Everytime I watch one Rudyard McVeigh's videos I am engulfed in the story. His research is never lacking, there is always plenty of related media and his ability to convey the information is phenomenal. Outstanding, as always!
@@OntarioTrafficMan as a non-native speaker I would have guessed "Rurrid", maybe he can do a video on the history, ethymology and pronunciation of his name or scots gaelic names in general.
Brings back memories - 1981 stumbling across Broad St (had never heard of it) late one night looking for Liverpool St, and then Liverpool St itself being such a rabbit warren I missed my train and had to wait until early morning. I remember Broadgate being built, once the biggest building site in Europe, and now that’s gone too! I also remember railway buildings along Bishopsgate being demolished to make way for offices and seeing how far down the Victorian buildings went and the beauty of the vaulted construction that had probably not been seen in decades.
Ah, I remember Broad Street station as a child, having been brought up in Bethnal Green in the 70s. I remember my dad taking me on the north London line all the way to Richmond and back . It took ages as it meandered through north London, but as a child it seemed magical, even the station names stuck in my imagination (Finchley road and Frognal) was one of my favourites. Happy days.
Crikey, came across this totally randomly. l used this lovely and very useful little line for about 3 years in the late 60's whilst working in Mincing Lane. (Hampstead Heath Station, South End Green). And WELL remember Broad St station - looking as it used to be of course. I seem to think that the last train left there at 10.30p.m. - which often meant a mad dash up the stairs to catch it! Happy days.
Britain had no shortage of faded, formerly grand railway buildings in the 1970s, but Broad Street Station was an exemplar of decrepitude. For that reason alone it was fascinating. Even the train windows had prison bars to stop passengers decapitating themselves on the route's limited clearances.
I remember the window bars and a friend regaled me with the sight of a male commuter who had quickly jumped into a compartment and was beaten out with an umbrella - one of the 'Ladies Only' ones!
Marylebone is an interesting one - it was earmarked for closure in the 1980s and there was a serious proposal put forward to convert the tracks as far as Northolt into a National Express coachway. After legal challenges and Chris Green to NSE it was reprieved and a great deal of investment followed. For more see www.londonreconnections.com/2014/near-terminal-case-saving-marylebone-rail-road-conversion/
@@blueberrypirate3601 Marylebone was pretty depressing in the early 1980s. I think it had 3 platforms in use and there was talk of running the Banbury/Wycombe trains into Paddington and the Aylesbury trains into Baker Street.
@Strawberry Station. But Marylebone was in a favourable position in comparison to Broad Street. One, Baker Street and Paddington Stations were at Capacity and could not absorb extra services from Marylebone. Two Marylebone had direct access to a Main Line, Broad Street did not.
I remember taking a train from there at the suggestion of a friend as I was working just down the road in Houndsditch. The station was pretty deserted but then so were most stations serving the City during office hours. Liverpool Street next door was still to have the Broadgate development transform it. Back then it was a dirty and scruffy station that was so out of date that scenes from The Elephant Man were filmed there.
Funny I am currently re-watching season 3 of 24, and the main baddie's name is Stephen Saunders. Not relevant really but just thought it was a funny coinkidink.
I remember travelling out of Broad Street in the final years of its agony on trains to Richmond, and being surprised to read in a book about the LNWR about the "inter Cities" train you mention that used to run to Birmingham from there. Apparently it was specifically for City business men and even provided the services of a typist on board! The gaunt and derelict remains of Shoreditch Station loomed over a rather seedy area between Old Street and Shoreditch High Street, where I worked for a while in an office on the corner of Redchurch Street. it's all become very "hipster" nowadays with the building of the Overground link. I remember too, the "stygian" depths of Liverpool Street from a journey to Harwich aboard a boat train en route to a Norwegian cruise with my parents in 1956. I was fascinated by the locomotives waiting outside the station to back down to their trains in the grim cuttings which took the line up towards Bethnal Green. It was the real "East End" in those days!
Very interesting, with a lovely selection of photgraphs. In the writings of R Austin Freeman (set mainly in the first two decades of the 20th century) Dr Thorndyke and his co-adjutors regularly use Broad Steet station to get to London's north-western suburbs, often walking the two miles from the Temple to get to or from the terminus.
Great video Ruairidh, I’ve always been fascinated with Broad Street. A small remnant of Broad Street can be seen outside Hoxton Station- the terminal’s old War Memorial. I think it was put there in around 2010.
A model steam locomotive in a glass case which collected money for charity which used to be on the station concourse survives in the collection of the National Railway Museum. The external stone staircase on the East side, which in later days was the only entrance to the station was supposed to be preserved and re-erected elsewhere, but I don’t think it ever happened.
I used this station just once, in 1982, and it was profoundly melancholy. Soot, corrosion, silence and decay. Like Marylebone was at that time, but with added buddleia and rosebay. Its incredible how far things fell between 1955 and 85. A least lines are beginning to reopen again, even though many stations currently look more like security posts.
Stayed in the Travelodge opp Marylebone on 16-9-16...up from NZ for daighter's wedding. Explored the station which i thought a lovely small size main station...with its beautiful porte cochère Rory might find the beautiful barrel vaulted entrance roof of Wellington station interesting.
I heard of Broad Street Station on Video 125’s North London Line Driver’s Eye View but I didn’t know what Broad Street actually looked like. Thank you for uploading this clip.
I hate to say this but some of the video shown looked like it was of St Enoch Station, Glasgow (2.38)… a little bit away from Broad Street. I may very be wrong but it’s so similar…
I only saw Broad Street in the seventies and eighties. It always seemed a sad place, each time being more rundown than previously. I almost expected the platforms to be wet, to match the general dreariness.
I recall Liverpool Street was very dark and depressing then as well. For sure what eventually arrived after many years construction seemed a whole lot better. I wonder though if they could have been more creative in refurbishing and re-purposing some of the original architecture of Broad Street Station frontage into the new.
By far the best explained and illustrated video on this subject i have seen. I have always been a bit confused about the place of Broad Street in the history of London railways...now I know. Thank you.
The Euston Road trolleys also feature in The Lady Killers which includes the NLR viaduct at belle Isle outside Kings Cross. The trolleybuses were good because of the length of their routes such as Willesden to Moorgate.
This station appears in an episode of Thames TV series Callan, the second episode of series 3 (the first series in colour) called Summond To Appear. Some nice shots of the station and a DMU that was obviously there for the filming......
Great video! Surprised there was no mention of the movie Give My Regards To Broad Street. A lot of good shots of McCartney outside and inside the station in the mid 80s.
While sad to see it go, ultimately it wasn't needed any more, and the diversion of the North London Line to Stratford and North Woolwich created a really useful new service. The East London line extension to Dalston Junction is an excellent reuse of most of the viaducts, a shame it wasn't built much earlier, as it was a real waste to have those viaducts sitting unused for so long.
I used to commute from my grotty rented bedsit at Dalston Junction into Broad Street station during 1980-1981. What a ramshackle ruin of a place it was with patched up WW2 bomb damage still visible. But that wasn’t so unusual in London in the early 1980s with a lot of car parks and empty plots were the Blitz had levelled the buildings. If you see the film Elephant Man there is a sequence in a train station with steam trains. I think they must have done location filming in Broad Street and the old Liverpool Street stations. They certainly recreated the Victoria squalor of both those old stations.
