One day, as a spotty, trainspotting schoolboy in the early 60's I asked the booking clerk at Clapham Junction for a return to Kensington. He replied "Work for the Post office, do you?" I replied in a small voice "er, yes". He grinned and sold me the ticket. A Standard 2-6-4 tank hauled me there and back again. One of many treasured railway memories from those far off days.
I too travelled on the service in the 1960's as a spotty school-boy, and the ticket clerks at Clapham Junction would usually question whether I was entitled to ride on it. That was when the old High Level booking office was still open (it closed in 1969). On one occasion I attempted to take my gran with me, as she liked the odd train ride too, and she had "privs" as my grand-dad had worked on the railway. When she tried to buy a Priv ticket to Kensington Olympia, the clerk refused. Possibly because he'd have to write out a blank ticket and couldn't be bothered - but I don't know for sure. I recall the trains normally being Class 33 hauled, departing from Platform 1, but occasionally the evening train would run into Platform 17. It was thrilling as a schoolboy to ride on a loco-hauled train for such a short ride. I did once try to cadge a lift back to Clapham Junction on the morning ECS return working but was refused, and had to use the bus (255 I think). There was also a brief period when British Rail ran a through train from Manchester (I think) to Brighton via Kensington Olympia/Clapham Junction, calling at both stations. The idea was to avoid people having to cross London between termini.
@@Clivestravelandtrains The use of Platform 1 for am trains and 17 for PM trains was a relic of Railways sharing income/costs. LSWR Nine Elms /Waterloo drivers only knowing the route to/from the Windsor side, and LBSCR Stewarts Lane ( firstly Battersea then later Hither Green) men only knowing the route to/from the Brighton Side. Depots were very jealous of keeping traditional routes, rather than "losing" them to another depot.
"Oh my God, they killed the Kenny!" I love it when things I like get referenced in really unexpected places. Now if only you'd tried to mimic the high-pitched voice....
A video on the *actual* "sinister and secret" trains would be yet another topic I'd watch from you! thanks for this one - really interesting, as always.
@@Pinkybum there must be more. I thought the Ongar branch was kept for longer to get people out to the secret nuclear bunker. Plenty of Engineering Trains but they are not for public use in any form. Tank movements and the LMR ?
Having been born and brought up a hundred yards from Clapham Junction station, I remember seeing the Kenny Belle from time to time. What I don’t recall is a ‘secret’ side entrance as all platforms from 1 - 17 were accessible via the dank and gloomy subway that ran from Station Approach to Grant Road where Fyffe’s used the arches as a banana-ripening store. Workers there were regularly bitten by poisonous spiders. But the smell was lovely.
The mere mention of Kensington Olympia brings back childhood memories of its glorious motorail terminal days. An overnight trip to Perth trundling across Britain with my dad's Vauxhall Viva on a wagon at the back was a true adventure.The very long loaded train waiting to depart into the night at Olympia was quite a sight. With the advent of limited range electric cars something like it may become feasible again.
Very frustrating waiting for a district line train to Olympia for what feels like hours when you’re trying to go to an event there! Overground is painfully slow, too
Well, yes and no. I spent most of my spare time in the early 70's travelling around when/where I could afford, taking photos of diesel and electric trains - and I often had the same question from older guys - "Why are you taking photos of those boring boxes on wheels, I put my camera away when Steam was abolished?" So, even in the 1970's, I learnt to "live with the times" and in fact disliked Steam Trains and the obsessions that went with them.
Electrification and re-signalling of the line was carried out for the Eurostar empty services between Waterloo ,and North Pole depot . Also, it was intended to be used by the proposed NightStar sleeper services coming from other parts of the UK via Waterloo and for the Channel freight services operated by the Dual voltage Class 92 locos. This created the opportunity for the use of EMUs in the form of Class 313 units operated on the North London services with passenger numbers exceeding all expectations and the eventual ‘reopening’ of three stations on the line. Perhaps a video on that might be worth considering !
I'm a fan of large and medium-sized tank engines, so that would have been a treat. I guess this service would also have been used for break-in runs for newly shopped engines after heavy repairs.
Kenny Belle was like the JANOP flight that flies in and out of Las Vegas every day, taking workers to and from Area 51. Dude, this is why I watch every one of these videos.
