Shedding a Light On the Station at Brighton (2)

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Grovel Apologetically

for late posting of yesterday's blog. Forgot to

press the appropriate button - yet again

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When you consider the engineering required to build Brighton Station and, even worse, get trains into it, it is not at all surprising that the London Brighton & South Coast Railway came very close to going bust in 1866. Fortunately revenues increased and it survived by the skin of its boiler plating.

Let's see how challenging it was to get trains over bits of the South Downs  and in to the developing seaside resort.

From the west it was relatively straightforward. The line, set at (or near) sea level at Shoreham-by-Sea ...

... could move inland and rise gently in the residential hinterland of the West Sussex coast and, by so doing, avoid major bridges (River Adur excepted!), tunnels and embankments.

Travelling south from London, a longish tunnel was needed at Clayton ...

... and a smaller bore at Patcham.

But it is the approach from the east that is the most spectacular and was the most challenging to build. 

After a short tunnel at Falmer Hill the line is mainly on a low embankment until it crosses the Lewes Road (in PINK) ...

... before running along an escarpment on a hillside opposite Moulsecoomb estate. Moulsecoombe station is up quite a steep hill from the main road ...

... but well placed for the expanding premises of Brighton university.

Then, to get to the Brighton station site, the line has to cross another deep valley formed, historically, by the River Wellesbourne, now barely a trickle. Starting our look-see at Ditchling Road ...

... the line is in a cutting. At London Road station the tracks are at ground level ...

... with a footbridge and footpath taking both passengers and local residents to and from the north side of the station.

Then the land plunges. The valley is traversed on the massive multi arch London Road viaduct ...

... crossing first Beaconsfield Road ...

... and then Preston Road.

The stylised engraving below gives an exaggerated view (looking towards the sea), showing Brighton locomotive works perched on a near vertical cliff.

Height is ludicrously exaggerated but a glance at Google Earth today ...

... shows the ground floor of the flats that replaced the "works" at or above roof level of the premises on Argyle Road, glimpsed bottom left. The bridge (bottom right) ...

... once carried the track to the goods depot (at a lower level than station platforms) ...

... note the "locomotive" crossing behind the railings!

Part of this route is now a footpath ...

... which also illustrates the height of the post-railway structures compared with the A270 below (left). Even these flats needed an arched "underneath" to lift the building to the level of the access road on the far side.

And did you spot fbb's "deliberate" mistake in yesterday's blog? The confused old man wrote that the freight line had been replaced by Stroudley Road. WRONG! Poor map reading! Bad house point!

As the above picture shows, the railway line has been replaced by the footpath ...

... which slopes UP to join Stroudley Road (within the curtilage** of the former works, not below). Streetview and Google Earth are superb resources, but, clearly, they do not replace an on-site visit.

Another one for fbb's bucket list, now becoming an unachievable large tin bath list!

But this brings us neatly to an examination of the station and its surroundings which will follow tomorrow.

** Curtilage - the land surrounding a building. It is such a splendid word, much underused, so fbb just had to squeeze it in!

A Puzzle from a Twitterer

Below is a detail from the gorgeous Eridge Station where GoAhead Southern diesels on their run to Uckfield connect with trains on the Spa Valley heritage railway.

On its platforms, the Spa Valley line has recreated a typical Southern Railway station complete with authentic colours and nameboards.

But look across to the footbridge on the National Rail platform.

It has got one of those!

Underneath the steps is a mailbag chute!

Its purpose is obvious (there's a bit of a clue in the name) but fbb does wonder where else these "slides" were used and where else they still exist.

It is hard to believe that Royal Mail business at rural Eridge ...

... was ever enough to justify such luxury.

 Next Brighton Station blog : Wednesday 10th July 

Shedding a Light On the Station at Brighton (1)

It is fascinating to chart the development of railway infrastructure in our towns and cities, and challenging but informative to watch its decline. In the 18th century a small settlement, called Brighthemstone, sat on the south coast about 50 miles from London.

The small network of roads (bottom centre) was surrounded by fields, called laines**, largely in narrow strips to cope with the hilly nature of the town's early hinterland.  The shape of the future Old Steine** ...

... is there, as is the split of the London Road, Ditchling Road and Lewes Road.

By 1815 Brighthelmstone had begun to grow ...

... and had gained a letter "L" in its name! "The Steyne" has not yet become Old!

In the 1840s, what became the London Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) arrived on the northern edge of the town.

Lines from London joined lines from Shoreham-by-Sea (now Coastway West) and Lewes (Coastway East).

A magnificent terminal building was constructed ...

... with pitched roofs over the platforms.

The original 1840s building is still there, but it takes a bit of finding. Thanks to Google Earth we can look down and see the white-walled structure surrounded by less dignified clutter - less dignified but better for the protection of passengers in inclement weather.

Initially, road access was via Trafalgar Street ...

... but later Queens Road was constructed with financial help from the LB&SCR. There were many additions and extensions to the buildings but the most notable was the two-arch glazed roof added in 1882/1883.

One little quirk concerned Trafalgar Street. It proved very steep for the gentlemen's carriages (horse drawn, of course) so a more gentle slope was built into an east-side extension of the station building. The gateway is still there ...

... with wooden door now sealed shut, but still visible from an inside area used by staff for bike storage.

A gentle ramp led up to platform level from where drivers were expected to exit via the the steeper down slope of Trafalgar Street.

A rough diagram of the whole station area ...

... shows a separate line to a Goods depot. The whole site grew to include a locomotive building works and a substantial engine shed. All this is now gone, but the thoroughfare that replaced the goods line is, appropriately, named Stroudley Road after the LB&SCR's highly successful loco designer.