In 1966 I started work in London just around the corner from Broad Street Stn. It was already very run down and a thoroughly miserable place, it had a misplaced bit of architecture placed in front of it, again which was very run down. I used it a few times but even the trains were run down. Really the whole affair brought the whole area down. In the end although I am not a devotee of modern architecture, what it was replaced with was a massive improvement.
Thanks for the extra info. I really enjoyed this video as it, and comments like yours, give an understanding at a local/neighborhood level. Personal familiar accounts really breathe life into the "facts and figures".
Whilst briefly working in London in the late 60’s & early 70’s I did wander into Broad St station to have a look, nothing was happening but I remember the building well & it will always be in my mind when my mind goes back.
It's a shame that this London terminal station no longer exists. It looked very grand in its heyday. This station was also not the only station named "Broad Street" that would later be demolished. Broad Street Station in Philadelphia also existed and was a grand station in its day, but it and was subsequently demolished, thus it doesn't exist anymore like with London's Broad Street Station.
I really wanted to travel this line to Richmond when I was a train mad child. My father said he'd take me just for the ride but it never happened. Broad Street reminds me of Liverpool Exchange station, another which is sadly gone. Last time I was at Exchange was as a very small child. My mother had taken us to Formby to see Grandma and we got a taxi from Lime Street to Exchange, only to find no railway tracks and some parked busses. The thing about Broad Street is that it would probably be a very useful terminus again now. Just like the old Bishop's Stortford to Braintree branch line would have served Stansted Airport admirably.
Why would Broad Street be useful? Well it wouldn't. Unless it was going to be incorporated as a below ground station within the Broadgate Complex and money found to build an incline to connect with the West Anglia services at Liverpool Street, the best Outcome for Broad Street was realized. A distant memory.
The port-a-cabin building on the platform from the later photos was used as a British Rail training school, I was there in May 1978 doing my guards training.
A great video! I've seen most of what Jago has to offer & this was a welcome slight change! I've been to Broadgate during my time working in the square mile & never knew what was there before... I think that's the thing with so many of the new buildings - we see them and hardly ever wonder what must've stood there before them. 10/10 Ruairidh
Broad Street station located in the financial area of London next to Liverpool station and near Shoreditch that closed in 1986 with just a few suburban services to north London. Fenchurch Street is another almost forgotten London termimus where the line goes to south Essex, places like Basildon and Southend.
London Marylebone station very nearly met a similar fate in the early-80s, after decades of being run down, and its services being cut to a handful of commuter routes after it lost its long distance services. There were crazy plans to convert it into a coach station which were seriously considered by BR, despite the fact that this would have slashed the capacity of the infrastructure. But it survived just long enough for the upturn in passengers in the mid-1980s to give it a reprieve, when the coach station idea proved totally impractical. It's now thriving after finding a new role as the hub of the Chiltern Railway network to Birmingham and Oxford. Maybe if Broad Street had survived a few more years it would have found a new role.
Children line/Marylebone saving grace was the capitalcard season tickets - they brought in an upturn in passengers - but as your video says,broad street fate was sealed in the 1970s
No it would not. Marylebone also survived because due to the sale of Capitalcard Tickets, both Baker Street and Paddington had reached capacity. Also Marylebone had direct access to a Main Line, Broad Street did not.
@@mjcats2011 the withdrawal of services of the great northern services in 1976 in favour of electric trains to nearby Moorgate station via Essex Road only left Richmond and Watford junction services and in 1979 British rail gained planning permission to redevelop broad street, so they wanted to withdraw services as soon as they can, but it took until 1985 to get the line to north woolwich electrified and Richmond services diverted and another year or more to build Graham road curve to allow Watford services to reach Liverpool street, so with the 1979 planning permission granted, the writing was on the wall and broad street was doomed
Some of the more architecturally pleasing stone work bits of the old Broad St stn building can still be seen to the left of the tracks as you drop into London Liverpool st station .
Broad Street Station reminds me of Manchester Mayfield. It adjoined another city centre station, Piccadilly, was also damaged by bombing and spent years covered in undergrowth and buddleia. It enjoyed an Indian Summer in the late 1950s when the west coast line was being electrified, and even had a "namer", "The Pines Express" to Bournemouth. It's now part of an urban regeneration project. The exterior is largely intact.
Broad Street's biggest problem was that it only ran to an east-west line a couple of miles to the north. Any onward trains had to run along this slow suburban line. I suspect that even early on, the Birmingham train faced stiff competition from the main line into Euston which linked to the Metropolitan line. Once the Northern Line opened up between Euston and the City, any advantage it had was gone.
I was thinking that he would have mentioned that the station played a part in Macca's film "Give my Regards to Broad Street". Other than that, great job as always.
I have a book written by Betjeman, with excellent photos about London's major stations. It inspired me when on a visit to Britain to take in Broad Street. I travelled from Richmond. It was a wonderful glimpse of parts of London I'd never seen. The station architecture looks French. This video is splendid.
4:00 that’s Harrow and Wealdstone which is now the today’s terminus of the bakerloo line from elephant and castle and that station was remembered for 3 trains crashed here in 1952
When they found the culprit loco the brakes were locked and she'd been put into reverse but as the crew died it remained a mystery as to why they ran the red lights at Hatch End.
I have used that from Wembley Central. As my Dad worked at the Operation Room which was down stairs that was from the Front Lefthand side of the building. (This is the room that was used when the Great Train Robbery took place and to arrange for a new look to get the train moving again.)
I visited the station in the early 80's, pretty sure I lashed out an extravagant 6p for a platform ticket to keep as a memento and probably still have it up in the loft somewhere. It must have been pretty near the end by then and I can confirm your view, it was definitely looking run down. Makes me wonder what it might be like today, had it not been closed, it might have become a sort of terminus for the London Overground.
@@MeFreeBee Gosh, I remember - there was an exit from the Metropolitan/Circle Lines on the square directly in front of Broad street station, which had a huge double-arrow on it, so anyone would think "Oh, that's the station". Then you enter, and instead of the merry bustle that is L'pool St., everything empty and deserted. You must have thought it was the End of the World.
@@Northstander No it would not. It would eat up most of TfL's budget just to get the Station in an operational state. Secondly on of the main reasons for the set up of London Overground was to create an Orbital railway.
In the 1970s there were suggestions that Broad Street could be amalgated with Liverpool Street. However it was not feasible to alter the track layout so that trains could access the Broad Street platforms from the lines into Liverpool Street. I used Broad Street a few times in the 1970s and I will always associate it with the Class 501 units.
Liverpool Street station Is low level, just below street level. Broad Street station, high level. The only way to get North London line trains into Liverpool Street station would have been building a high level station above the existing platforms. Not impossible, but would involve altering the wonderful trainshed, possibly architectural vandalism. The site of Broad Street station become Broadgate, a massive office block.
If Broad Street station was still here today. It would of been the terminus of the London Overground East London Line extension that would of had a triangle junction to the north at Hoxton & Shoreditch and would of made it lot easier to get to Central London from West Croydon, Clapham Junction, New Cross, New Cross Gate and Crystal Palace.
it wouldn't be easy to build a triangular junction. Also it would have cost a fortune to rebuild Broad Street. Easier to get to Central London? You need to take a look at the London Rail map, Andrew. You can get to Waterloo and Victoria in about 7 mins from Clapham Junction. Just one interchange you can get to the City by London Underground. You do realize all the other stations you mentioned have direct services to London termini? All of which more convenient than Broad Street. Moreover, if you lived in Croydon and wanted to get to Central London, you wouldn't consider using West Croydon. You would use East Croydon instead, where more frequent and express services call. With no direct access to a main line mean that Broad Street was totally useless. And the benefits of closing Broad Street Station massively by a factor of thousands to one outweigh the negative. Liverpool Street Station a far more important station, is now completely rebuilt and fit for purpose. And a true orbital metro network consisting of the NLL from Stratford to Richmond and Clapham Junction with the North London Line and the ELL extension from Highbury and Islington and Dalston Junction to West Croydon, Clapham Junction, New Cross and Crystal Palace.
In the 60s I thought Broad Street was BEYOND BORING, well I was young, it's always sad when so much well built engineering ends up like pearls cast before swine
I have often thought the switch of the final service, Watford junction to Liverpool Street was a costly but ultimately needless excersize. The Graham a street curve was constructed in Hackney to join the north London line onto the tracks into Liverpool Street to make the route for that service possible yet within a few years the service was axed? And today the Graham Street curve lies idle
The Graham Road curve is still in use, I pass under the bridge on most days and often see a overground train stationary atop. It's not in public use but empty stock seems to use it regularly.
@@lfewell2161 I understand the unit you see uses the curve as a reversing point, rather than to travel from one line to the other. It goes onto the curve, clears the points, stops, then travels back onto line towards Dalston... not quite what the curve was built for ;-)
Nice one Ruairidh. I went there only one in 1978 (I think). Very sad. If it had survived 10 years more it might now be undergoing a renaissance as all the other terminals are now at capacity. But that'd history/government policy/politics for you
No Broad Street would have done little to relieve the other Terminals. All it would have done is to suck money from other far more worthwhile projects.
No need to destroy the beautiful Victorian station building. Just look at the ugly monstrosity that has replaced it. This absolute disgrace is part of the ongoing vandalism of Victorian London. Ongoing is the key word here.
5:55 - Slam door trains were excellent however, as UK society has degraded over time since their last use, they would be unsafe now with their private compartments not to mention the doors. Great experience at the time though...😊
Broad St was in some ways the saviour of Marylebone - a classic case of not realising it could be useful until it was gone. Times have changed a lot in 40 years... All the London mainline stations were filthy, run-down, inefficient, poorly maintained, deliberately not useful, charismatic dens of inequity. The railways of the 70s & 80s were terrible compared with today but are remembered with such romance and many a rose tinted lens by my age group and older (I was born in '69). There was wholesale destruction and a feeling that, like the 50s and early 60s, the only way forward was to tear it all down and start again, part of the demolition was to leave it to rot for 20 years and save the cash for something better. But someone realised that we still needed to get to work, we still wanted to go to 'the smoke', we still needed those transport systems as not every car would fit. Some of the the finest railway minds since the original builders managed to pull off a phoenix act and the likes of Scot Rail and Network South East, and to a different extent 'new' Inter City pushed through and, to be honest, had no choice but to refurbish the stations. The Chairmen of British Rail (Sir Peter Parker, Robert Read and Bob Reid) fought for their systems and made some headway for the first time in years, even in spite of the car friendly Conservative government Broad St was a dump. It closed, as Ruairidh said, after a long, slow, painful illness but it sparked the rebuilding of Marylebone, Liverpool St, Paddington, Cannon St and the later masterpieces that can be seen at King Cross and St Pancras. Thank you for telling the rest of the story of Broad St (and a bit of St Enoch, apparently.
@@mjcats2011 But it wasn't really a main line by the 1980s, before the advent of Network South East. Marylebone's biggest saviour was that the BRB lived opposite! The 1970/80s were not a good time for British railways in a lot of respects but glorious in others...
@@daveoftheclanburgess It was not the main corridor but it had direct access to Oxford and the Midlands without affecting other commuter services. No, the BRB being opposite was not Marylebone's savior. Ultimately, the London Travelcard was. It meant that Baker Street reached capacity and Paddington could not handle services either. Now Marylebone provides alternative services to Birmingham and Oxford and serving towns that would otherwise have very few if any direct services into London, such as Leamington Spa, Warwick, Stratford Upon Avon and Kidderminster. Broad Street on the other hand, did not have direct access. It had access to the North London Line which is a busy orbital passenger railway and a busy freight route. It had already lost the East Coast Inner Suburban's to Moorgate in the 1970's and lost the NLL to North Woolwich in 1985. At the time of closure there was very little traffic serving Broad St. It just was not worth keeping crumbling ruin of a station on prime city land for just a little over 300,000 passenger journeys a year. A good thing that happened with Broad St Station's demise is that the viaducts were reused for the ELL and it brought much of Hackney to the rail network.
That may be as it was a similarly redundant city terminus. However, it could be a London Tilbury and Southend/LMS 2100 class Baltic in Broad Street. The GSWR 540 class locos were, in essence, a development of the LTSR design, 10 years later - both were designed by Robert Whitelegg for very similar purposes - heavy commuter traffic. However, none of either survived beyond the mid 30s as being small classes it made no economic sense to build special replacement boilers when they were needed and the by then LMS which subsumed both the LTSR and GSWR had standard classes able to fill the role. I hope someone can definitively identify which of the 2 options we're looking at. It's quite a coincidence really - 2 similar city termini with a similar fate, 2 railway companies with the same Chief Mechanical Engineer, who used the same basic design for a similar role on each system.
Likely, also has colour light signals in it, which Broad St never had. Also an ex-CR bow tie route indicator when ex-NLR had destination boards on the front
And the ugly building which replaced the station, seen at 7:42, has itself become a victim of developers. It was demolished a few years ago and replaced by something even uglier.
Not quite correct. That particular building is still there - its just had its entire granite facade completely removed and replaced with something new in the last couple of years (that building pictured overlooks the new Crossrail Liverpool Street entrance, with the bus terminus alongside Liverpool Street and the main pedestrian station entrance/MacDonalds just out of shot behind the hoarding to the right). The building you're thinking of (that was completely demolished and replaced a few years ago) was beyond that pictured - and yes, I agree, what they've replaced both that building with and the new facade on the building pictured, are awful compared to the originals (which actually, were aging very well IMO because they had extremely high quality finishes for modern stonework).
Thank you for an informative video. However, please note that the plural of terminus is terminii (pronounced termineye) and that the word terminals usually refers to airports... well, aerodromes, really!
""Terminus" is a Latin word, and so has a proper pluralization of "termini," though in common speech pluralizing those sorts of words as "-uses" is becoming more accepted (terminuses, octopuses)." ...from stackexchange. I'm not going to give an opinion except that common usage usually prevails.
@@firesurfer Methinks you are an American! However, if you watched the video you will note that I was contesting the use of terminals as the plural, not terminuses etc. The remark wasn't directed at you and your comments are unwanted. I can speak English well enough not to have you throw in your penn'orth thank you.
hi great video,its a pity this station had to go.the main building was a great structure,,good to see all the old EMUS of the 60s and 70s in this video,the new electric trains to day just do not do it for me, they have no character and the seating is ghastly.come back 1967, !