I used to get this train on the way from Clapham Junction to Olympia in the late 80's when working at Charles House, which was then a government building (with armed American soldiers staring at you if you got off the lift on the wrong floor!). When I was using it I was told it was called the Clapham Flyer (not sure if that was a local nickname but it stuck). The train stock used to come up from Selhurst depot and return there after service, which is why it ran from Platform 17 on the first out of, and last back to, Clapham. The rest of the service ran from Platform 1. I seem to remember it running back and forth to Olympia 4 times in the morning and 4 times in the evening when I was using it - first morning run out from Clapham was around 07:30-ish, last before 10:00. The first evening service to Clapham was around 15:30 and last about 17:35 from memory, as I often had to run to catch it, else it was a real pain to get back to Clapham Junction. District line only ran when exhibitions were on, so you'd had to head to Ken High Street and go via Victoria. If you missed the last one, there was also an intercity later in the evening from Milton Keynes than ran once a day from Olympia which also went to Plat 17 and then on to Brighton.
I remember I went to Kensington Olympia many years ago to visit the Personal Computer World show. I went by tube. and looked at the timetable while waiting for the train back, and noticed there were just two BR trains a day from there to Clapham Junction. I thought it was very surreal. The platform arrangement has been changed at this station and it has been modernized making is less other-worldly! Thanks for uploading.
I am Catherine,s husband and when I was 15 in 1963 I read an article one Saturday in the Daily Express about the “secret train” from Clapham Jnct. The next week I was off from Southend with my new 35mm camera to ride on the train and go on the footplate of the BR Standard tank. I still have the photographs and the negatives. Happy days. Cedric Hennis.
I used this service a few times in the mid 70's, seem to think it was a class 33 loco and some elderly carriages whenever I used it, At that time it used to depart and arrive from the far western side of the station, beyond the Richmond platforms. Journey time was far quicker than the bus so it was worth making sure I didnt miss the last one back.
I worked at the Post Office (and Civil Service) building at 375 Kensington High Street: "Charles House" (late 70s). I regularly spotted the class 33 at KO, but never knew the backstory. Charles House, along with the GPO, also had some floors where a "burly gentleman" was always stationed at the entrance, and "encouraged" you to not venture there. I reckon Chas, House could also have been a reason the service endured.
I remember that when Network South East lost it's class 33s and the 'Belle went over to class 73s they often suffered from flat batteries from the frequent re-starting after the short journeys (they had to turn the engine off when the driver moved from the loco to the driving cab of hte 4TC unit attached) and at one time they had to top and tail them using 2 locos. Also I remember a 4TC on the line that had half of one carriage fitted with florescent light, hopper windows and class 319 seats, possibly as I test for refurbishment. It looked very odd. I have photos of it.
In summer 1971 I commuted from Balham to Olympia on the Kenny Belle as I was working at the Exhibition Center - the train was normally a Class 33 and 4TC. But the evening journeys back to Clapham Junction were too early for me and I had to travel via Victoria - took twice as long to get home. It's great to see how much this service has developed since those days.
Thanks again Jago. Is it possible that if the original train had a guard's van, that title position of the guard would be that of the 'Belle End' ? l know l should seek help.
This entire episode is erotically charged in a quite disturbing way. The way Jago inflects "The Winkle" at 0:33... well, I don't know whether to run screaming into the street or have a quiet, contemplative moment. As it were.
Another interesting quirk about Kenny O: it still saw steam trains even after 1968 as LT had running powers for engineering trains from Lillie Bridge depot and they used the ex GWR Pannier tanks until 1971, I believe
This is one of my favourite episodes. I genuinely feel that it has an element of ‘Betjeman’ about it. I think i’ve watched it three times now since it was released.
Wow! It was a shock to see Blythe House again. My bedroom window overlooked it when I was a young oik! This line was always very unpredictable and not at all convenient to get anywhere in reasonable time. There were many buses that stopped close to Olympia that were much faster to virtually all points of the compass! Still, it was a great place to play! You’re so incredibly thorough! Still love what you do.
you were in Blythe Road ? My family there and recorded a lodger, a John Blood, with them in one of the census returns. a GGGfather had come over from Ireland and built and painted his way south from West Kensignton, his Brother lived in Paddington/Brook Green Hammersmith. Despite never living there I still feel most at home in the Fulham Area (the cheap (relatively) Bits.
During the mid 1970's I had to change trains at Clapham Junction each morning and to keep me from getting bored waiting I used to check which loco was on the Kenny Belle, although I didn't know it was called that then, which was formed of a 4-TC unit and class 33, or occasionally a 73, and ran from platform 2. In this way I managed to 'spot' every member of the 33 and 73 class (the only two classes I've seen every member of). One day I did board the evening service and did the round trip, I'm not sure if my season ticket actually covered that journey but no one questioned me so that was OK.
A line spared the Beeching axe that survived long enough to thrive, eh? Who'd have thought it. One wonders how many lines outside of London would have followed the same pattern had they had the chance.
It's interesting to speculate how many lines would have been brought back to life now if the service had stopped in the 60s but the trackbed had been protected from being built on, cuttings filled in, viaducts demolished etc. I've long thought that Bloody Beeching was not the only or the worst villain: he may have used dubious passenger-census techniques, he may have not considered making stations unstaffed as an alternative to closure, he may have been paranoid about avoiding any suspicion of duplicate routes that served the same towns. But BR and the government (for allowing BR to do it) may have been the worse villains for allowing closed lines to be wiped off the face of the earth, by taking whatever steps were necessary to make damn sure the line could never economically be resurrected. There really needed to be a "once a transport route, always a transport route" law which said that all closed lines must be kept intact as footpath/cycle paths, and the land could never be sold off to be built on, in case fortunes ever changed. But that would have required foresight that even a five-year-old could do: something which 1960s politicians and BR chiefs did not possess. I am ashamed of my parents' and grandparents' generation for allowing it to happen. The only good thing to come out of Beeching is that the outrage has caused a lot more forward thinking and protection of routes for any that may be closed nowadays. Now the problem is Highways England who decide that it is acceptible to fill in bridges with concrete instead of maintaining them.
@@Mortimer50145 Very well said. The closure of some of the Beeching routes was inevitable, but the closure of others was unnecessary even at the time, and the deliberate "salting of the earth" that prevented future reopening for negligible financial gain was an extraordinary act of state-sponsored vandalism.
The line from Edinburgh to Galashiels/Tweedbank is a good example of a restored Beeching-era cut. But one has to remember that Ernest Marples, he of a road-building company, was Minister of Transport, and some of the trackbeds of closed lines were used for by-passes and road improvements which we now take for granted.
@@None-zc5vg Exactly. And there should have been. There was no foresight of "what do we do if more and more people decide to live further from work and commute by car, but traffic in cities becomes so bad that public transport is needed once again." Then there is the scenic-heritage-railway phenomenon. I bet the Cinder Track (Scarborough-Whitby-Sandsend-Staithes-Saltburn) would be a very good money-making venture if heritage trains (or even modern DMUs) could travel that route. Maybe that phenomenon would have been harder to predict in the 1960s. And for a single-track line, there's no space to have a single line alongside a footpath/cycle track, so it becomes either/or.
And another amazing, informative program. They just keep on getting better, the railways in and around London are very interesting, and the history is very interesting as well.
It always amused me that the original terminus was at Waterloo, presumably chosen to remind any visiting Frenchmen of the great battle and that they should never tangle with Britain ever again.
It was also used at an alternative terminus to Euston for some trains during the rebuilding of that station. The line was previously electrified for the old (LNWR?) Willesden -Earls Court service. It used to be possible to get to Edgware Road in either direction, South by District or north by Metropolitan and the curve near Latimer Road, a short stub of which can still be seen. On the east side there were two bays, and I think a siding between them, at each end of the station. A train can be seen in one of the south east bays in the photograph. Bertram Mills circus used to travel by train and have been seen loading op in one of the north end bays. These bays are now covered by the new flats. When built the main station building was on the east side, I think it was damaged during the war and replaced by the modern one on the west side. The station was on the edge of London, and the west side was basically fields before the exhibition hall was built.
I used to get a train into clapham junction and leg it across to the far side of the station to that platform to the overground line and do THIS EXACT JOURNEY... It's spooked me a little bit, and now I heard that there was much more history to it, makes it that much more intriguing...
