23 April 2025 History The of the North London Line
Presenter Adrian Wright came to us from Chelmsford giving a very comprehensive talk on the North London Railway, not to be confused with the North London Line which is a marketing term. The NLR Society have published several good books on the line.
This was a short railway of only 15 miles built initially for goods traffic from West India Docks, extending piecemeal eventually to Chalk Farm opened from 1850 to 1851 with later extensions westwards in 1872 and a new branch from Dalston to Broad Street opening in 1865 to take pressure off Fenchurch Street, the latter costing £1.3m. The line was famous for the short distances between stations and for the large number of connecting lines to main lines heading north, north east and north west.
At one time the railway had 9 locos available for every route mile of railway! Average travelling time between stations was 3 minutes, and nowadays there are 8 trains per hour. Traffic was at its busiest on the Broad Street Branch with 80,000 people carried daily and it was the first railway to introduce automatic ticket machines in 1894. Prior to Bow works being opened, first for construction of carriages and wagons in 1853 then construction of their own locos, in 1863, all earlier locos were supplied by contractors. The last loco of 161 was built in 1906 and afterwards they just did overhauls until the works closed in 1960.
Apart from one 0-4-2 CT all locos were either 4-4-0Ts or 0-6-0Ts, the crane tank being the oldest loco inherited by BR in 1948. Only one 0-6-0T is preserved, being 58850 on the Bluebell Railway. Their early 4-wheel coaches had buffers at one end and a cup connection at the other end to take up less platform space. Very little goods traffic was generated at the stations along the line, most having no goods sidings at all, leaving the large amount of goods traffic mainly generated from the docks. Beeching tried to close it as another poor example of his lack of foresight, but it was opposed and saved by the efforts of local councils.
