LONGER THAN 40 MINUTES UNDERGROUND!

In the early sixties I made a journey by train to visit my uncle in Barnhurst.

 I had to change trains at new cross, so this brought me up on a platform where there was a train of Q stock waiting in the south London line bay. To see Q stock at close quarters!

So I made subsequent trips to New Cross, not to see my uncle, but the wonders of underground trains. I bought a ticket to Whitechapel and somehow extended the journey to Mansion House to examine R stock in all its majesty. Silver white and red versions.

Then I cottoned on to the idea of buying a “Twin Rover” ticket which would afford me unlimited access to all the wonders of the underground system. (And buses both red and green)

The twin rover was bought at Bromley bus garage, in a little booking office next to the staff mess, straight out of “On The Buses”

A bus journey on a no. 47 RTL bus through Bromley, Downham, Lewisham, and on to the delights of Surrey Docks when still a Surrey commercial docks. I got off the bus, under a large suspended London transport bullseye appearing from a nondescript row of shops, the first signs of the UndergrounD. Then, on close inspection, a narrow opening revealed the entrance to Surrey Docks station.

Along a long passageway and down to the partially underground station, where a red train of Q-converted stock arrives. Brake rods squeal, doors open, the rhythmic Westinghouse pump, and the uneven click, click, clunk of the doors all closing separately. In the train, the click click click of the contactors as we accelerate away in the direction of Rotherhithe and the Thames tunnel.

If you got out at Wapping you could sample the delights of the damp dripping retaining walls, narrow platforms and the distant clanking and “mind the doors” of the station lift, still manually operated by an attendant.

On to Whitechapel, where we change for the District mainline, and red and silver R stock, a lot of it was still red back then. The curious whining noise of these trains and the multitude of motors, every bogie of the train possessed them.

If you were lucky, a Q stock train would come along, but increasingly rarely during the day, and only in the rush hour, and certainly never on Sundays.

You would have to venture down to the east London line to see Q stock, a wonderful mixture of rolling stock styles from the sleek 1938 stock back to the angular Q23 ex G stock cars, which soldiered on long after they were due for withdrawal, because they were all west facing and it would have been too expensive to turn the more recent cars to face west.

   Out would come my mother’s tape measure, and I would then be seen by intrigued passengers crawling all over the interior of the car taking measurements.

   Once, I was thwarted in my attempts at surveying rolling stock…on the northern city line an angry driver took exception to my measuring up his cab front.

The northern city line between Moorgate and Drayton Park was a true tube line, but with extra-large 16ft diameter tunnels (a relic of its origin as a proposed extension of the Great Northern railway from Finsbury Park to the city) It was the last repository of the pre-1938 tube stock, which would growl as if reluctant to leave, from the brakes as it left Moorgate station. If you sat behind the spacious switch compartment you could hear the click of the contactors as the train accelerated away. On Moorgate’s disused platform, the large diameter tube tunnel that just went a short distance (the aborted extension to Lothbury) and had its own unpleasant aroma .The long platforms and short 4-car trains. The stations on this line were unpopulated and eerily quiet, and you could hear the train’s progress along the tunnel for a long time after it left the station.

By this time, the line ended at Drayton Park, out in the open, which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. If you ventured to the end of the platform you could just get a glimpse of the car sheds.