Today is the anniversary of the topping out of the BT (or Telecom) Tower and for some its still known as the Post Office Tower. Besides the images showing early designs for the tower itself, the structure was going to be known as the Museum Radio Tower. The rather grandiose name came from the fact […]
Read MoreTower Bridge’s one-two-five (125th) anniversary is upon us and this post discusses the bridge’s ‘one thro’ five’ – a subject that’s never been written about! What’s that then? Its the furthest Tower Bridge can be seen from central London. Inevitably its a view straight down the the river through five main Thames crossings. The one […]
Read MoreIn 1889, 1929, 1954 and 1959 there were four important milestones for the railway that ran along Swansea Bay. The first was a change from what was then called the Oystermouth railway to the Mumbles Railway & Pier Company, authorised by the act of 26 August 1889. That made the Oystermouth railway into the line […]
Read MoreWales’ so called ‘highest slum’ – the old Snowdon summit building – was replaced in 2009 with a brand new design by Ray Hole, and called Hafod Eryri, which means roughly summer residence. It was built to better match the summit of Snowdon than the old building did and has stone facing and a sloping […]
Read MoreA goody bag of tweets covering many different types of vintage London Underground posters, many dating back to the very early days of the tube. This post was originally prepared in 2017, which explains why tweets only go up to that year. A new post has been done with those after 2017 and any that […]
Read MoreBritain’s answer to the Eiffel Tower and only five years younger, is the famous tower at Blackpool, for many decades the tallest building in the British Isles (besides the somewhat taller, short lived one at New Brighton.) The Blackpool Tower was inspired by the enormous success of the Eiffel Tower. Five million Accrington bricks, 2,500 […]
Read MoreThe unusual three foot six inch gauge railway as it was known in its final form began operation in 1949. The exact date for the introduction of the new trains, signalling and crossovers took place on 13th April 1949. The pier’s first railway began partial operation in 1889 thus this is the 130th anniversary for […]
Read MoreThis is the one with the Beadles! The Burlington Arcade has reached two centuries and its one of perhaps a couple of places in London that has continuously employed Beadles on its watch. The arcade is found on Piccadilly right next to the Royal Academy, just round the corner from Bond Street and The Ritz, […]
Read MoreEighty years ago the first RT bus entered service with London Transport. This was RT1, formerly ST1140, a temporary hybrid of a bus allocated to Hanwell garage on the 18c route. By April 1939 it had a new body and after evaluation was allocated to Putney (Chelverton Road) for Route 22. Over 7000 of these […]
Read MoreIn the first part of this we looked at runaway trains on the Bakerloo, Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly Lines. This second part looks at those lines which one would assume did not have runaway trains of any sort. These are the Victoria, Waterloo & City and Island Lines. The latter two are is included even […]
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