The exterior of the station was dominated by the bulk of the Great Eastern Hotel (the GER was noted for the quality of its catering and hotel services -- all now long-gone, of course: you'd be lucky to be able to buy so much as a cup of tea on most modern services).
The main approach to the station was down a long sloping taxi ramp:
Here's one of my photos to show some of the glories of the main train-shed roof, which still survives:
And here's how it used to be:
The station used to be a bit of a rabbit-warren, with dark, soot-grimed alleys and an extraordinarily complex system of footbridges which raised and lowered themselves over tracks, twisting through vast brick arches as they meandered from one side of the station to the other:
More walkways here, in a scene that illustrates the importance of parcels traffic (all of that is now transported by lorries):
Most of the mail travelled by train, too (again, it all now clogs up the roads):
The train shed was not a full-length job, and if you were in the wrong part of the train when you alighted you might face a soaking from the rain (one of the good parts of the redevelopment was the extension of the train shed, in the same style):
To minimise this possibility, the two centre platforms were much longer than the rest, cut deep back into the station concourse (another reason why it felt such a labyrinth -- not all the platforms ended in alignment).
The longest InterCity trains usually (though not always) departed from there -- the Hook Continental, an international train via Harwich to the Netherlands, and the named expresses into East Anglia (the Broadsman, the Norfolkman, the Easterling, the Fenman).
Despite that intoxicating glamour, Liverpool Street's main traffic was commuters -- thousands of them.
It was home to the famous Jazz Trains in the 1920s (the GER tried to prove that steam was just as good for operating an intensive service as electric trains. Surprisingly they largely succeeded).
That image (above) is, for me, immensely sad. It's of the high-numbered suburban platforms: the trainshed was demolished to allow a developer to build some gimcrack office block overhead, leaving the public to use this tawdry, lightless space:
Let's put that behind us and return to more glamorous things -- some glorious British Rail Mk2 carriages in an InterCity train are glimpsed at a platform, alongside a long line of empty BRUTE trolleys:
And here a pair of Mk2 InterCity coaches awaits the next turn of duty, showing that steam heating was still in operation long after steam traction had disappeared:
Let's finish with a treat -- this classical box on stilts housed the Station Master's office:
On the other side of the concourse there was a similar, larger, box housing the Europa Bistro, a restaurant overlooking the concourse and giving a fabulous view of the trains as they arrived or waited to depart.
I think the remodelled Liverpool Street is a bit of a soulless place compared to all that, notwithstanding its bright efficiency.
4 comments:
Superb!
What a grand station Liv St used to be. I wish I could have known it in those times.
Thanks for the pictures and the comments! Very interesting from a continental point of view; e.g. the taxis and trucks amidst the station.
Many British termini had access roads for taxis and trucks that ran parallel to the platforms (St Pancras and Cannon Street, to name just two others in London) -- a reflection of the vital part that parcels and mail traffic played in the railway (and vice versa), and of the sheer volumes of stuff that had to be loaded and unloaded. There's a nice sequence in The Ipcress File showing someone boarding a train with all that paraphernalia around them.
The traffic continued to very recent times: Euston was rebuilt in the 1960s with a complicated series of aerial access roads for mail and parcels trucks to enable them to drive into and out of the platforms.
I've now spent a fruitless couple of hours trying to find decent-sized images of the Europa Bistro (at one time known as the Cafeteria, and doubtless it had other names). All I can find are postage stamp sized images which are usually watermarked with the image company's name.
If anyone can point me in the right direction I'd be grateful.
Post a Comment