Monday, 26 October 2026

Innings, Outings And Stackings (1)

 It Started With A Picture ...

... and a Google Earth view of the same area ...
... and a closer view.
Can you spot those red cuboids opposite the terrace and adjacent to the former Granada cinema. They be London buses. And there they are now, courtesy of StreetView.
So, the challenging question is what are these buses doing in the front garden of a small terrace of Edwardian houses?

It's A Long Story

To find out, we needs to take an eastbound walk along St John's Hill. In so doing we cross the bridge over just part of this busy "junction" which isn't.

Two railway companies each provided a share of the traffic. 
Up a ramp off St John's Hill was the London Brighton and South Coast Railway office. 
Readers may amuse themselves by working out where the L B & S C trains went! These approached Clapham Junction from Londo Victoria ...
... crossed the lines from Waterloo before joining, then leaving the wider tracks. Those ran from Waterloo and were owned by the London & South Western Railway.

LSWR had two chunks of the station, one for trains to Portsmouth, Southampton and Exeter, and a northern section for the "Windsor Lines" leading eventually to Reading.

So where is the LSWR Station building?

There were TWO!  One was down a road off St John's Hill ...
... with an obvious 'proper' station at the bottom.
You can spot where part of it stood, even today. The clue is in the blank wall, the greenery ...
... and the lavish skylights on the footbridge.

With the development of the station in the early 1900s, extra tracks were added and there was no room for the original edifice. So it was moved on to  St Johns Hill, just west of the overbridge.

And there it is, opposite the terrace and in front the Edwardian block that we met above.
From here there was a footbridge and covered walkway ...
... which led across the newly added tracks (bottom right) and along to the entrance and footbridge, top left.

Or, from the opposites e direction, possibly a slightly less f0uzzy extract ...
... from Granada top left, ove8rbthe t9rack and along the platform to the footbridge skylights bottom right.

This entrance was closed as a wartime economy measure in the early 1940s.

But you can see where it was from street level ...
...  and if you know where to look, some remaining ironwork ...
... can be seen via a telephoto lens from the LBSC station yard. St John's Hill is left, the Edwardian block is upper right and the former Granada looms in the background.

So the station has three entrances now. In addition to the former LBSCR building ...
... there is an entrance via a shopping arcade a little further east along St John's Hill ...
... and in the north of the tracks, an entrance on Grant Road. 
These latter two are joined by a pedestrian tunnel ...
.... with steps up to the platforms.
Also crossing the station is the footbridge spotted earlier.
This has been progressively equipped with lifts ...
... to add to the stairs: these days increasingly helpful to fbb.

The footbridge has an escape to the outside world only via the LBSCR station building.
But we need to get back to those parked buses.

 Next Clapham Junction blog : Tues 27 Oct 

Sunday, 25 October 2026

Sunday Variety

Substantially Significant Snippets?

You would think the "reporters" might have access to a genuine picture of a Metroline bus.

Or maybe not? Every picture of a Metroline London bus that fbb can find has the London Buses roundel below the lower deck windows!
The fake one, created by Artificial Incompetence (AI) doesn't.

If it's new on the railway, it must be Great British Railways and public ownership.
It isn't and we don't. GBR hasn't happened yet. Several operator companies have transferred to state control; but this is nominal and financial. GBR does not yet exist; see what is written on the repainted trains.
It is the same people running everything as before "nationalisation". There appears to be a resounding "no change" when you join the club.

Knowing the huge lead time of any project, it is inconceivable that GBR had anything to do with the new footbridge. Except there isn't a new footbridge and Pokesdown already has lifts!
The lifts are not available for public use, being for "goods" only - whatever that means at a passenger only station!

The good news is that the contractors are putting new lifts into the existing shafts.

Apparently this will cost £7.4 million, being funded by South Western Railway and Network Rail's  £4.4 million and a dob from HMG of £3 million.

For two lifts and a bit of rejigging at platform level?

National Grid Not Good?
We know that the National Grid is in big trouble because the bosses keep telling us everything is fine. There are even expensive advertisements adulating the company's resolute readiness for whatever meteorological mayhem might manifest itself this winter.

So stock up with candles and a Camping Gaz stove if you are all electric.
If you are anxious about fire risk, then a heavy duty gazebo and some warm clothing might be a useful asset. 

And if you have an electric car?
A few packs on the back seat with a lot of wire and bulldog clips might get you there!

Swinney's Scottish Scheme
Scotland's First Minister has caused a bit of a kerfuffle at the SNP annual conference. Without discussing it with, apparently, anyone, he has decided to take over all public transport north of Hadrian's Wall.

It would be fair to say that nobody is very happy. Publicly very disturbed are the very wealthy brothers who own McGills.
They have already had spats with Strathclyde PTE (or whatever it is called this week!).
"It will turn out to be a bonny stramash", reported a learned and much respected but anonymous Scottish bus manager!
Hmmm. Br**n S**t*r's changed a bit in his old age!

Not Just Scotland: Now Brizzle!
It won't be quicker. It won't be better. It will take ages!

Peter Parker Probes the Public
Pardon? Oh, sorry!

It's not Peter, it's Richard, West Midlands Mega Mayor.
The mind boggles!
Now he wants the Brummie folk to invent a name for his fantastic franchised fleet ...

... which could easily be the bus equivalent of "Boaty McBoatface?

fbb Is A Naughty Boy!
On Friday, your benign befuddled blogger awoke from his slumber and, as is an everyday essential exercise, he checked the blog. He did not check for spooling mistokes, for factual accuracy, correct grammar ot just plain incompetence. He checked to see if he had remembered to press the button to "post" his profusely popular posting.

He had!

Imagine his consternation to be told via a red warning triangle and a warning panel, that his voluptuous verbiage "contained sensitive information" and was being presented as "access restricted".

Page reads were higher than usual at 0730, so the warnings went unheeded.

The blog, you may remember, was about buses to Pan Estate in Newport Isle of Wight, an area obviously packed with secret government research establishments, the Isle of Wight espionage academy and a stockpile of nuclear missiles ...
.... disguised as Council houses; and, far left, a Co-op one stop shop.

Google also sent fbb an email.
But, as a high ranking international spy, disguised as a fat octogenarian, fbb was ready for this.

Before brekkies on Friday, fbb copied the whole "sensitive" blog into a new Blogger file and re-posted it, deleting the blog with potentially dangerous material, apparently obvious to everyone at Blogger HQ.

The re-posted posting contained no changes, no redacted text or deleted pictures and ...

... guess what? ...

... attracted no interference from the bewildering Blogger bots!
Above picture courtesy of "Meta" HQ, Blogger department.

Peterville Castle Halt
Painting Progress

1. Paint the raised areas, door frames etc, blue
2. Make a mess of it.

3. Paint the main area white using thinned paint which flows up to, but not onto the blue.
4. Get white paint on the blue

6. Touch up the blue carefully (?)
Go to item 2: repeat ad infinitum. 

Then give up and hope people won't notice.

It will look OK from the usual viewing distance.

 Next Clapham Junction blog ; Mon 26 Oct