to Vireggio in Italy, as the latter carried through coaches which used the Petite Centure around Paris to be hooked onto the Rome Express. The whole journey took under 24 hours and I loved every minute, especially as I had the middle bed in a couchette so could watch the world outside while laying horizontal. Happy memories and it sure beats flying (yawn), apart from my one trip on a Concorde which was fun.

Growing up in Brixton South London, it was always possible to catch sight of French Railway coaches being hauled to Victoria on these cross-channel services. A welcome change from all the anonymous EMU workings.

Actually travelled on the night ferry one with my parents too young to really appreciate it Paris-London

I never realised trains actually went on the ferries. A fascinating video, Thank you.

My fourth of your videos. ... From an oldie who has lived through much of the content you have featured. All are nicely presented. Well scripted and well delivered commentary combined with obviously carefully researched visuals. All in all, great productions. Well done indeed. ... and thank you.

I always wondered how they aligned the height of the rails, and now I know! Thanks!

Surely these must have been two of the most glamorous trains to ever run in Britain? And to think that the Night Ferry lasted all the way to 1980! But that kind of passenger rail travel is quickly becoming little more than a distant memory. Thanks from Canada for the great video!

10:32 "No proposals have been made to introduce sleeping car service through the Channel Tunnel"? The Nightstar was a proposed sleeping car service through the tunnel which went so far as to purchase a fleet of coaches. That fleet is now used by VIA Rail Canada on their Montréal-Halifax sleeper service.

Well done Ruairidh. Interesting and very well produced and narrated. Thank you. ;-)

This brings back many memories of 1950's boyhood "linesiding" at Petts Wood Junction, where the passage of the "down" Victoris - Folkestone Harbour "Golden Arrow", surely the most elegant of all British named trains, was the highlight of the day. Sadly the "up" service leaving Dover Marine at about 4 p,m, passed through in the early evening, by which time we had already returned home for our teas. I never witnessed the "Night Ferry", but the sight of Continental ferry- vans, mostly concerned with perishable fruit and vegetable traffic, in the consists of some freight workings added a little variety to the drab, short wheel-base British goods wagons. A new Continental Freight Depot was opened in 1960 at nearby Hither Green to deal with this traffic . Commenting on the early years of the Cross-Channel "packet" traffic, the first South Eastern Railway trains ran from London Bridge on a circuitous route, running alongside Brighton line metals through the North Downs as far as Redhill, before striking off east in a straight line through Tonbridge to Ashford and Dover. It was some time before the shorter route from New Cross to Tonbridge was opened, and Charing Cross and Cannon Street became the South Eastern Railway departure stations for Continental traffic. At one time Bricklayers Arms off the Old Kent Road was termed the Railway's "West End" terminus, but was soon relegated to the handling of goods traffic, though its locomotive depot stayed open until the end of steam . For some time, an independent shipping company ran the "Channel Packet" boat services, which as well as European mails, once the Suez Canal was opened also conveyed mail traffic for the Indian subcontinent. This was transported to the Italian port of Brindisi to be loaded aboard ships of the P&O for its onward journey, thus saving the delay of the voyage around the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean. Folkestone was later opened up by the railway as a second Channel port, but was always hampered by the steep descent from the junction on the main Dover line through the eastern town to the Harbour. Originally there had been plans to run the railway on a flatter route along the shoreline, but the residents of Folkestone, already a popular upper-class watering place, refused to permit railway construction to despoil their sea frontage. In the early years, "boat trains" were run on a "tidal" basis, dependent on the sailings of the packet steamers, with different operating times dependent on the state of the tides in the Channel. Due to a misreading of the timetable on the 9th June 1865, a gang of track workers removed the rails near a bridge on the line near Staplehurst in the path of the "up" boat train from Folkestone.The resulting derailment left ten passengers dead and forty injured, including the author Charles Dickens who was returning from a trip to Paris with the actress Ellen Ternan and her mother. Dickens was praised for tending to the injured and dying, but the accident affected him deeply, his health suffered and he died exactly five years to the day after the crash In the meantime, an upstart East Kent Railway, sponsored by business interests in the Medway Towns and North Kent Coast, had succeeded in piecing together its own railway into London through Bromley, Norwood, Herne Hill and Brixton, to terminate at Victoria (shared with the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway), and Blackfriars Bridge (Ludgate Hill), while extending its existing lines to serve the North Kent Coast and Dover, and even a cheeky cut off route to the South Eastern's own town of Ashford. Now named the London Chatham and Dover Railway, it began to compete with the SER for the lucrative Cross-Channel traffic. This competition between the railways, in spite of a "Continental Traffic Agreement of 1863, where they agreed to pool receipts, but provoked constant bickering and disagreements, was to the detriment of both, and the population of Kent and the London suburbs the railways were purporting to serve, who always got second best after the Continental traffic demands had been satisfied. The South Eastern Railway in particular suffered from a bad press in relation to its unpunctuality and poor service. The rolling stock provided for passenger use was described by the prominent railway author of the day E.L.Ahrons as "a collection of dog boxes". In 1899, the dire situation resulted in both companies receiving Government sanction to amalgamate for operating purposes as the South Eastern and Chatham Railway Joint Management Committee.They had previously applied to the Government of the day on a number of occasions for legislation to allow this to happen, and been refused : Unhelpful political influence in railway operations is nothing new! This amalgamation had one result in the construction of flying junctions in the Petts Wood/St Mary Cray/Bickley/Chislehurst area to link both railways where the SER lines bridged over those of the London Chatham and Dover, resulting in the Petts Wood Junction where I was later to enjoy my boyhood "linesiding"! A series of elegant new locomotives was designed under the auspices of Harry Wainwright, many built at Ashford Works, but the passenger rolling stock remained non-corridor, even on the "Boat Expresses". If one wanted Pullman comfort one had to board the car at the outset of the journey. By this time, it wasn't only the rich who were enjoying excursions abroad : Local organisations, and even the works outings of large companies were travelling across the Channel to visit destinations of interest in Europe. Sadly, almost at the end of the SECR's existence, even more of the "Working Class" were were being shipped to the Continent from the Channel Ports , many to find death or mutilation on the Western Front during the 1914-18 "Great War".

