Mix ‘n’ Match

A week of trains and steps… Today I completed a consecutive 7 days of doing over 8000 steps. That’s an important thing for my health and wellbeing. Now I think I’ll ease back for the weekend before setting out to put together a string of 13 days for the next level. Why 8000 steps? I know that most of the fitness trackers suggest 10k steps but many medical sources suggest that this is a figure plucked out of the air – around 20 minutes spent walking at a brisk pace being more beneficial. So I’ve picked 8k steps as a target that I know I can achieve most days and I think having a target that you can do is important because failing your target all the time is demoralising and leads to giving up on exercise. That’s the background and it ties in with my Freedom Pass Project, my general trainspotting and other activities. So let’s have a photographic panorama of some recent outings that I haven’t reported…👍

For my Freedom Pass Project I still needed to take a London Underground train to Ealing Broadway. I sorted that out last Wednesday by picking up the Central Line from Shepherds Bush to terminate at Ealing. I spent 3 hours on the station during which time I saw 15 freight trains – that’s roughly double the norm. The reason for this is the closure of the line between Didcot and Oxford for major repairs to a failing bridge over the Thames. Many of these extra freights are intermodal services from Southampton Docks to destinations in the Midlands and Northern England. Here’s one such train…

…66413 heading a service from Leeds to Southampton – This would not normally have routed via London as it’s quite a detour! There are a lot of diversions and it’s putting a lot of stress on the available slots. Some freights were clearly sharing the same slot, cutting margins and causing minor delays for passenger services. For my US friends, this loco is wearing a livery based on the Genesee and Wyoming as that company now owns Freightliner.

I post a morning photo on Twitter every day. This started because I was helping a young Serbian friend with his photographic learning. Subsequently I discovered, when I stopped posting, that a couple of my other trucking friends had been enjoying the images. In particular, Jürgen, asked that I continue. So that is what I have done. We now share morning photos for our friends. Jürgen has been displaying some great shots of where he lives and I’ve been doing a mix of my usual😅 Here’s a shot that I shared taken on Ballards Lane in Finchley Central…

A visit to Clapham Junction always gives a lot of steps – just walking down to East Finchley Station and then changing at Bank for the Waterloo & City line before riding a Southwestern Railway service out to Clapham will give you over 4k steps in one hit! Then moving around the station to try and catch a flavour of what’s passing through can easily add another 6k! – It’s a big station 🤣 Here’s a Class 455 unit – now nearly 5 years beyond its intended retirement – amidst the weeds on the Wimbledon side of the station…

…While on the Richmond side of the station we have a Bow depot to Tonbridge train of empty hoppers behind 66764 of GBRf…

Epi wanted to take a walk over to the garden centre in Bounds Green while she is having a week off work. This is only 2.4 miles (5 mile round trip) but in North London that includes a few sharp climbs and the boredom of walking Creighton Avenue😅 Here’s a 102 bus on Alexandra Park Road close to our destination…

A trip out yesterday saw me visiting Hampstead Heath station where I caught a shot of the Hoo Junction to Whitemoor yard engineers train…

…A train of ballast on this occasion. Then I walked home over Hampstead Heath. I’ve been promising Jürgen that I’d take him for a virtual walk across The Heath and I took several images to post on Twitter for him. Here’s a couple of them…

…And while I’m out and about, I mustn’t forget my Trucking buddies – Here’s a nice example of a Scania P500XT at a building site on The Bishops Avenue…

Hope you enjoyed my week of exercise 🤣👍

CMMC – April Pick a Topic from my Photo

Catching up with Cee’s Midweek Madness Challenge on a Sunday morning. This time Cee has suggested the following topic ideas; ‘neighborhood, road or street, green, grass, flowers, landscaped, yellow, cloudy, tree, yard, gray, spring or summer…’

Lets start with neighborhood, road or street with a shot of The Grove in Church End, Finchley on Thursday this week…

For green, yellow, tree and spring here’s 377606 arriving at Carshalton station yesterday evening…

Gardens, grass, green, flowers and trees – Victoria Park, Finchley taken on Thursday…

Finally, an archive shot for clouds, landscaped, green and path…

This last shot is an example of the pace of change and why we need to keep photographing the everyday scene – Wembley Stadium, on the horizon, is no longer visible from here because of new housing built on the green area between. I guess I’d better get a current view 😉👍