Hardly seems like killing the Kenny, more that it metamorphosed, like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. It shows the gradual realisation that a lot of offices weren't in Central London and trains to them might be useful - but even today most rush hour SWR services miss Clapham Junction. Rare error from Jago; at 4:32 it is a 4-COR unit that is shown, not a 4-TC. It is on a Portsmouth express, as shown by the 8 headcode. 4-TCs worked from Bournemouth to Weymouth and were push-pull fitted with "33"s, ideal for the Kenny Belle. LT have a red-liveried 4-TC which has also run excursions down to Swanage.
Yes, but the 6-TC unit 601 was formed in 1965 using a pair of 4-COR motor coaches (with their traction motors removed) sandwiching 6-PAN and 6-PUL trailers. It was effectively the operating prototype for the TC units used on the Bournemouth line electrification. After this it was used for a while on peak-hour East Grinstead trains and then in August 1967 became the regular stock on the Kenny Belle, until it was withdrawn in June 1971 after a collision with a milk tanker at Kenny.
@@michaelwadman6276 Thanks, very interesting, I hadn't realised the full background of the 6-TC and had assumed it would be like a 4-TC with a couple of extra carriages. The 4-TCs of course look like the Southern Mk1 EMUs - CIGs, VEPs, CEPs.
@@iankemp1131 There were a quite separate 6TC class - temporary formations formed from REP/4TC stock during the transition to Class 442 operation - the Class 442 recycled the traction equipment from the REP stock power cars, requiring loco-haulage of the remaining vehicles until the new units were ready. The original 6TC was a unit formed of two 4COR-type Portsmouth line motor coaches (actually from a 4RES restaurant car unit) with the traction equipment removed, sandwiching four ex Brighton line 6PUL/6PAN trailers.
Kensington Olympia was electrified in 1994…but one year later the service was extended to Willesden Junction and until the line northward was Electrified in 1996…utilised the ageing Class 117s. For a short while it was referred to as “The Willy Belle”…but luckily it didn’t catch.
I think you will find that the line was electrified (using 3rd rail) in 1994 to North Pole Junction so that the Eurostar trains could reach North Pole Depot. The service was increased and electrified on the back of Eurostar paying for the electrification. The line from Clapham Junction platforms 16/17 and 2 were electrified at the same time. It should be noted that Kensington Olympia was the standby destination for Eurostar trains should they be unable to reach Waterloo (that included arrangements for customs and security). I believe that the line north of North Pole Junction was also electrified in 1994 (using overhead) so that electric Euro freight trains could operate to the West Coast Main Line.
@@PStaveley In addition, the overhead electrification of the West London Line north of North Pole Junction also enabled the introduction in 1997 of a Connex South Central service between Gatwick Airport and Rugby. Today, that service has metamorphosed into Southern Railway's Clapham Junction to Milton Keynes Central route.
Whilst operating between Willesden Junction High Level and Clapham Junction as a shuttle service, there was a local nickname applied: The Wheel Clamp Line (Wil Clap) but it never seemed to catch on either.
Yet another gem from Jago. Always enjoy your forays into the haunted wing of railwayana knowledge, in this case, *literally!* I'd always assumed that the "Parliamentary" trains were the original ghosts.
OMG!! I work at Blythe House and was not expecting this to be about the PO savings bank 😍 Also funny because I'm regularly annoyed at how impossible it is to figure out when the distrct line from Olympia will run... so I guess it still has a secret train 😂
Thanks for including the stock and for digging up the photos to go with it. It was an island of loco + carriages for long after London had become saturated with multiple units, chiefly of course EMU's.
Canadian National Railways had a train like that. The Montréal_St-Hilaire train (called the Ribeco by the crews, the name of it’s actual terminus) ran well beyond government money was available. Yet, it always escaped service cutbacks because it was used by CN headquarters employees who knew how much worse being stuck in traffic would be and had the power to decide to not cut it. By the virtue of being employees, riders could have a pass that spared them the $130 for a monthly pass available to the public (an unholy sum back then). Now, 20 years after it’s ultimate demise, the commuter line has been reopened and is pretty popular with regular commuters.
I used to get this train in the 90's to get from crystal Palace to High Street Kensington without going into Victoria it was a lovely route from Clapham to Olympia.
