Avoiding Steep Hills where possible

A recent Twitter post by Paul Whitewick about an early road atlas reminded me that on my map shelf (What? Don't you have one?) are some AA "prepared routes" made for my parents in the early 1960s.

AA Prepared Route Maps

While not as old as the one Paul's looking at they do provide a reminder of road travel in a time before sat-nav, largely before motorways, and when the performance of cars required careful route planning to help ensure a trouble-free journey.

The earliest from 1960 goes from Kingston-upon-Thames to Sidmouth in Devon, a journey of 158¼ miles according to the front cover, Google maps suggests 154 miles today. A year later they were off to another favourite holiday haunt, Hayle in Cornwall - probably to join Mum's parents who rarely went elsewhere - a much longer 267¼ miles. Although the AA route starts at Harrow & Wealdstone Station and they lived at Heston so you can knock about 7 miles off that.

This route has on the cover the endorsement "(Avoiding Steep Hills where possible)". This isn't some thing that we often need to think about now with most modern cars having ample power to tackle any hill in this country excepting the few exceptional steep mountain passes.

It was a factor in 1961 however, particularly if your "sports car" only had a 328cc motorcycle engine (and only three wheels). Failure to plan ahead might result in your passenger having to get out and carry the suitcases!

Having said which the photo here was taken in Wales where nothing is flat except sometimes the beer.
The prepared route maps are a little odd to look at at first.

 The list of instructions on the left of the page run from top to bottom.

The strip map on the right of the page runs from bottom to top so that you are looking at the map in the direction of travel, which is logical once you've thought about it but a little confusing at first.

A North-pointing arrow is included in the map for orientation purposes and at the top of the page a brief description of the terrain through which you;ll be travelling is given.

The return trip is printed on the reverse of the pages so when you want to come home you simply open the booklet at the back cover and follow the instructions and maps as you did on the outward trip.

For 1963 the destination was Skegness, the Berkeley had been replaced by a Ford Popular 100E and the passenger count was increased by one. For 1965 it was Skeggy again though by then an Austin A35 Countryman (like Wallace and Gromit's van but with side windows) had replaced the Ford. Steep hills were less of a concern and something else had appeared on the maps.

Section Mill Hill to Baldock

North of Hatfield was  Welwyn "The Clock" Motorway Terminal. The southern end of the A1(M) motorway section between Welwyn and Stevenage had opened in 1962. (This is now Junctions 6 to 8.)

If you didn't fancy driving on this new-fangled invention a footnote gave an alternative:

"If all purpose roads are preferred take 3rd exit B197 & proceed via Knebworth, Broadwater & Stevenage where bear rt to rejoin old road at Graveley".

I like the distinction between Motorways and "all purpose roads". If you had been letting rip on the new motorway, which you might well have been doing given that until just before Christmas 1965 there was no speed limit, you are cautioned in the route notes to "watch your speed" on rejoining the A1 at Graveley. Even if the 70mph limit had been in force I'm not sure either of Dad's cars could have broken it though I'm sure he'd have tried to find out 😀



Images: Route to Hayle and route to Sidmouth:

Scans of the outward trips to Hayle and to Sidmouth, 1960 and 1961.

If you wanted to try and follow the 1961 route to Hayle and back avoiding steep hills where possible (and once the COVID-19 lockdown has been lifted obviously) there's a PDF of the document here although I rather think 59 years of changes in the road system might turn that into a bigger challenge than the original trip regardless of how many cc your car's engine has 😃

Hidden London - Moorgate Station

4th March 2020

In a previous era when we were able to leave home without the risk of catching the plague, having our shopping examined by the police, or being abused by self-appointed guardians of society on Twitter, I paid a visit to the disused parts of Moorgate Underground station by means of a Hidden London Tour by the London Transport Museum. Was it really only a month ago? For anyone old enough to remember 1975 Moorgate is synonymous with one terrible thing but there's more to the station than that.