I have got the Hornby Golden Arrow train pack, but I knew nothing about it until I watched this video. Thanks for uploading.

The |Dumbarton Shipyard you refer to is, Denny Brothers of Dumbarton. The company built most of the UK's railway steamers including the recently restored Queen Mary in Glasgow

0:17 Great Scotland Yard. It's The Eurostar High Speed Electric Express Passenger Train. Thanks Mate. X

It’s amazing that these passages have become common place, even expected and we demand it to be cheaper or traffic free. Yet many of us, even when not born yet, may wish for the luxury of new travel days. We take modern engineering for granted and balk at the cost for the blue collar man. Guilty as any other viewer.

What fantastic historical fact sharing in these videos. The whole old world luxury travel concept was so totally different from the modern world. One sees some of these period concepts in those painstakingly re-created serials like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and Downton Abbey and The Saint and James Bond and all. Really enjoyable to watch your videos and learn more facts.

When she was a very young girl, my wife lived in Folkstone & well remembers seeing the Golden Arrow trains passing through there. I'd love to have travelled on that service back then !!

Fascinating to see the contrast in the imperative to trade into, and travel within, mainland Europe with the recent attempted total sealing of the UK’s borders. I wonder how our predecessors would view this if catapulted into 2022

I remember, in the 1950s, the Golden Arrow trains being loaded onto ferries at FOLKESTONE not Dover

This is a lovely video about the old ferry at Dover

The dimmest glimmer of this era in my remembering was a school day trip to Boulogne when I was 13, I think ('75) and the ferry we crossed on had the rail tracks embedded in the ferry floor.

My grandfather worked on the Golden Arrow as a chef for a while in the 1950's

there was also a brief service in 1971 with a direct carriage to the trans-Siberian railway through to Novosibirsk via the Ost-West service, though its primary route became via Oostende and a connecting ferry with Dover-Marine express

I can remember meeting my Grandmother in the early 50,s off the Golden Arrow boat train service at Victoria station having been on holiday to Switzerland. Wow was I lucky to see such a locomotive. Shame that this mode of transport has disappeared.