Reading the comments below and talking of strange trains and rolling stock reminds me what my colleagues once told me. They were om M44 and unable to get into Euston, they didn't know where they would end up, but at about 9 30 am they pulled into Olympia. Strange terminus, but seemingly one of the few platforms in the Capital long enough to take the Mail train.
I managed to ride the early evening Olympia-Clapham train just once, returning from an exhibition in the 1980's. What I didn't know at the time was that the Class 33+4TC then worked empty to Waterloo to join an EMU, to form a combined diesel+electric train out to Basingstoke where it split, with the 33+TC going on to Salisbury and the EMU to Southampton (or Bournemouth?). Think I'm right in saying this (& the inbound morning train) were the only trains ever where a diesel+EMU worked together.
Brilliant reminder Jago. I used to take the Kenny Belle just for fun on many occasions in the late 70's/early 80's. Had train geek friends in Kensington, and we would always start our spotting trip days with a ride down to Clapham. Had a class 74 give up on us one day, just short of Latchmere junction. Clapham sent out a class 09. It's still the only time i have had mainline (ish) haulage by an 09. Monday morning was always the best day to catch it as it was hauled by whatever had spent the weekend at Stewarts Lane or Clapham junction. Thanks for the memories.
Many thanks for this ultimately heartwarming tale of a line that hung in there for years before eventually becoming loved and well used. I'm glad I was sitting down for the little South Park reference at the end :-)
Interesting ! I used that train for a couple of years, living in West Kensington and working in Watford. It ran relatively often for such a random route, at least once or twice an hour. The interesting thing was always somewhere near Willesden Junction it would have to stop for a minute or so while it switched from rail power to overhead (and vice versa on the way back) it was a really great way to change what would have been a nightmare journey and probably taken at least an hour into a 15/20 min, no stop train. Occasionally I used to travel a bit further to Clapham Junction, I seem to remember it stopped at West Brompton too and then the platform at Clapham Junction, if you were sitting at the end of the train, the "mind the gap" was really necessary, it was at least a 1m gap between the train and the platform, and then probably half that again in height from the platform 😁 It may have gone further than Clapham all the way to Gatwick, but I could be misremembering
That would be the Southern Service (omits WJ), indeed did go beyond Clapham Junction - cannot recall where , and ended up in Northampton or Milton Keynes, or Watford Junc on a bad day. Stll runs hourly (half hourly ?)
After the Post Office moved out, Blythe House became a major storage space for the Victoria & Albert, Science and British museums. So that was a very handy train for museum people like me . . . if that was really what we were doing.
In my first job after leaving school, I worked as a clerk in a machine tool 'factory' in Juxon Street, off Lambeth Walk. At some point the works moved to Transport Avenue, Brentford, which meant a longer, more complicated commute via Clapham Junction. I remember seeing the Kenny Belle, although I never heard that name. But I do clearly remember the Ivatt 2MT tank engine and a particulaqr train - the 6TC set, although I am almost certain it never used all six. Three at the most. I only ever saw it on what I think you said was now platform 17, although I'm sure I knew it as platform One. I did know where it went and was always fascinated that there was a Thames rail crossing that just had four trains a day! I might have been tempted to travel on it one day, but never did. Pity. I suppose I could just get the Overground and see all there was to see?
I had my one and only cab ride ( on the footplate of BR Standard Class 3 No 82029) on this service back in '67. There are films on RU-vid showing the Kenny Belle with steam haulage.
Jago, thanks for another of your excellent videos. (Thanks also for making me aware of the experimental 6-TC.) As a regular user of the Belle from 1975 to 1984, I can confirm that it usually, left from the "real" Platform 1 on the north side of Clapham Junction, but sometimes from the old Platform 2 and, as you said, Platform 17. The consist was either a 4-TC or two or three assorted Mk 1s. Leaving aside the frequent occasions when the train didn't run at all, there were some interesting journeys. Once there was not a 33 available, and we got an 08 shunter, which of course took ages. At least twice, over-running engineering works caused a nagical mystery tour via Acton and Willesden. NB when I was using the service, we knew it as "the Flier".