Freedom Pass Project – Update

Following my trip to Tower Hill and Tower Gateway, reported in my last Freedom Pass post, I had an enforced break after I developed an issue with my foot. That has now cleared up and I’m back to normal mobility again – Slightly faster than the average snail 😉

Sunday dawned bright and the recent winds had dropped – it was a glorious day! I usually relax indoors on Sunday’s. There’s not much freight about and services are reduced on the main lines. However, on much of the London Underground, Sunday service is not much reduced compared with weekdays. I decided I would visit the three northern termini of the Northern Line. This is my local line so I only had to walk down to one of the nearest stations to begin my documentation for this one. Although it is local, I still managed to take some 40 images while I was out and about! The starting point is Finchley Central. We’ll be back here soon to tell more but the first trip of the day is up the line to High Barnet.

We’re in an area that was bypassed by the mainlines in the early days of the railways because of the high ground around Barnet. That left the villages of Finchley and Edgware unserved. There is a lot of history involved but suffice it to say here that ultimately a line was built from Finsbury Park through Finchley to Edgware in 1867 and a branch from Finchley to Barnet was added in 1872. Operated initially by the Great northern Railway, they became part of the LNER and were absorbed into the London Underground network in 1939 when the Northern Line was extended north from Highgate to connect with the LNER line at East Finchley. This explains the non-London Underground style of architecture found along much of the route.

Lets get the show on the road – This is the end of the line at High Barnet…

…Beyond the access walkway is a wooded steep bank close on 50ft high up to street level. Looking back towards the station we can see the original footbridge…

…and a view from the other end of the platform shows the waiting rooms and the main station building hiding behind the trains…

…You can also see the buildings on the hill beyond the station too. From High Barnet I’m going back to Finchley Central.

Time to talk about an anomaly – Finchley Central, up until the current part-closure of the Bank Branch, was the terminus for a shuttle service to & from Mill Hill East outside of peak periods. I don’t know if the intention is to return to that method of working when the work at Bank is complete. But to be on the safe side, here’s a train for Mill Hill East arriving on platform 1 at Finchley Central…

…And I’m taking that to Mill Hill East – the second of our termini for the day.

Mill Hill East wasn’t built as a terminus – it was a stop on the line across to Edgware. The arrival of the Underground at Edgware, combined with the war and abandoned electrification of the route, killed off the line beyond and Mill Hill East was left as a single track stump…

You can still walk quite a bit of the track bed beyond and maybe I’ll do that again in the future for a post. But for this post I now have to use one of my old photos of the station…

…as I had to hurry downstairs to catch a bus across to Edgware!

I said bus, so the introduction to Edgware Station is Edgware Bus Station!..

…Served by 17 routes, it’s pretty busy, even on a Sunday. A constant stream of buses arrive from all over north London, dropping their passengers off beside the train station before entering the bus station proper…

Edgware Station is pure London Underground. Opened in 1924, sadly, some of the intended grandeur has been lost as the village of Edgware has become a town and the building is dwarfed by its surroundings…

Inside the station there is a mystery – if you build 3 platforms, why only provide shelter on 2 of them…

…As might be expected, the answer is that the closest platform was added later – I believe in 1932. At one stage this platform was turned into an Island platform in preparation for an extension of the line north to Bushey Heath.

The interior of the trainshed at Edgware has a steam era feel although it was always an electric railway…

There’s an interesting mini-waiting room hidden under the stairs down on the platform along with an original station name board…

…Love that ‘W’👍 As mentioned above, there were plans in the 1930’s to extend the line north to Bushey Heath – In this view looking north along platform 3, you can see the tunnels that were started to take the line under the main road outside…

…but the work was abandoned with the onset of WWII and the subsequent introduction of the ‘Green Belt’ afterwards put an end to further development and the extension of the line.

To end my visit to Edgware, here’s a view of the main trainshed from platform 1…

…The building alongside is a depot and the brick building was once the signal box.

Then it was time to head home, taking the train down to Golders Green. In the past, Golders Green was a terminal for some services on the Edgware Branch so, for completeness, here’s a train pulling into the centre platform…

…and on the platforms we can find some more ‘Old London Underground’ signage…

…with modern sticky labels telling about the part-closure of the Bank Branch.

Outside the station is another very busy bus station…

…With the one-time Golders Green Hippodrome as a backdrop. Time to get on the bus and make my way home to conclude my Freedom Pass Project day out😎