Are they really using diesel trains in an underground station? That's what it looks like in that new station, I can't see any electrification in there, although it looks like a third rail supply substation at 7:52, I can't see any third rail there, or have they invented something new?
Its definitely third rail, image was probably taken during construction before the third rail was installed. Unless the few remaining unelectrified lines south of London are electrified on the third rail, this may of been the last time that the third rail system was installed.
Of course, had Broad Street survived to this day... It would have saved an awful lot of expensive and very disruptive remodelling at Kings Cross and allowed the TfL Rail Sheffield service pattern to have been increased, despite the Crossrail central section not having opened!
How? The access to the North London Line has been singled. How would Broad Street help the Liverpool Street to Shenfield? So it would not cost much to rebuild Broad Street to an Operational standard? I would hazard a guess it would cost far more. And Kings Cross needed remodeling regardless of Broad Street. in any case the money made by the land sale rebuilt Liverpool Street, a far more important station.
@@mjcats2011 would have allowed Crossrail services to increase because West Anglia services could have been running into Broad Street instead of Liverpool Street, freeing up platforms in Liverpool Street for additional GE Inner. And would have helped at Kings Cross (I'm talking previous remodelling, not the latest stuff) because less suburban services would have been using the platforms there, as a result of also using Broad Street instead.
@@wurlyone4685 What are you talking about? The Broad Street lines are High Level, the Liverpool Street lines were at low level. They went in completely different direction. The Graham Road Curve was built to allow trains from Watford Junction to access Liverpool Street. Also the link to the East Coast Main Line from Canonbury has been singled and would have to use the North London Line with its stopping services to access the link. Moorgate handles the 8 trains per hour off peak / 12 trains peak for the inner suburban's easily. And I cannot see Cambridge or Peterborough passengers being happy adding as much as 20 - 25 mins trundling along the NLL simply to access Central London. That's why services to Birmingham and the West Coast main Line were stopped ages ago. As for Liverpool Street. The GE Inners will use new low level platforms when Crossrail opens.
@@mjcats2011 this whole thing is hypothetical - not just my statements, but also yours in this scenario. ie you're stating things that have happened after Broad Street closed - but had it not (which is the scenario I was putting out) then those things either might not have happened, or not happened exactly as they have (would have been implemened in a different way/different solutions). And yes, Broad Street was high level, while Liverpool Street is street level... There are things called inclines... One of these could have been built to connect Broad Street to the WA lines though the old Bishopsgate goods terminal. The additional Crossrail services will indeed use the low level. When it opens. My point was the additional Crossrail GE Inner services could still have been introduced despite the central section (low level) stations not having opened, if the above had happened - additional capacity would be available in the existing Liverpool Street, because of WA services using Broad Street (via an incline!) instead.
@@wurlyone4685 Diversion to Moorgate happened in 1975, Broad Street closed in 1986, so I do not know what point you are making there? Just where would you build the incline or ramp for the Lea valley routes? Because they went in different directions the incline would have to be built close to the station and there just wasn't the space. Broad Street was in decline way before 1985 when it was closed. Service after service was transferred from Broad Street, because guess what Operationally it was more efficient to do so. Moreover, we probably would not have the ELL extension or the NLL to Stratford. Broad Street would not have provided a relief for Kings Cross. The Inner Suburbans were transferred to Moorgate. As much as you hate the Broadgate complex it did provide money for the redevelopment of the far more important Liverpool Street Station. Broad Street was a crumbling ruin which would have required a huge amount of money to modernize, for a station without the potential of St Pancras or Marylebone.
The commentary refers to the demise of a (direct) service between Broad Street and Cambridge. I don't think there ever was such a service; the ER trains via Canonbury to the ex-LNER lines didn't go that far, surely?
Another daft idea was to re route all services along the Met into Baker St and close Marylebone. After much arguing the idea was thankfully abandoned in 1986 at the same time Broad St closed.
Closing Marylebone would have been daft. Closing Broad Street was one of the best things to happen to the London Rail Network. Marylebone had advantages that Broad Street did not. Namely direct access to a main line, which provided an alternative route to Birmingham, and later Oxford.
@@thebrummierailenthusiasts5329 Shoreditch station was the peak hours/Sunday terminus of the East London line, and broad street was the terminus of the north London line (or link), but Shoreditch high street was only built in about 2009/10 and is only a through station and *HAS NEVER BEEN A TERMINUS* even if a previous station on the site was 200 years year's ago
Everytime I watch one Rudyard McVeigh's videos I am engulfed in the story. His research is never lacking, there is always plenty of related media and his ability to convey the information is phenomenal. Outstanding, as always!
I couldn't agree more.
Totally agree.👍🙂
*Ruairidh
I believe it's pronounced "Rory" but I'm not certain
@@OntarioTrafficMan That's right, it's Scots Gaelic.
@@OntarioTrafficMan as a non-native speaker I would have guessed "Rurrid", maybe he can do a video on the history, ethymology and pronunciation of his name or scots gaelic names in general.
Brings back memories - 1981 stumbling across Broad St (had never heard of it) late one night looking for Liverpool St, and then Liverpool St itself being such a rabbit warren I missed my train and had to wait until early morning. I remember Broadgate being built, once the biggest building site in Europe, and now that’s gone too! I also remember railway buildings along Bishopsgate being demolished to make way for offices and seeing how far down the Victorian buildings went and the beauty of the vaulted construction that had probably not been seen in decades.
Ah, I remember Broad Street station as a child, having been brought up in Bethnal Green in the 70s. I remember my dad taking me on the north London line all the way to Richmond and back . It took ages as it meandered through north London, but as a child it seemed magical, even the station names stuck in my imagination (Finchley road and Frognal) was one of my favourites. Happy days.
Brilliant video, nobody ever tells about broad street, such a forgotten piece of history.
Well, Geoff Marshall did a video on it some time ago.
Paul McCartney wrote a song about it
Crikey, came across this totally randomly. l used this lovely and very useful little line for about 3 years in the late 60's whilst working in Mincing Lane. (Hampstead Heath Station, South End Green). And WELL remember Broad St station - looking as it used to be of course. I seem to think that the last train left there at 10.30p.m. - which often meant a mad dash up the stairs to catch it! Happy days.
Britain had no shortage of faded, formerly grand railway buildings in the 1970s, but Broad Street Station was an exemplar of decrepitude. For that reason alone it was fascinating. Even the train windows had prison bars to stop passengers decapitating themselves on the route's limited clearances.
I remember the window bars and a friend regaled me with the sight of a male commuter who had quickly jumped into a compartment and was beaten out with an umbrella - one of the 'Ladies Only' ones!
I think its a shame that one of the things that killed this station, the trams, also died as a result of the underground's immense expansion...
Knowing the fate that befell Broad Street makes me grateful that we still have Marylebone around. It was starting to go the same way by the 1980s.
Marylebone was slated for closure but the decision was reversed.
In recent years Marylebone has been bursting with under capacity for various operators. What a contrast!
Marylebone is an interesting one - it was earmarked for closure in the 1980s and there was a serious proposal put forward to convert the tracks as far as Northolt into a National Express coachway. After legal challenges and Chris Green to NSE it was reprieved and a great deal of investment followed. For more see www.londonreconnections.com/2014/near-terminal-case-saving-marylebone-rail-road-conversion/
@@blueberrypirate3601 Marylebone was pretty depressing in the early 1980s. I think it had 3 platforms in use and there was talk of running the Banbury/Wycombe trains into Paddington and the Aylesbury trains into Baker Street.
