Lordy Lordy, Look Who is er 136
That headline will work so much better in four years time, but never-mind. One of my favourite London rail stations, Liverpool Street, was opened 136 years ago today. As I already made mention of King's Cross birthday last year it's only fair I do the same for Liverpool Street as I use both to travel to the capital.
The station that opened in 1874 was very different to the one that serves North East London and East Anglia now. Originally it was laid out in an L shape, with a long entrance way just off Liverpool Street, running along what what is now (was it then?) Sun Street Passage.
The station in 1896. Source: Wikipedia
Nearly the same view on Google Street View. I don't have a photo that was quite the right angle.
Observations from the Ticket Queue
In Cambridge station there are four ticket machines. Three look the same. One doesn't look like the others. This tends to kind of throw people off.
Let's talk about the forming of the ticket queues. Sometimes there is one queue, other times there is a queue behind each machine. When we have the 'uni-queue' there tends to be a bit of hesitation in using the ticket machine that looks different. It includes looking around to see if other people are going to use it and looking at the screen distantly with squinted eyes. Eventually someone from the back of the queue (or in today's case, someone who just walked into the station) will just stroll up to the machine and go about their business, with varying degrees of success as we will see.
When there is a 'multi-queue' scenario, the queue for the Mystery Machine is usually the shortest. Can it be trusted? It doesn't look like the other ones.... can I buy the same tickets from it? The person who queue jumped to it today wasn't able to work out how to buy a ticket, wondered around a bit, tried to queue jump to the Mystery Machine again before getting in the uni-queue with everyone else.
The Mystery Ticket Machine is on the left. The rest look like the one on the right. All of them do the same job. I wanted to get a shot of all 4 machines, but there was a couple who just wouldn't move out of the way. That same couple passed on using the Mystery Machine moments before.
It's terrible to see such ticket machine discrimination in the flesh.
And Suddenly, A Stream Train
There's been a few chances to see stream trains going about their business in London in the last few weeks, and it always worked out that it happened when I wasn't there.
This morning I was off to London to finish present shopping and was getting the 11:32 to Liverpool Street. I got to Cambridge Station a bit early (before the train did) so I had some time to mill around. In doing so I noticed that we now have a service that goes to Stratford. I also noticed that everything was in a bit of a disarray. Train platforms kept getting swapped. There was a Stanstead train parked at platform one, which was causing all the King's Cross trains to be moved about. Hmm what were they tying up platform 1 for?
After a while the Stanstead train cleared off and then there was an announcement that the delayed 11:07 special service to King's Cross will be arriving at platform 1. Special service eh? Hmm it didn't take much to work out what was about to happen, so I dig out my camera from my bag and grabbed a spot along the platform.
Off in the distance, I could see a hulk of an engine with a puff of black smoke coming out the top. Yes! Finally a steam train! But drat, it's now 11:29 - my train leaves in 3 minutes.
It was the Sir Nigel Gresley, which has been busy lately. I got to snap a few shots of the train approaching and the above video of it going by me before having to run to catch my train. I contemplated missing mine for a chance of a better photo, but it would chew up too much of my afternoon. When I got onto my train, I headed for the front carriage so I could at least get a look as we pulled away. I got a few blurry shots...
... to go along with the few I got from the platform:
Aged 157, Having a Bit of Work Done
"Now take a nice one to send to Grandma..."
Today in 1852 the London terminus of the Great North Eastern Railway was opened - King's Cross Station. It holds a special place in my heart of course as it's where I usually come and go from London. The first time I took the train to London after moving here was to King's Cross (after being on a delayed train, a nice welcome by National Rail there).
In the time I've been here I've seen the start of the transformation of the station into what it will look like in a few years time. The foot bridge and the clock on platform 8 removed, the shops shut up, the concorse entrance to the Tube closed off and the raising of scaffolding along the west side of the station, both inside and out. Not to mention the constant repositioning of Platform 9 3/4 to keep tourists on their toes. Bit by bit, chunks of scaffolding have been removed. Just this past week a few of the shops have re-opened so things are starting to slowly come around.
Platform 4
At this rate snow is going to become common place again. When the Liverpool Street train arrived at platform four a few minutes later, I was the only one in the my carriage as I was the only one who would walk out to the uncovered part of the platform.
What’s all this then?
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