I'm not talking about the Central Line here, although that did reopen through Central London today after a 68 day break. Emphasis on the break. It was strange to see crowded platforms at Mile End again, unlike the last 10 weeks where the place has been like a brief subterranean halt on a ghost train. That may have been strange, but it wasn't unexpected.
I saw the unexpected train before I got to my station. There used to be three rail stations along Bow Road within a quarter of a mile of each other. Two are still there, one on the District Line and the other on the Docklands Light Railway. The third station has long since closed. There's a rail bridge over Bow Road that used to carry passengers but now just blocks the view. Dirty black steps lead up to a deserted platform, blocked off somewhere behind a car repair yard. Nobody travels from Limehouse to Stratford any more, not in one journey anyway. It's just like the railway bridge in EastEnders - ever present in the local scene but no train is ever seen upon it. Except this morning, when I was amazed to see a passenger train rumbling across, completely out of place, a reminder of the branch lines that used to exist before the savage rail cuts of the 1960s.
It's exactly forty years since Dr Beeching's infamous report lopped the least busy branch lines from the country's rail network. He proposed closing almost a third of the network, around 5000 miles. Over 2000 stations were closed, thousands of passenger carriages were scrapped, and several communities found their rail connections severed. The railway had lost its dominance to the car, a position from which it has never recovered.
Some branch lines have since survived in name only. Denton in South Manchester has one train a week, in one direction only. The 14:56 to Stalybridge never returns, but this useless skeleton service is enough to prevent the rail authority from having to close the line officially. Ten years ago in Croxley Green (where I used to live) the service on the local branch line was suddenly cut to a single train from Watford and back at 6 o'clock on weekday mornings. In 1996 that one daily train was replaced by one daily taxi and the line fell into disrepair. However, by the letter of the law, that taxi means that the overgrown and partly-demolished Croxley branch line (photos here) is officially still open.
Londoners escaped most of Dr Beeching's cuts, with newrailwaylines opened and moreunderconsideration. We've been lucky. 10 weeks waiting for the Central Line to reopen is nothing compared to 40 years without any train service at all. I shall try to remember that when I collect my thumping great Central Line compensation payment...