@Strawberry Station. But Marylebone was in a favourable position in comparison to Broad Street. One, Baker Street and Paddington Stations were at Capacity and could not absorb extra services from Marylebone. Two Marylebone had direct access to a Main Line, Broad Street did not.
I remember taking a train from there at the suggestion of a friend as I was working just down the road in Houndsditch. The station was pretty deserted but then so were most stations serving the City during office hours. Liverpool Street next door was still to have the Broadgate development transform it. Back then it was a dirty and scruffy station that was so out of date that scenes from The Elephant Man were filmed there.
Funny I am currently re-watching season 3 of 24, and the main baddie's name is Stephen Saunders. Not relevant really but just thought it was a funny coinkidink.
I remember travelling out of Broad Street in the final years of its agony on trains to Richmond, and being surprised to read in a book about the LNWR about the "inter Cities" train you mention that used to run to Birmingham from there. Apparently it was specifically for City business men and even provided the services of a typist on board! The gaunt and derelict remains of Shoreditch Station loomed over a rather seedy area between Old Street and Shoreditch High Street, where I worked for a while in an office on the corner of Redchurch Street. it's all become very "hipster" nowadays with the building of the Overground link. I remember too, the "stygian" depths of Liverpool Street from a journey to Harwich aboard a boat train en route to a Norwegian cruise with my parents in 1956. I was fascinated by the locomotives waiting outside the station to back down to their trains in the grim cuttings which took the line up towards Bethnal Green. It was the real "East End" in those days!
Very interesting, with a lovely selection of photgraphs. In the writings of R Austin Freeman (set mainly in the first two decades of the 20th century) Dr Thorndyke and his co-adjutors regularly use Broad Steet station to get to London's north-western suburbs, often walking the two miles from the Temple to get to or from the terminus.
Great video Ruairidh, I’ve always been fascinated with Broad Street. A small remnant of Broad Street can be seen outside Hoxton Station- the terminal’s old War Memorial. I think it was put there in around 2010.
A model steam locomotive in a glass case which collected money for charity which used to be on the station concourse survives in the collection of the National Railway Museum.
The external stone staircase on the East side, which in later days was the only entrance to the station was supposed to be preserved and re-erected elsewhere, but I don’t think it ever happened.
I used this station just once, in 1982, and it was profoundly melancholy. Soot, corrosion, silence and decay. Like Marylebone was at that time, but with added buddleia and rosebay. Its incredible how far things fell between 1955 and 85. A least lines are beginning to reopen again, even though many stations currently look more like security posts.
Stayed in the Travelodge opp Marylebone on 16-9-16...up from NZ for daighter's wedding. Explored the station which i thought a lovely small size main station...with its beautiful porte cochère
Rory might find the beautiful barrel vaulted entrance roof of Wellington station interesting.
I heard of Broad Street Station on Video 125’s North London Line Driver’s Eye View but I didn’t know what Broad Street actually looked like. Thank you for uploading this clip.
I hate to say this but some of the video shown looked like it was of St Enoch Station, Glasgow (2.38)… a little bit away from Broad Street.
I may very be wrong but it’s so similar…
I only saw Broad Street in the seventies and eighties.
It always seemed a sad place, each time being more rundown than previously. I almost expected the platforms to be wet, to match the general dreariness.
I recall Liverpool Street was very dark and depressing then as well. For sure what eventually arrived after many years construction seemed a whole lot better. I wonder though if they could have been more creative in refurbishing and re-purposing some of the original architecture of Broad Street Station frontage into the new.
By far the best explained and illustrated video on this subject i have seen. I have always been a bit confused about the place of Broad Street in the history of London railways...now I know. Thank you.
I spotted some trolleybuses in the video - they would also merit one of Ruairidh's films.
The Euston Road trolleys also feature in The Lady Killers which includes the NLR viaduct at belle Isle outside Kings Cross. The trolleybuses were good because of the length of their routes such as Willesden to Moorgate.
This station appears in an episode of Thames TV series Callan, the second episode of series 3 (the first series in colour) called Summond To Appear. Some nice shots of the station and a DMU that was obviously there for the filming......
Thanks for that, I'm gonna check it out.
Great video! Surprised there was no mention of the movie Give My Regards To Broad Street. A lot of good shots of McCartney outside and inside the station in the mid 80s.
Was just thinking the same. Good call!
While sad to see it go, ultimately it wasn't needed any more, and the diversion of the North London Line to Stratford and North Woolwich created a really useful new service.
The East London line extension to Dalston Junction is an excellent reuse of most of the viaducts, a shame it wasn't built much earlier, as it was a real waste to have those viaducts sitting unused for so long.
It’s a shame that broad street station had been taken down in the 80s
I used to commute from my grotty rented bedsit at Dalston Junction into Broad Street station during 1980-1981. What a ramshackle ruin of a place it was with patched up WW2 bomb damage still visible. But that wasn’t so unusual in London in the early 1980s with a lot of car parks and empty plots were the Blitz had levelled the buildings. If you see the film Elephant Man there is a sequence in a train station with steam trains. I think they must have done location filming in Broad Street and the old Liverpool Street stations. They certainly recreated the Victoria squalor of both those old stations.
In 1966 I started work in London just around the corner from Broad Street Stn. It was already very run down and a thoroughly miserable place, it had a misplaced bit of architecture placed in front of it, again which was very run down. I used it a few times but even the trains were run down. Really the whole affair brought the whole area down. In the end although I am not a devotee of modern architecture, what it was replaced with was a massive improvement.
Thanks for the extra info. I really enjoyed this video as it, and comments like yours, give an understanding at a local/neighborhood level. Personal familiar accounts really breathe life into the "facts and figures".
Thank you for a concise but informative video. Others have tried to cover this subject without the clarity that you have presented.👏
Whilst briefly working in London in the late 60’s & early 70’s I did wander into Broad St station to have a look, nothing was happening but I remember the building well & it will always be in my mind when my mind goes back.
It's a shame that this London terminal station no longer exists. It looked very grand in its heyday. This station was also not the only station named "Broad Street" that would later be demolished. Broad Street Station in Philadelphia also existed and was a grand station in its day, but it and was subsequently demolished, thus it doesn't exist anymore like with London's Broad Street Station.
I really wanted to travel this line to Richmond when I was a train mad child. My father said he'd take me just for the ride but it never happened. Broad Street reminds me of Liverpool Exchange station, another which is sadly gone. Last time I was at Exchange was as a very small child. My mother had taken us to Formby to see Grandma and we got a taxi from Lime Street to Exchange, only to find no railway tracks and some parked busses.
The thing about Broad Street is that it would probably be a very useful terminus again now. Just like the old Bishop's Stortford to Braintree branch line would have served Stansted Airport admirably.
Why would Broad Street be useful? Well it wouldn't. Unless it was going to be incorporated as a below ground station within the Broadgate Complex and money found to build an incline to connect with the West Anglia services at Liverpool Street, the best Outcome for Broad Street was realized. A distant memory.
The port-a-cabin building on the platform from the later photos was used as a British Rail training school, I was there in May 1978 doing my guards training.
