It was with mixed feelings that I returned to London after Christmas 1978, because although I loved the job I was doing, I loved Cornwall and missed my family too. All of them who’d been around at Christmas began what was to become the normal Curnow departure ritual of assembling at Penzance Station and waving until lost from sight. I enjoyed the journey until the industrial buildings and flats of London’s outer suburbs began to build up, and it took me about seven years to get the hankering for the smell of the sea out of my system! I managed quite happily, though, without the dawn chorus of gulls on the roof above my head!
Waiting for a New Malden train on Wimbledon Station each work day evening at the turn of the year 1977/78, this was a frequent sight to me, as units passed through non-stop. Class 416 5683 heads away from the capital with a commuter service. 7####BW01-WIM-E5683-PAS_D
In February I moved to Kings Cross, where in an Islington Council scheme, youth leaders like me – who would put something constructive into the community and be good tenants – could share large four bedroom “unlettable” properties. Ours was situated just off Pentonville Road (of ‘Monopoly’ fame!) which is the main road going east from King’s Cross to the City, and if I took that road and stopped at the turning off to my new home, I’d see a scene very similar to the well-known painting ‘From Pentonville Road looking West: Evening’, by John O’Connor – especially on some Summer evenings when there were striking sunsets.
The sunsets I remember were more intense than that depicted here. Below St Pancras is the silhouette of the Welsh Tabernacle Church, and opposite closest is St James – that became “the Clown’s Church”. The pinnacle of Kings Cross Station is visible between St James and St Pancras.
Normally, though, my route to the ‘Cross’ took me through back streets to the mouth of the Station, and down the taxi road on its east side. From the vantage point there opposite the depot, although usually fairly quickly passing through to ensure I wasn’t late for work, I could see a few movements and one or two locos at the head of northbound trains. I’d pass across the buffers noting what was there and down to the Underground, recording what I’d seen en route. If I was extra early, I’d visit the suburban platforms and St Pancras too.
Platform end spotters chat with the driver of 31411 – a “Finsbury Park” loco, ownership denoted by the white bodyside stripe – as it waits to remove the car carrier train from the arrival at Platform 6 on 22nd April 1981. These engines were in constant use on ECS duties. 810422A01-KGX-31411-E_C_S
Most locomotives arriving at the London termini in those days wore standard blue corporate livery, and unlike the locos I was used to in the Penzance area, they were virtually always in presentable condition. A notable regular exception to this was 31406, which rolled out of the tunnels at the throat of the station one day, heavily fuel-stained and (surprising to me) stayed in this unkempt condition for a very long time – the only one of the ECS fleet not in reasonable appearance. Empty coaching stock regular 31411 soon appeared ex-works, but without its traditional white bodyside stripe (which was added six weeks later); and beginning with this loco (but spreading also to class 47s) red-painted buffer beams and silver trimmings were increasingly to be seen on ex-works locos in the station area.
North of Kings Cross, in the new sidings built across the old ‘widened lines’ route from the station on its east, smartly attired 31270 and 31248 are parked between duties. Compared with my old haunts, the ER kept their locos in great external shape. 770809B01-KGX-31XXX-PARKD
Before long, the platforms below my viewing platform were being demolished, and trains no longer went through to the ‘widened lines’ towards Farringdon that way. On the main platforms 47/4s, 47/5s, 31/4s and 55s were the “order of the day”, but surprising to me, Deltics undertook lowly jobs beside top-link ones – like parcels, sleepers, goods and motorail. It wasn’t until March that I knew Class 40s were ‘regular’ occasional visitors, when I saw 40077 and soon after 40106, wearing green and yellow livery. Over a few years I encountered many different members of that class here, but oddly there were few repetitions, as I usually only saw each one once. Namers like Acquitania and Sylvania made more frequent appearances.
The second British Railways emblem – the “lion with dartboard” was still in use when my interest in railways began, but gradually superseded. 40106, a ‘celebrity’ loco, which I saw many times at Kings Cross, was repainted green with it in the 1980s. 830930A01-UNK-40106-LOGOS
The Eric Curnow Collection 