The "yards" were extensive, despite the constraints of the site. The map below is spun 90 degrees anti clockwise to confuse our reader. North is to the left.

Photos do not do justice to the works, but they were big. The station is upper left in the picture below.

... and loco shed was substantial.

Modern flats replace the loco works ...

... and Colas Rail (engineering company) occupies the engine shed site.

But getting all these structures in to a restricted and sloping site involved some spectacular and often overlooked railway engineering which will be outlined in tomorrow's blog.

Brighton, by the way, was a familiar short form of Brighthelmstone as far back as the 17th century. Slowly it began to supplant the older name and was eventually officially adopted in 1810.

** laines - a Sussex word meaning "an area of land at the foot of a hill".

** Steine - and area of rocky or pebbly land.

Snippet

Regular listeners to the late Terry Wogan's breakfast show on Radio 2 will recognise some of these names. Correspondent Alan sends this from N&P (Notices and Proceedings the journal which records the activity of the Traffic Commissioners). The Commissioners have nothing to do with traffic, hence their title, but they do handle all licensing affairs for passenger service vehicles.

Alan "Deadly" Dedicoat was announcer and occasional newsreader for our Tel whist Ken Bruce was the "jock" (in both senses of the word) which followed El Tel on air.

The surrender of the licence means they can no longer operate "for hire and reward" but it is not known whether they are disposing of the buses themselves.

Deadly is also famous for being "The Voice of the Balls" on the National Lottery TV programmes.

 Next Brighton blog : Tuesday 9th July 

Weekend Odds (2)

Foot or Bottom or Top?

Historically Bus destination blinds have shown either "Foot of Beachy Head" or "Top of Beachy Head" as illustrated on the front cover of the Middleton Press book.

Historically "Foot" was the Corporation whilst Southdown went to "Top".

The two places are quite different; it is a challenging trudge to get from Bottom of to Top of.  Currently Stagecoach service 3 and 3A serve Meads ...

...  and the time point on Dukes Drive (Bede's School) ...

... gives access to a footpath climb from foot to top. No 3 son confirms the ascent, having run up there.

From here the B2103 climbs and wiggles up to the top.

Currently the Eastbourne Tour equates to Southdown 197.

It leaves the pier and runs out via the sea front and back via the town centre ...

... ascending the B2103 and running clockwise via "top of" and Birling Gap.

Operated by Seaford and District it has tour fares ...

... and fbb's old fogey pass is not valid. Boo Hiss! Maybe on the next visit the old man will be willing to shell out £7.50 for a wonderful open top ride. It looks like a superb trip on a sunny but breezy day - UK seaside at its glorious best.

But there is another route to "top" of which more next week.

Memories Fade
fbb had forgotten that before privatisation Brighton (Corporation) Buses struck out with a revolutionary change of image. Brighton Hove and District (a "Tilling company") were red and cream ...

... whereas Brighton Corporation painted their vehicles in ...

... red and cream. The two companies had a complex operating agreement plus some mysterious revenue sharing algorithms which meant that, sometimes, Brighton and Hove buses would run a Corporation route and vice versa.

It was something of a shock when the Corporation decided to paint its vehicles BLUE and cream ...

... and something of a relief when the two operations merged to become the present Brighton and Hove - but with a reversion to read and cream!

Stripes and slash gave way to wavy bits, but the core and tradition colours remained.

Both styles have been (and still continue to be) adorned by colour coding for the more frequent services.

Southdown's eponymous South Downs green ...

... succumbed sadly to the all pervasive Stagecoach stripes and zigzags, then swirly bits.

Snippets
Manchester "Tube" Map

fbb has been reminded that Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham ...

... is up for re-election in 2020, so what happens to his "vision" if he loses? That is the real problem when politicians get involved in Public Transport - noble and aspirational plans can evaporate at the next election. But will the OneBus partnership approach do any better?

Certainly the Sheffield Bus Partnership may have taken the companies closer to profitability but it has been a real "disaster darling" for the public. Further cut-backs are expected in September.

Fish Fingers
Following on from Greggs celebrated vegan sausage roll, Waitrose is now offering vegan fish fingers.  (shouldn't they be called Tofu fingers? Trades description legislation?) An on-line tweet reports an "interesting" shelf display.

fbb has been known to make the occasional tryping mistake (surely not) but the above is a classic. Look at the last sentence.

When fbb started the Great Britain timetable he has a stiff letter from a user complaining of multiple mistakes. Sadly the correspondent somewhat undermined his point when he advised the team to "make more use of a spell chercker"!

Pram Bus
The Christchurch (New Zealand) pram buses provided a fascinating insight into solving the problem of how to attract young mums to the buses.

Correspondent John (he of the acronymic** street name in Eastbourne) sent this scan of a page from a West Yorkshire Road Car Company bus timetable book.

And the service was FREE!

** acronymic - there is no such word - but there should be. If Shakespeare can invent new words, so can fbb!

Night Tube Car Cards
After a bit of aggro from the Unions, the night tube started in 2016. Services run all night on Fridays and Saturdays on Central, Victoria, Northern and Jubilee line plus part of the East London Overground.

A twitterer has spotted a night service diagram in his tube train, taking some of the space used normally for the daytime version.

The black background is the night network's trademark.

Electric Cars : Saviour of the Planet?
Maybe not completely! A recent report casts a few doubts.

Did anyone say they would? Electric cars, it is proposed, will deal with air quality, shortage of fossil fuels etc. But this report warns that other problems will NOT be solved.

The report has got a point but doesn't seem to be much of a surprise. What is clear is that the commercial model for bus travel has not delivered the step change in public transport that the politicians claimed. £50billlion for buses might make a difference!

Tomorrow we spend some time in and around a piece of railway infrastructure.

 Next Viaduct blog : Monday 8th July