A great video! I've seen most of what Jago has to offer & this was a welcome slight change! I've been to Broadgate during my time working in the square mile & never knew what was there before... I think that's the thing with so many of the new buildings - we see them and hardly ever wonder what must've stood there before them. 10/10 Ruairidh
Your the modern version of Pathe news :) thanks again for these videos! :)
Broad street was electrified at 630 V dc 3rd rail making it into a bit of the Southern Region north of the river.
No, originally 3rd and 4th rail (as on LT) but later converted to 3rd rail only (as SR).
Broad Street station located in the financial area of London next to Liverpool station and near Shoreditch that closed in 1986 with just a few suburban services to north London. Fenchurch Street is another almost forgotten London termimus where the line goes to south Essex, places like Basildon and Southend.
London Marylebone station very nearly met a similar fate in the early-80s, after decades of being run down, and its services being cut to a handful of commuter routes after it lost its long distance services. There were crazy plans to convert it into a coach station which were seriously considered by BR, despite the fact that this would have slashed the capacity of the infrastructure. But it survived just long enough for the upturn in passengers in the mid-1980s to give it a reprieve, when the coach station idea proved totally impractical. It's now thriving after finding a new role as the hub of the Chiltern Railway network to Birmingham and Oxford. Maybe if Broad Street had survived a few more years it would have found a new role.
Children line/Marylebone saving grace was the capitalcard season tickets - they brought in an upturn in passengers - but as your video says,broad street fate was sealed in the 1970s
No it would not. Marylebone also survived because due to the sale of Capitalcard Tickets, both Baker Street and Paddington had reached capacity. Also Marylebone had direct access to a Main Line, Broad Street did not.
@@mjcats2011 the withdrawal of services of the great northern services in 1976 in favour of electric trains to nearby Moorgate station via Essex Road only left Richmond and Watford junction services and in 1979 British rail gained planning permission to redevelop broad street, so they wanted to withdraw services as soon as they can, but it took until 1985 to get the line to north woolwich electrified and Richmond services diverted and another year or more to build Graham road curve to allow Watford services to reach Liverpool street, so with the 1979 planning permission granted, the writing was on the wall and broad street was doomed
Some of the more architecturally pleasing stone work bits of the old Broad St stn building can still be seen to the left of the tracks as you drop into London Liverpool st station .
Great history, i never used Broad street, but remember it well as a train enthusiast.
Wonderfully told, some fantastic before and after shots, a pleasure to watch. Thank you.
Broad Street Station reminds me of Manchester Mayfield. It adjoined another city centre station, Piccadilly, was also damaged by bombing and spent years covered in undergrowth and buddleia. It enjoyed an Indian Summer in the late 1950s when the west coast line was being electrified, and even had a "namer", "The Pines Express" to Bournemouth. It's now part of an urban regeneration project. The exterior is largely intact.
Broad Street's biggest problem was that it only ran to an east-west line a couple of miles to the north. Any onward trains had to run along this slow suburban line. I suspect that even early on, the Birmingham train faced stiff competition from the main line into Euston which linked to the Metropolitan line. Once the Northern Line opened up between Euston and the City, any advantage it had was gone.
The Peter Foggo office block that replaced the Broad Street building has since been half-demolished and its appearance utterly changed.
Really enjoyed this just an excellent presentation of Broad Street station thanks!
Very nice video, thank you. Some of the background video at around 3 minutes in does seem to relate to another, sadly lost, station, GLASGOW St ENOCH!
I was thinking that he would have mentioned that the station played a part in Macca's film "Give my Regards to Broad Street".
Other than that, great job as always.
Allegedly a favourite of Sir John Betjeman.
I have a book written by Betjeman, with excellent photos about London's major stations. It inspired me when on a visit to Britain to take in Broad Street. I travelled from Richmond. It was a wonderful glimpse of parts of London I'd never seen.
The station architecture looks French.
This video is splendid.
@@brucewilliams8714 That's a great book! I got it when it first came out. I agree, the old station looked French.
Interesting piece of railway history!
4:00 that’s Harrow and Wealdstone which is now the today’s terminus of the bakerloo line from elephant and castle and that station was remembered for 3 trains crashed here in 1952
When they found the culprit loco the brakes were locked and she'd been put into reverse but as the crew died it remained a mystery as to why they ran the red lights at Hatch End.
Did it
Looks like this was the original crossrail. Now they're building a new one. Only time will tell how much of a success it will be.
Excellent, thank you. I have always thought Broad Street a really interesting station.
Very informative and well done. Thanks for taking the time to make this video.
I have used that from Wembley Central. As my Dad worked at the Operation Room which was down stairs that was from the Front Lefthand side of the building. (This is the room that was used when the Great Train Robbery took place and to arrange for a new look to get the train moving again.)
I remember going there in 1979 when it looked very run down.
That's because it was very run down.
I visited the station in the early 80's, pretty sure I lashed out an extravagant 6p for a platform ticket to keep as a memento and probably still have it up in the loft somewhere. It must have been pretty near the end by then and I can confirm your view, it was definitely looking run down. Makes me wonder what it might be like today, had it not been closed, it might have become a sort of terminus for the London Overground.
My only memory was when my mother and I got out the wrong exit of the tube, expecting to end up in Liverpool St. and being totally disoriented.
@@MeFreeBee Gosh, I remember - there was an exit from the Metropolitan/Circle Lines on the square directly in front of Broad street station, which had a huge double-arrow on it, so anyone would think "Oh, that's the station". Then you enter, and instead of the merry bustle that is L'pool St., everything empty and deserted. You must have thought it was the End of the World.
@@Northstander No it would not. It would eat up most of TfL's budget just to get the Station in an operational state. Secondly on of the main reasons for the set up of London Overground was to create an Orbital railway.
In the 1970s there were suggestions that Broad Street could be amalgated with Liverpool Street. However it was not feasible to alter the track layout so that trains could access the Broad Street platforms from the lines into Liverpool Street.
I used Broad Street a few times in the 1970s and I will always associate it with the Class 501 units.
Liverpool Street station Is low level, just below street level. Broad Street station, high level. The only way to get North London line trains into Liverpool Street station would have been building a high level station above the existing platforms. Not impossible, but would involve altering the wonderful trainshed, possibly architectural vandalism.
The site of Broad Street station become Broadgate, a massive office block.
It could be a back up station. Trains could reach many lines from there.
It was replaced by Shoreditch High Street but not a terminating station.
A beautiful, if poignant story clearly well told.
Can you do Wolverhampton low level or even Skegness I know it not lost but it not used like it used to be please 😌
Not quite all gone. The facade off the goods depot was recycled into a retaining wall for a terrace at the late Bill McAlpine’s home.
A good cup of coffee and a Ruairidh video! Bliss! 😀
If Broad Street station was still here today. It would of been the terminus of the London Overground East London Line extension that would of had a triangle junction to the north at Hoxton & Shoreditch and would of made it lot easier to get to Central London from West Croydon, Clapham Junction, New Cross, New Cross Gate and Crystal Palace.
it wouldn't be easy to build a triangular junction. Also it would have cost a fortune to rebuild Broad Street.