When I rambled Europe with a three-month Eurail pass I loved night trains. They provided free accommodation and meant I didn't waste my days traveling. Highly recommended for today's travelers.

Would love to ride one of the re-created trains. Maybe someday...

I loved the film footage. Excellent commentary also. Thank you for the video!

There is an excellent book "Designing Ships for Sealink". In it the designers detail how they had to put water troughs and sluices under the carriages, as the toilets etc would normally drop waste directly on to the track, but on a ship this was not ideal! The water sluices disposed of the waste off the stern. Also the coaches had individual heating stoves in each coach, so spray water blankets were installed to contain any fires on the rail deck.

Just a comment about the Silver Arrow service - in the 1970s I lived in Paris and this was my preferred way of going home, especially as I could get a train from Gatwick Airport directly to my parents' home station. The service did indeed use BAC1-11s, but I highly doubt they did so in 1948! It was run by BUA, then Dan Air and finally British Caledonian Airways. And Le Touquet was never known as a Paris airport - it was 2 hours from Paris on the dedicated service, with an intermediate stop at Amiens. Le Touquet was a wonderful airport - small and friendly. Although my student friends tended to use the Night Ferry - NOT in first class, but sitting up all night and walking between train and boat - because it was far and away the cheapest way to cross.

I took the (first class only) Night Ferry to Paris in the later 1970s, had a day in Paris, then had a couchette on an overnight service to Rome. We need to petition DfT and the Home Office for some high speed night trains to the continent!

hi there, i remember seeing the golden arrow in victoria station as a child in 1962, the loco was a green class 71.great memories of victoria station, also the Newhaven boat train was some times there with electric loco 20003 on the front.a 6PUL train could sometimes be seen with a pullman car in the middle,they really looked the part, unlike todays rubbish.

Ruairidh my man!!! Quality content as always keep it going matey! 👏👌👍💪💯

Fascinating. I love rail history. That's why I'm here a lot.

Can I just say, your style is greatly improving and the lil bit at the end is a nice addition where previous videos just stopped dead.

I saw the Golden Arrow once in Tonbridge station.

Very interesting looking back at the glory days happy memories.😎👍

Excellent!

Most excellent video! 👍🏻👌🏻👏🏻

I took it often in the winter due to air delays caused by fog. When the carriages were put on the boat at night there was so much noise I would wake up.

Thanks for answering all the questions I've had since reading European chapter in SOME CLASSIC TRAINS by Arthur Dublin.

Great summary history of the cross-channel trains. I worked in the Restaurant Car of the Night Ferry between London Victoria and Dover in it's final days. The presidency of the European Union is currently with Germany and they have just announced an ambitious project to relaunch the TEE network (names TEE-2) with purpose built luxury high speed trains from 2025, to compete with internal European air travel. Regretfully, Great Britain is not included in the project (for obvious reasons), otherwise we might have seen sleeper services re-introduced, via the tunnel. Europe forward; Britain backward again!

I was in Thunder Bay, Ontario maybe 15 year ago where there was a bunch, maybe 40 of the Nightstar coaches sitting in a field. On dirt, not on rails, windows removed, they looked unfinished. This was after they were used on the Montreal-Halifax VIA service. I haven't been back to TB since then so I don't know the status of the coaches. I have heard from friends in the UK that it was a fear of a passenger train in the tunnel late at night and fear of terrorists is why they were never used. That plus politics, as usual.

Great video; nice bit of trivia about the public address system!

2:40 Created their own equipment called the "flesh door" (fleche d'or) :)

Interesting insights again

Dear Ruairidh, Thank you for this video. Might I suggest a small change? You mention, when speaking of the ticket prices, what the cost would be in 2020 terms. It sounds a lot, but if you added something like: "About the same as the first class ticket from London to Manchester" (or whatever), it would give a very direct comparison. Best wishes, Luke

Fascinating

Brilliant, thank you.

