The park is OK - more of a heath or fields than one of the excellent Royal Parks in this city. But one thing which seemed interesting there was this small, old station - closed to the public, and labelled Dudding Hill Junction.
Turns out this is part of a little railway that time forgot!
The station is part of the old Dudding Hill line, which was opened with much excitement in 1868. The line itself is only about 4 miles long, serving areas of North West / West London. In the late 1800s, the Willesden area (I think in part because of swanky new rail services) was morphing from an outskirts village, into a middle-class London suburb. [Which is kinda reflected in a lot of the architecture here - though today it's Zone 2, and fairly central in the ever-expanding city!]
The Dudding Hill line was closed for general use just after 1900. It seems passenger services were soon picked up by the arrival of the even swankier Metropolitan and other lines which still function as part of today's London Underground.
But amazingly, the old line STILL operates a sparse service, using a speed limit of 40mph, and semaphore signalling - just as it would have a century ago! The service is/was apparently mainly for freight, but with very occasional chartered passenger services (which in 2019 must be like a step back in time!)
Tbh this line can't be generating much revenue, and I'm surprised that it has not been demolished to re-use the space/lines. In fact there have been numerous recent proposals to re-work it, but I'm not sure if any are going ahead. In a way this is quite nice, though. It is unusual to find inadvertent reminders of the past, especially in a big city like London!
Here's the photo I took of Dudding Hill Junction yesterday, and then one stolen from Wikipedia, which shows a glamorous Victorian passenger crowd descending the steps. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment