MY LIFE IN TRAINS
My Story - Part Two
North London Main Lines
My Dad used to walk me along the North Circular to Tottenham Hale station, to watch trains on the Liverpool Street to Cambridge line. I have a vivid memory of the floods in the Lea Valley in 1948 when the winter snow eventually melted.
A couple of years later he bought a motorbike and sidecar – a BSA Golden Flash (GPU 667 I think) and once he’d rebuilt the engine and all the mechanical bits, under our glass lean too next to our outdoor lavatory, we could travel further. Me in the sidecar at first, and later sitting behind him on the pillion.
Our favourite spots were on the former Great Northern line to the north from Kings Cross, and once we’d moved to the northern edge of Chingford next to the King George V reservoir, we often went to New Barnet for an afternoon on the platform, and sometimes got on an N2 hauled train for the short trip to Potters Bar for a change of scene. Just once we went to Elstree on the Midland main line out of St Pancras.
I was given a Zeiss Contina 35mm camera with a fastest shutter speed of 1/300 to take on a school trip to Switzerland in the summer of 1959 - by then, diesels were infiltrating everywhere that I went spotting. These are some of the first photos I took with that camera – and it shows!
All Photographs by Alan Lewis Chambers ©
BR built Peppercorn A1 No 60157 'Great Eastern' speeds through New Barnet on the last leg of its journey to Kings Cross on 28 June 1959.
LMS Stanier 2-6-2T No 40142 pulls into Elstree with a down train on 12 July 1959 - the headcode suggests parcels or empty stock.
English Electric Baby Deltic No D5903 pulls into New Barnet with a stopping suburban train on 19 July 1959.
WD 2-8-0 No 90349 heads north through New Barnet with a class F freight on 19 July 1959.
BRCW Class 2 No D5318 (more familiar in Scotland as Class 26) pauses with a stopping northbound semi-fast at Potters Bar on 19 July 1959.