Easier to get to Central London? You need to take a look at the London Rail map, Andrew. You can get to Waterloo and Victoria in about 7 mins from Clapham Junction. Just one interchange you can get to the City by London Underground. You do realize all the other stations you mentioned have direct services to London termini? All of which more convenient than Broad Street. Moreover, if you lived in Croydon and wanted to get to Central London, you wouldn't consider using West Croydon. You would use East Croydon instead, where more frequent and express services call.
With no direct access to a main line mean that Broad Street was totally useless. And the benefits of closing Broad Street Station massively by a factor of thousands to one outweigh the negative. Liverpool Street Station a far more important station, is now completely rebuilt and fit for purpose. And a true orbital metro network consisting of the NLL from Stratford to Richmond and Clapham Junction with the North London Line and the ELL extension from Highbury and Islington and Dalston Junction to West Croydon, Clapham Junction, New Cross and Crystal Palace.
Suppose you are right.
I'm a tram and I approve this video ;) :D
Superb video never knew about this despite having heard the name
i loved that station
In the 60s I thought Broad Street was BEYOND BORING, well I was young, it's always sad when so much well built engineering ends up like pearls cast before swine
I have often thought the switch of the final service, Watford junction to Liverpool Street was a costly but ultimately needless excersize.
The Graham a street curve was constructed in Hackney to join the north London line onto the tracks into Liverpool Street to make the route for that service possible yet within a few years the service was axed?
And today the Graham Street curve lies idle
The Graham Road curve is still in use, I pass under the bridge on most days and often see a overground train stationary atop. It's not in public use but empty stock seems to use it regularly.
@@lfewell2161 I understand the unit you see uses the curve as a reversing point, rather than to travel from one line to the other. It goes onto the curve, clears the points, stops, then travels back onto line towards Dalston... not quite what the curve was built for ;-)
@@jimtuite3451 Thank you for that info, I must admit I was puzzled as to where the train was going/coming from, all is now revealed.
It will be forever memorialised in Paul McCartney's long forgotten 1984 movie Give My Regards to Broad Street. The album is good though.
Sad isn’t it? I’m glad Paul McCartney’s ‘Give my regards to Broad Street’ has helped to keep it alive in the memories of a few…
What a great video.
Any idea of the date of the photo at 1.08 mins? It must be decades after the start of the E&WID&BJR in 1850
We had a Broad Street station in Philadelphia which was also lost in time.
There’s also one in Newark, NJ.
Whats this "The War" you talk of?
Seriously though, vastly informative video about something I can't honestly say I'd heard of.
World wars one and two
@@Keithbarber it's a joke
@@geekyboringfilms233 and I've just had my shower and put blue boxers on
You don’t start a sentence with ‘and’.
Nice vid. Didn't know that London had Trolleybuses - any chance of their story?
You didn't know London had trolley buses ! That amazes me-how old are you then?
@@kennethcoxell9449 Old enough to have seen trolleybuses in Hudderfield. Does that amaze you?
It closed 35 years ago ? I had no idea !
Excellent video
Looks like a topic that Geoff Marshall should cover for a future video
Nice one Ruairidh. I went there only one in 1978 (I think). Very sad. If it had survived 10 years more it might now be undergoing a renaissance as all the other terminals are now at capacity. But that'd history/government policy/politics for you
No Broad Street would have done little to relieve the other Terminals. All it would have done is to suck money from other far more worthwhile projects.
The only way I knew about this station is from "Give My Regards To Broad Street" from 1984.
No need to destroy the beautiful Victorian station building. Just look at the ugly monstrosity that has replaced it. This absolute disgrace is part of the ongoing vandalism of Victorian London. Ongoing is the key word here.
It's an absolute crying shame. The greedy, selfish City corporates won't stop.
5:55 - Slam door trains were excellent however, as UK society has degraded over time since their last use, they would be unsafe now with their private compartments not to mention the doors. Great experience at the time though...😊
Broad St was in some ways the saviour of Marylebone - a classic case of not realising it could be useful until it was gone.
Times have changed a lot in 40 years... All the London mainline stations were filthy, run-down, inefficient, poorly maintained, deliberately not useful, charismatic dens of inequity. The railways of the 70s & 80s were terrible compared with today but are remembered with such romance and many a rose tinted lens by my age group and older (I was born in '69). There was wholesale destruction and a feeling that, like the 50s and early 60s, the only way forward was to tear it all down and start again, part of the demolition was to leave it to rot for 20 years and save the cash for something better.
But someone realised that we still needed to get to work, we still wanted to go to 'the smoke', we still needed those transport systems as not every car would fit. Some of the the finest railway minds since the original builders managed to pull off a phoenix act and the likes of Scot Rail and Network South East, and to a different extent 'new' Inter City pushed through and, to be honest, had no choice but to refurbish the stations. The Chairmen of British Rail (Sir Peter Parker, Robert Read and Bob Reid) fought for their systems and made some headway for the first time in years, even in spite of the car friendly Conservative government
Broad St was a dump. It closed, as Ruairidh said, after a long, slow, painful illness but it sparked the rebuilding of Marylebone, Liverpool St, Paddington, Cannon St and the later masterpieces that can be seen at King Cross and St Pancras. Thank you for telling the rest of the story of Broad St (and a bit of St Enoch, apparently.
London Broad Street however did not possess what London Marylebone had. Direct access to a Main Line.
@@mjcats2011 But it wasn't really a main line by the 1980s, before the advent of Network South East. Marylebone's biggest saviour was that the BRB lived opposite! The 1970/80s were not a good time for British railways in a lot of respects but glorious in others...
@@daveoftheclanburgess It was not the main corridor but it had direct access to Oxford and the Midlands without affecting other commuter services. No, the BRB being opposite was not Marylebone's savior. Ultimately, the London Travelcard was. It meant that Baker Street reached capacity and Paddington could not handle services either. Now Marylebone provides alternative services to Birmingham and Oxford and serving towns that would otherwise have very few if any direct services into London, such as Leamington Spa, Warwick, Stratford Upon Avon and Kidderminster.
Broad Street on the other hand, did not have direct access. It had access to the North London Line which is a busy orbital passenger railway and a busy freight route. It had already lost the East Coast Inner Suburban's to Moorgate in the 1970's and lost the NLL to North Woolwich in 1985. At the time of closure there was very little traffic serving Broad St. It just was not worth keeping crumbling ruin of a station on prime city land for just a little over 300,000 passenger journeys a year. A good thing that happened with Broad St Station's demise is that the viaducts were reused for the ELL and it brought much of Hackney to the rail network.
I'm no expert but 2:50 looks remarkably like an ex Glasgow and South Western Baltic tank at Glasgow St Enoch.
That may be as it was a similarly redundant city terminus. However, it could be a London Tilbury and Southend/LMS 2100 class Baltic in Broad Street. The GSWR 540 class locos were, in essence, a development of the LTSR design, 10 years later - both were designed by Robert Whitelegg for very similar purposes - heavy commuter traffic. However, none of either survived beyond the mid 30s as being small classes it made no economic sense to build special replacement boilers when they were needed and the by then LMS which subsumed both the LTSR and GSWR had standard classes able to fill the role.
I hope someone can definitively identify which of the 2 options we're looking at. It's quite a coincidence really - 2 similar city termini with a similar fate, 2 railway companies with the same Chief Mechanical Engineer, who used the same basic design for a similar role on each system.
@@EuroScot2023 Thanks for that helpful and interesting reply. As I said, I'm no expert!
Likely, also has colour light signals in it, which Broad St never had. Also an ex-CR bow tie route indicator when ex-NLR had destination boards on the front
My father worked at Broad St Station occasionally.
In the 60s caught this train to Kew Gardens
Philadelphia also lost its magnificent Broad Street Terminal.
You should do.a story on the class 37
And the ugly building which replaced the station, seen at 7:42, has itself become a victim of developers. It was demolished a few years ago and replaced by something even uglier.
Not quite correct.
That particular building is still there - its just had its entire granite facade completely removed and replaced with something new in the last couple of years (that building pictured overlooks the new Crossrail Liverpool Street entrance, with the bus terminus alongside Liverpool Street and the main pedestrian station entrance/MacDonalds just out of shot behind the hoarding to the right).
The building you're thinking of (that was completely demolished and replaced a few years ago) was beyond that pictured - and yes, I agree, what they've replaced both that building with and the new facade on the building pictured, are awful compared to the originals (which actually, were aging very well IMO because they had extremely high quality finishes for modern stonework).
Thank you for an informative video. However, please note that the plural of terminus is terminii (pronounced termineye) and that the word terminals usually refers to airports... well, aerodromes, really!
""Terminus" is a Latin word, and so has a proper pluralization of "termini," though in common speech pluralizing those sorts of words as "-uses" is becoming more accepted (terminuses, octopuses)."
...from stackexchange. I'm not going to give an opinion except that common usage usually prevails.
@@firesurfer Methinks you are an American! However, if you watched the video you will note that I was contesting the use of terminals as the plural, not terminuses etc. The remark wasn't directed at you and your comments are unwanted. I can speak English well enough not to have you throw in your penn'orth thank you.
Fascinating
hi great video,its a pity this station had to go.the main building was a great structure,,good to see all the old EMUS of the 60s and 70s in this video,the new electric trains to day just do not do it for me, they have no character and the seating is ghastly.come back 1967, !
Well I am glad you don't run the railways. Go back to the 1960's?
Are they really using diesel trains in an underground station? That's what it looks like in that new station, I can't see any electrification in there, although it looks like a third rail supply substation at 7:52, I can't see any third rail there, or have they invented something new?
Its definitely third rail, image was probably taken during construction before the third rail was installed. Unless the few remaining unelectrified lines south of London are electrified on the third rail, this may of been the last time that the third rail system was installed.
So much interesting information, but you are racing through it! Slow down. And breathe…
What can I say? SUBSCRIBED!
yet Marylebone Managed to stay open, despite facing a similar threat, it did it and is now a valued member of the London Termini family
1:14 That's a Tank Engine? It looks like a Sturling.
Wake up babe, new Ruairidh MacVeigh video
Of course, had Broad Street survived to this day... It would have saved an awful lot of expensive and very disruptive remodelling at Kings Cross and allowed the TfL Rail Sheffield service pattern to have been increased, despite the Crossrail central section not having opened!
How? The access to the North London Line has been singled. How would Broad Street help the Liverpool Street to Shenfield? So it would not cost much to rebuild Broad Street to an Operational standard? I would hazard a guess it would cost far more. And Kings Cross needed remodeling regardless of Broad Street. in any case the money made by the land sale rebuilt Liverpool Street, a far more important station.
@@mjcats2011 would have allowed Crossrail services to increase because West Anglia services could have been running into Broad Street instead of Liverpool Street, freeing up platforms in Liverpool Street for additional GE Inner.
And would have helped at Kings Cross (I'm talking previous remodelling, not the latest stuff) because less suburban services would have been using the platforms there, as a result of also using Broad Street instead.
@@wurlyone4685 What are you talking about? The Broad Street lines are High Level, the Liverpool Street lines were at low level. They went in completely different direction. The Graham Road Curve was built to allow trains from Watford Junction to access Liverpool Street. Also the link to the East Coast Main Line from Canonbury has been singled and would have to use the North London Line with its stopping services to access the link. Moorgate handles the 8 trains per hour off peak / 12 trains peak for the inner suburban's easily. And I cannot see Cambridge or Peterborough passengers being happy adding as much as 20 - 25 mins trundling along the NLL simply to access Central London. That's why services to Birmingham and the West Coast main Line were stopped ages ago. As for Liverpool Street. The GE Inners will use new low level platforms when Crossrail opens.
@@mjcats2011 this whole thing is hypothetical - not just my statements, but also yours in this scenario. ie you're stating things that have happened after Broad Street closed - but had it not (which is the scenario I was putting out) then those things either might not have happened, or not happened exactly as they have (would have been implemened in a different way/different solutions).
And yes, Broad Street was high level, while Liverpool Street is street level... There are things called inclines... One of these could have been built to connect Broad Street to the WA lines though the old Bishopsgate goods terminal.
The additional Crossrail services will indeed use the low level.
When it opens.
My point was the additional Crossrail GE Inner services could still have been introduced despite the central section (low level) stations not having opened, if the above had happened - additional capacity would be available in the existing Liverpool Street, because of WA services using Broad Street (via an incline!) instead.
@@wurlyone4685 Diversion to Moorgate happened in 1975, Broad Street closed in 1986, so I do not know what point you are making there?
Just where would you build the incline or ramp for the Lea valley routes? Because they went in different directions the incline would have to be built close to the station and there just wasn't the space. Broad Street was in decline way before 1985 when it was closed. Service after service was transferred from Broad Street, because guess what Operationally it was more efficient to do so.
Moreover, we probably would not have the ELL extension or the NLL to Stratford. Broad Street would not have provided a relief for Kings Cross. The Inner Suburbans were transferred to Moorgate. As much as you hate the Broadgate complex it did provide money for the redevelopment of the far more important Liverpool Street Station. Broad Street was a crumbling ruin which would have required a huge amount of money to modernize, for a station without the potential of St Pancras or Marylebone.
The commentary refers to the demise of a (direct) service between Broad Street and Cambridge. I don't think there ever was such a service; the ER trains via Canonbury to the ex-LNER lines didn't go that far, surely?
A number of peak services were run from Cambridge to Broad Street in the 1950's.
Mostly Hertford or Hatfield to Broad St, DMU or hauled
Vs. Broad St. Station, Philadelphia.
Shame that that station was also demolished, especially its train shed.
Thanks
RIP Broad Street!
Another daft idea was to re route all services along the Met into Baker St and close Marylebone. After much arguing the idea was thankfully abandoned in 1986 at the same time Broad St closed.
Closing Marylebone would have been daft. Closing Broad Street was one of the best things to happen to the London Rail Network. Marylebone had advantages that Broad Street did not. Namely direct access to a main line, which provided an alternative route to Birmingham, and later Oxford.
Shoreditch is now the terminus of the east London line
Shoreditch closed in 2006. What was the East London Line is now part of London Overground.
Shoreditch high street is not a terminus but the modern alternative to the broad street and Shoreditch underground station so it's doing 2 jobs in 1
Yeah
Well years ago it was
@@thebrummierailenthusiasts5329
Shoreditch station was the peak hours/Sunday terminus of the East London line, and broad street was the terminus of the north London line (or link), but Shoreditch high street was only built in about 2009/10 and is only a through station and *HAS NEVER BEEN A TERMINUS* even if a previous station on the site was 200 years year's ago