Moorgate Station - Metropolitan Line

 Moorgate station in the City of London opened in 1865 as the terminus of the first extension of the Metropolitan Railway, intended to bring the line closer to the financial heart of the city. A year later extra platforms were added for the Metropolitan Widened Lines, a.k.a City Widened Lines, which gave more capacity in peak times. In 1868 these lines were extended to King's Cross and used by the Great Northern, London Chatham & Dover, and Midland Railways for services to that station. The Metropolitan Railway altered their terminal platforms in 1875 when they extended the line to Liverpool Street and Moorgate became a through station.

 

Moorgate Station - Northern Line

 Moving forward 25 years a second Moorgate Station was built when the City & South London Railway (now part of the Northern Line) arrived in 1900. This tube station on the other side of the road also incorporated a fancy 6 storey office building which became the company headquarters. Four lifts took passengers to the platforms deep below the ticket hall. In 1904 the Great Northern & City Railway joined the C&SLR at Moorgate, bringing main line trains through larger than normal tube tunnels from Finsbury Park direct to the city, relieving congestion at King's Cross. This meant there were two separate Moorgate stations (actually both called Moorgate Street at the time) and passengers wishing to change lines had to come up to the surface and cross the road. 

 

Old signage in subway tunnel

 Since this was a pain in the neck the three railway companies built a passenger subway to link the stations. This opened in 1912 and contained ticket offices for the three underground lines and mainline trains running over the City Widened Lines.

These subway tunnels form the first part of the Hidden London tour, (Were you wondering when I'd get to that?) where the guides explained much of the above history in the now very grubby tunnels after descending the spiral staircase - no lifts any more. As always the presentation given was excellent, pitched at the right level for "tube nerds" and "normal" visitors both.

 

Greathead Shield

The next section of the tour took us to Moorgate's "unique selling point" as far as station tours go. The Great Northern & City had always intended to extend it's line to Lothbury, further into the heart of the city and so a Greathead Shield was installed at the southern end of the tunnel ready to excavate the new line southwards. This required supporting money from the Great Northern Railway but they pulled out of the project and the tunnel went no further. The GN&C, heavily reliant on peak hour traffic was bought by the Metropolitan Railway in 1913. The Greathead Shield however was left in place and over 100 years later it's still there. After  being strongly warned against taking photos of the trains - the shield is located just beyond the live platform, ducking through a narrow service tunnel, and waiting until the platform is empty a raised walkway takes us to something you really won't see anywhere else on the network. (Though if you've walked through the pedestrian tunnel between the DLR and Waterloo & City at Bank station you'll have passed through the remains of a Greathead shield left in place after the line was completed and rediscovered when the DLR was built, look for the red metal ring partly embedded in the tunnel walls.)

 

Moorgate "catacombs"

During the Blitz the Metropolitan station at Moorgate was very heavily damaged being a subsurface station with open platforms not a deep tube. (So this is one Hidden London station tour where "used as an air raid shelter" isn't a theme.) Temporary repairs were carried out post-war pending the area's redevelopment. That redevelopment was part of the Barbican and entailed re-aligning the Metropolitan tracks between Barbican station and Moorgate. Between 1962 & 1967 a steel and concrete raft was built over the Metropolitan platforms and Moorgate Underground station actually became an underground station. Three seven storey office blocks were then built above. As part of the Thameslink project the City Widened Lines platforms were closed in 2009. Sometimes humorously referred to as the Moorgate Catacombs these are intended to be re-used as storage sidings for the Hammersmith & City and Circle line trains in 2020. The tour takes us through the working platforms and into the construction site to the end of the Widened Lines platforms where on the day I went we were lucky that the builders had left the lights on, affording a good view down the lines under the Barbican.

 

Metropolitan Railway "Diamond & Bar"

Moorgate station will be joined to Liverpool Street by the platforms of the new Crossrail* station - whenever that eventually opens, adding another chapter to the history and complexity of a station which I hitherto had rarely thought about except in connection with that terrible accident on 28th February 1975 when a train from Drayton Park failed to stop at the terminal platform, hitting the tunnel end wall at about 35mph and resulting in the deaths of 43 people. This was the Underground's worst peacetime accident but was the catalyst for the introduction of the automatic safety system, sometimes called the Moorgate System, that will stop a train entering a station too fast and that has been adopted on railways across the world.

(*Cross/Eliz/Purple/rail/train/Line 😉 )