The original Platform 1 was closed in 1980, and the "Belle" used platform 2 from then onwards. That platform was renumbered as platform 1 in 2012 because a new platfrom was inserted between it and platform 3
Worked at the savings bank as a post office engineering apprentice North Postal engineering Section & yes post office telephone engineers as they were called then had offices at Blythe house & would take great joy in taking the lift to the 5 th floor MI5 level - only to be escorted back to the 4th floor Post Office Telephone training centre heady days. !! 1967
Sir Humphrey would of course have denied that MI5 existed. But according to David Niven, even the London taxi drivers in wartime knew where MI5's main central London building was.
@@highpath4776 It is now, and was in the 1930s, but not from 1945-1987. Niven claimed to have visited during WW2 when it says officially it was at Blenheim Palace - but one would expect them to have maintained some London presence.
Though obviously _Midnight in Moscow_ is their most famous, I’ve always actually been a fan of their jazz ditty _Samantha._ Eh, what’s that, you say? *…”Belle”?*
@@MarkMcCluney It was a clever song (a lot of their stuff was) because while pop music was still considered subversive and forbidden, Dixieland bands enjoyed a certain exemption, for whatever reason, behind the Iron Curtain - so it’s actually the dirge-like theme tune of a once famous USSR radio station, with the selfsame title, that they jazzed up.
Sleepless Further down the comments is one from Josh Graves. I can't be sure I know what I'm talking about but part of his explanation hints at why it was called the winkle.Scroll down to his comment and it might be the answer.
Although technically dead, The Kenny does now have a strange kind of afterlife, in that there is a regular service, which runs over the route at roughly the original timetabled time. When I was in London studying medicine a few years back, I took said early morning service on several occasions, when I went to various exhibitions at Olympia.
There was a brief period, it may have been in 1974 but I'm not sure, when Paddington station was being re-modelled and certain trains to/from the West of England were diverted to/from Kensington Olympia instead. I recall this was for several weeks. The District Line service was operated for onward connections into London. Can anyone else remember more details of this?
If you look at it sideways you could maybe say that the gap in the 40s was to make the line a secret - axis forces would be using train timetables to work out what would be the most efficient way to bomb the nuts off of London, and it'd be one hell of a score if they disabled the post office & took out a few MPs at the same time!
How on earth do you find out all this stuff? I had never heard of the Kenny Belle and found this video really interesting. Great video Jago, and as ever I can hardly wait for the next one.
There is also still a lot of information stored in the memory cells of old men like me! Not all of my stored knowledge is on the Internet (thank God!). What I like about Jago's videos like this, is that they sometimes tease out recollections from other people of my age. I'm glad that RU-vid is around now for these snippets of information to be recorded and not lost. I have learnt things from some of the replies people have made to my comments. That is all to the good.
Thank you. I travelled on it a few times both as a ghost train and an advertised one. I do remember that it left from one platform at Clapham Junction and arrived back on the opposite side. I guess that it turned left, as it were, at grade but returned on the otherside having passed under the lines to and from Waterloo. Certainly it was platforms 1 and 17 that were used.
Apparently Stabled at Selhurst , rather than the mid roads at Clapham - although maybe used as maintenance at Selhurst - run Kenny O Morning - into Clapham Depot, then different stock for the afternoon run for servicing at Selhurst next day ?
I used to live up the hill from the junction and as a boy would go to Olympia's Boys And Girls exhibition. Always went via Victoria and Earl's Court. Now you bloody tell me.....
I used to catch it in the mornings of the mid-eighties when I worked at Hammersmith. It left from the North most platform at Clapham junction, but I do recall maybe a change to the Southmost platform sometimes, maybe the return that I seldom took, and no need to leave the station for at least the Northern platform. Chelsea Reaches was a BP terminal and barren ground.
In the late 1970s I used to commute into central London from West Brompton, and would occasionally see the train go past. At one stage, I wished there was a station stop at West Brompton, as that train would have been perfect for me. Sadly, by the time they got round to building one, I'd long since moved away!
Jago, I'm almost ashamed to admit (not quite being an actual card-carrying number-noting Anorak myself) that I quite enjoyed this more nerdy numbering heavy version of your videomaking style. Onward to 125k!
It wasn't just Post Office workers at Blythe House using the service. There was another big government office on the bridge at Olympic called Charles House who used the service. To them this service was also known as 'The Flyer,' as it was anything but.
How on earth do you find the time to keep churning these out? Love them regardless! Greetings from an eternally locked-down Melbourne, must be near 230 cumulative days so far.
