The plans were announced publicly at the Southern Railway AGM in 1930, when the shareholders were told that this first main line electrification scheme would use the same 660 volt dc system already in use, not least because it held the possibility of existing suburban stock being used on weekend excursion trains. Once again, the Southern planned a massive increase in frequency, more than doubling the existing service, and also promised to continue the practice of non-stop expresses between Brighton and London, including the use of Pullman carriages. Not only would electrification take place, but it would be accompanied by a further extension of colour light signalling, with the colour light signalling for the stretch of track between Coulsdon North and Brighton to be the longest in the country. As part of the scheme, at many stations, including Brighton, platforms would be lengthened, while Haywards Heath station would be rebuilt. A former railway rolling stock paint shop at Brighton would be converted to a twelve-road carriage cleaning and inspection shed, with a mechanical carriage washer in the sidings, and another carriage shed would be built at West Worthing. To justify the cost of electrification and the enhanced service, a 6 per cent increase in revenue would be required.

Work started in 1931 following on in true Southern fashion from the completion of the suburban network, and thirty-six out of the 162.5 track miles were completed by the end of the year. It was possible to operate an electric train service as far as Three Bridges and on the short piece of electrification between Redhill and Reigate, on the North Downs line to Guildford, on 17 July 1932, and although basically just hourly, this was a great help in training motormen and also provided experience for depot staff. Once again, the time taken to complete or commission work seems to have been incredibly short by modern standards. It took just fifteen minutes on a weekday morning, 6 October 1932, to commission the colour light signalling from Balcombe Tunnel Junction to Copyhold Junction. At Brighton, it took just five hours early on Sunday, 16 October, to commission a new signal cabin that replaced six manual boxes and this despite the work taking place during heavy rain.

Trial trains were running between London and Brighton from 2 November 1932, and the an official inauguration took place on 30 December 1932, when the Lord Mayor and sheriffs of London, the board of the Southern Railway and its senior officers, all travelled to West Worthing on one of the new standard sets that included a Pullman car, to meet the Mayor of Worthing, and then on back to Brighton to meet that town’s Mayor, before the entire party moved off to luncheon at the Royal Pavilion.

Provision of rolling stock was very lavish, and all of it was new. Basically, the new electric multiple units included three five carriage Pullman sets, the first electric multiple-unit Pullmans in the world, six carriage corridor sets with one Pullman car amongst its ordinary carriages, and a variant of this with additional first-class accommodation for services to London Bridge, used on the fast and semi-fast services. There were also four carriage compartment sets in which one carriage had a side corridor and lavatories, and these were used on the stopping trains. Off-peak, six trains an hour were provided, four from Victoria, including one for West Worthing, and two from London Bridge. The non-stop service to Brighton, advertised as ‘on the hour, in the hour, every hour’, showed little improvement over steam timings, although the working timetable was for fifty-eight minutes to ensure a punctual arrival. The other trains, advertised as ‘six trains per hour all day – comfort and frequency – you won’t need a timetable’, were an improvement, with ‘semi-fasts’ taking seventy-four minutes to Brighton and even stopping trains, just ninety-eight minutes, despite lingering at Redhill to detach a portion for Reigate. Contemporary advertisements show a man waiting for his girlfriend, saying that he would ‘wait for just six more trains’. Brighton was already part of the London commuter belt, so peak services had to be considerably augmented, with five fast trains between 17.00 and 18.30, four of them running non-stop and one making just three stops. The only stock that was not new was for the Brighton-West Worthing local service, using three-car suburban stock from the Western Section. These ran every fifteen minutes, with alternate trains missing the halts. There was one closure, with the halt at Bungalow Town between Brighton and Worthing being closed on the day that electric services started – but it was not to be closed for long as it was also convenient for Shoreham Airport (now known as Brighton Airport) and when it re-opened it was as Shoreham Airport Halt.

A new system of headcodes was introduced for the Brighton electrification, with even numbers used for trains running between Brighton and Victoria, and odd numbers for trains to and from London Bridge.

The first month of operations showed an immediate jump in traffic, with revenue up 5 per cent, and at holiday periods, traffic grew even more, with 78 per cent more tickets sold over the Easter Holidays, while on Easter Monday, passenger numbers rose by 127 per cent, so that on that day, between 18.00 and 22.00, no less than twenty-eight trains left Brighton for London, most of them fast.

This was success on a grand scale. The interesting point was, however, that travel by express motor coach between London and Brighton also increased.

Anxious to make the best use of the investment in the Brighton line, it was decided to extend electrification to Eastbourne and Hastings via the coastal route, rather than taking the direct route to Hastings through Sevenoaks and Tonbridge. This was because the Southern was pressing ahead with electrification at a time when the British economy was still shaky, and in addition to feeding off the Brighton electrification, the chosen route to Hastings also enabled Lewes, Eastbourne and Bexhill to be served. The direct route to Hastings would have been electrified had not the Second World War and nationalisation intervened, something borne out by both a later Southern Railway announcement on electrification and by the extension of electrification from Orpington to Sevenoaks.

The short section of track between Bickley Junction and St Mary Cray was opened to electric trains on 1 May 1934, while electric services from Sevenoaks via both Swanley Junction and Orpington started on 6 January 1935. Again, the standard twenty-minute frequency in peak hours, half-hourly off-peak was adopted, with trains from Charing Cross, Cannon Street and Holborn Viaduct. On eight coach trains, the three leading carriages only ran beyond Orpington or Swanley Junction. This was an investment in the future, calculating that rapid growth in residential areas would soon fill the then empty rural spaces beyond Orpington. As before, the Southern’s confidence was to prove to be justified, and the company helped with its advertising campaign with the slogan ‘Live in Kent and be Content’.