The trains at minutes 2.43 and 5.28 are the Paris - Strasbourg Rapides that ran on large sets of tyred wheels in the 1950s, the '1' in a white box on the front of the locomotive denotes region Est (region Nord = '2'). Another good video though.. keep them coming :-)

In thhe eighties and nineties there was a direct train from London Victoria to Dover, easily connecting to a hydrofoil boat ( no cars transported) to Ostend in Belgium, where again an easy connexion existed with direct trains to Brussels and Cologne in Germany (some went even further).

10:32 Actually, there was going to be a Night Star sleeping service through the Channel Tunnel. The service almost went into operation but the Night Star was canned. The equipment built for the Night Star, the Renaissance cars, were sold to Via Rail Canada, and they still use them today. And I don't think the concept of a sleeping car service through the Channel Tunnel isn't completely out of the question as many night services throughout Europe have been introduced as well as the reinstatement of sleeping cars on Amtrak trains 65, 66, and 67 on the Northeast Regional.

10:32 ... Well one already mentioned the planned but never introduced Nightstar train, but let's not forget there has been a very notable sleeper train revival in Europe in recent times. It looked like the end of sleeper travel when DB started shutting down its CityNightLine network but luckily ÖBB of Austria swepped in and have more or less started the revival by taking the last few old DB routes as well as reintroducing some of the cut services. And of course there are also now private operators around Europe piggybacking off the success and the availability of rolling stock from the remnants of CityNightLine. There are even some luxury Night train startups like Midnight Trains based in France which may have a decent shot.

Brilliant vid

Terrific

I suppose I should add that in the 1990's security was less of an issue than now, so widening the Eurostar network would be a challenge - plus of course the increased passport controls coming with Brexit. Having said that, I recall one of the "fun" moments of overnight rail travel in the 1970's was when crossing the Dutch/German border, and crisply-dressed German border guards would briskly open the compartment door to see your passport at 1 am! That's what I'd call "making an entrance" - especially as a boy being brought up on endless World War Two movies!

"Terminal Decline" - I see what you did there.

Just love your work

“About £6 or close to £700 today”... Inflation is rough...

I wanted to take the night train across the Channel in 1980 but it was one of the services excluded from the Interrrail discount and so too expensive. Never mind, I thought, another time… but of course that turned out to be the last year that it ran.

I remember seeing the night ferry trains on platform 2 at Victoria, sometimes you would see the SNCF coaches and rarely German DB coaches which was a super treat as they were the coolest and all very posh and smart somewhat let down by the inclusion of the more drab MLV stuffed in between loco and consist. I lost my job with BR over the ferries aka TOPS class 99 as I as a prank when Norwood TOPsman thought it would be super funny to send all the class 99's into Eastleigh for brakes and service certificates and was unceremoniously sacked by Eastleigh AM who invented swear words to bellow down the fone at me, I think if I wasn't a hefty sort o' chap he fancied having a go at me when I was in the office too, he was absolutely beetroot the utter mess I caused.

enjoyed the info..thanks

A very interesting vid, thank you.

There was a train called the Flesh Door? That sounds terrifying!

(Writing in July 2021) In continental Europe, night express trains appear to revive, especially thanks to the Nightliner project (if I may call it a project) of ÖBB (Austrian main passenger carrier). And plans to tax airplane fuel. Consequently, I wouldn't be surprised by the start of nightly rail express trains using the Channel tunnel - but let's see Eurostar recover from its bail-out first. Against the mood of British politics.

I can envisage long distance European train travel making a comeback in the next few years with all the hassle surrounding air travel, having to arrive for a flight 2-3 hrs before, the hassle of transport to and from an airport or changing flights and even airports for connections. The thought of getting on a train in the UK and alighting in Berlin or Rome is appealing. One also gets to see the countryside one is travelling through, the journey is part of the trip and should be a fun part. One often would not have to change trains as they can be split and carriages added as the sleeper service to Scotland from London does to serve 3 or 4 cities. I believe a service from Penzance to Scotland was once mooted Also train travel is a lot greener for our planet.

Personally i'm very fond of travelling on night trains, and on some routes like Tokyo to Sapporo i find the cancellation of night services quite devastating; but even if i also like rail ferries and was lucky to take one last year between Denmark and Germany; i doubt it's even remotely feasible to have a rail ferry in the channel nowadays. Night trains through the tunnel, however could really make sense, to Berlin or to Vienna for example. Austrian railways, ÖBB, have a very vast network of night services, and they seem to only expand as of recent. (Or it could be even further, say at one point from 1960s and i think until late 1980s there was a connecting service Moscow - Hoek van Holland | Oostende - London).

I wish they would recreate the Night Ferry !

Just to say, there was a proposal for a sleeper service using the channel tunnel called the night star, and it got a fair way along before being axed

When the Channel Tunnel was built there was a plan to run through trains from Provincial Britain to Europe, and trains were built for the purpose, but never used - apart from when GNER borrowed a couple to meet a rise in demand on the East Coast. I understand that one problem with the Eurostar Sleepers was the electrical surge created if all the passengers took a shower at the same time! An example of the thinking at the time was the proposed Glasgow-Milan sleeper service, for which a reception lounge was built at Glasgow Central. Then along came Ryanair etc. The lounge was eventually demolished when two extra platforms were dug out of the short-term car park at platform level, to accommodate the proposed Glasgow Airport rail link - which was never built. The two extra platforms were then gifted to ScotRail enabling more frequent services to run to Ayrshire.

Nice one! Surprised you don’t make a DVD of them all.

This video was very enjoyable, thank you for uploading it. If you take any requests, could you do the "Queen of Scots" Pullman service or the Peppercorn A1s? Personally, I think they are very underrated.

Minor correction they planned sleepers under chunnel in 1980 that's why the sleeper coaches class 92 and them modded 37/9 were done only for Ryanair etc to stop them. Hence why the Canadian government bought the sleeper carriages and we have too many class 92s

It was 1968 or 1969 so travelled on The Golden Arrow and the Invicta as I said too young to appreciate

Referencing the original Nightstar proposal (including the stock that started to be constructed and was eventually bought by VIA Rail Canada) would've tied in nicely with this video.

Any chance of talking about the GWR Ocean Liner express train with it's super saloons.

Love these videos about more obscure parts of transport history. You think you'd ever have an interest in doing some American trains and routes?

I'm always confused by the night ferry service and the one I travelled on in 1972/3(?) taking bicycles (which went in the luggage) we went from Victoria I believe to Dover thence Calais at the disembarkation was a German night train waiting to take us to Munich whence we transferred to the Akropolis Express (another two days?) for Athens. Our bikes arrived a few days later!

Times have changed 11 Nov 2020 .now the night sleeper trains are back .

Age now over. It is an evenly lit train tunnel between UK & France with high-speed rail on both sides. Or taking flight on airplanes.

Speed is not always the best way to get from A to B, but at least Belmond still operate the Pullman service and a few others

I have a railcar ferry on my N scale layout. To just tie it to a pier would not be realistic so I scratch-built a movable landing stage that actually looks pretty good.

The bridge clearances on the Great Central line out of Marylebone provide for French Train sizes.

There WAS a proposal for tunnel sleepers and we built the stock en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightstar_(train)

We almost had sleeper trains via the channel tunnel! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightstar_(train)

bonjour, joli résumé mais je me permets d'attirer l'attention sur le fait que plusieurs séquences ne montrent pas la "flèche d'or" mais une rame Michelin sur pneu de la SNCF sur la ligne Paris strasbourg dans les années 50 (2'46 et 5'30)...cordialement

Can you do a history video of the Atlantic Coast Express?

Of is redundant if used with comprised!

The Night Ferry is a fascinating train IMHO.

What happened to the dc 8 video

2:40 I beg your pardon, "The Flesh Door"?

Ironic I was just watching the Btf film on the Night Ferry

Well made short doc. Just wish he wouldn't say 'comprising of'. No 'of' when 'comprising' is used.

Were the carriages used on these trains dual braked?

Hi there watched all your railway videos multiple times. Love your work thankyou. Could you please settle an argument about how your name is pronounced? Is it rorrith or Rory or something else? Respect.

I'm surprised you havent' covered the BR STandard Classes themselves yet.