The Eastbourne and Hastings electrification also included the line from Haywards Heath to Horsted Keynes, and from Lewes to Seaford, and some additional work in the London area, including extra sidings at New Cross Gate. While incidental works were not numerous, a tunnel at the London end of Lewes station had to have one of its curves eased to allow modern rolling stock to use it and an overbridge at the station rebuilt so that the platforms could be lengthened, while platforms were also lengthened at Eastbourne. Contrary to popular opinion, lengthening trains is not an easy or inexpensive option. There was also some station rebuilding, including elevating the halt at Cooden to station status as Cooden Beach, while no less than ten stations had electric lighting installed for the first time. A new carriage shed with four roads was built at Ore. One unusual aspect of the preliminary work was the replacement of track re-laid with steel sleepers with wooden sleepers, essential for safety with electrification.

The formal opening took place on 4 July 1935, once again with the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of London accompanied by the usual hosts travelling to meet the mayors of Eastbourne, Bexhill and Hastings. Services actually started on 7 July. While the new electric multiple units ordered for the Eastbourne and Hastings electrification lacked the Pullman car, which was replaced by a first-class coach with a pantry, Brighton sets with single Pullman cars operated as far as Eastbourne with many of the newer sets relieving them on the Brighton line, suggesting that the original provision of Pullman carriages was far too generous even for the Brighton line. The best trains took just eighty minutes to reach Eastbourne, and this was cut to seventy-nine minutes by 1939, but post-nationalisation it stretched to eighty-one minutes and then eighty-five.

As with the original Brighton and West Worthing electrification, a much improved coastal service was introduced, with trains running every half hour from Brighton to Seaford and every half hour to Eastbourne, with both these services serving passengers travelling between Brighton and Lewes. However, all was not well, for despite the frequency of services being more than doubled, passengers east of Eastbourne took exception to trains running into and out of that station instead of dividing at Polegate, as had been the practice during steam working.

Meanwhile, there had been another development on the Brighton Line. The opening of what was billed as the ‘largest indoor swimming pool in the world’, at Brighton, on 29 June 1934, was taken as an opportunity to rename the Southern Belle as the Brighton Belle by the Mayor of Brighton when the train arrived at noon.

The Southern’s confidence in electrification was soon justified. At the AGM in February 1936, Mr R Holland-Martin, the chairman, was able to announce that revenue on the Sevenoaks electrification had risen by 41 per cent, almost 50 per cent more than that estimated to cover the costs of the work, while the Eastbourne and Hastings schemes had seen revenue rise by 16 per cent, more than twelve times the amount needed to cover the costs. It is clear from his statement that in addition to meeting interest on the capital costs, in many cases costs had also risen with electrification because of the enhanced train services provided, although electric trains needed a minimum crew of just two compared with the three of a steam train.

There was yet another new incentive for the railways to modernise. The previous November, the Government had agreed with the four main line railway companies to provide funds for major improvement schemes at an interest rate of 2.5 per cent, lower than that generally available on the money markets at the time, through a Railway Finance Corporation, that would have its initial capital of £30m guaranteed by the Treasury. The Southern, despite its being the smallest of the railway companies, decided to take a loan of £6 million to fund further electrification and improvements at a number of stations, as well as a new line from Motspur Park to Chessington South. The new electrification schemes were to include both routes to Portsmouth, the direct line via Guildford and the old LBSCR line through Horsham and Arundel, as well as the Thames Valley line between Staines and Reading, and in Kent, there would be additional electrification between Swanley Junction to Gillingham and Gravesend to Maidstone, as well as Sevenoaks to Hastings, but the last-mentioned was delayed by the Second World War and nationalisation, and indeed, only barely managed to electrify a short time before the end of the twentieth century, and then on a cheapened basis with stretches of single track.

New lines

Another project that had been delayed, although one suspects not so much by the First World War as by uncertainty and the sometimes slow expansion of the underground system, was a line between Wimbledon and Sutton. This had been authorised in 1910 for the Metropolitan District Railway, with Wimbledon as the southernmost of the three branches of the District. As originally conceived, the line would have been a continuation of the District. The project was revived in 1923 because the Southern was anxious about further extensions of the City & South London tube beyond Morden, and it was agreed that the tube would not be extended and that the Southern would build the new line. Work started in 1927, with opening as far as South Merton on 6 July 1929 and at Sutton on 5 January 1930, providing a convenient link between the London Section and Central Section. Six new stations were provided on the line, including one at St Helier where the London County Council was building a vast new housing estate for 10,000 people, and this was the only station to have a goods yard, doubtless for household coal traffic. Electrified from the outset, the line cost £1 million and required a high embankment and twenty-four bridges to carry it over the many roads in the area. The double track ended on the opposite side of Wimbledon from the District platforms, and instead of connecting with the underground system linked with a line originally worked jointly by the LSWR and LBSCR to Streatham Junction, and services operated over the line between Holborn Viaduct and West Croydon.

An ambitious scheme to create a new seaside resort and dormitory town at Alhallows on the North Kent coast, across the Thames Estuary from Southend-on-Sea caused the Southern to build a single track 1¾ mile branch line off its Gravesend-Port Victoria line. After special excursions, on 14 May 1932, the line opened on 16 May. It was steam-worked from the outset, with a regular service to and from Gravesend, but with a few peak period trains to and from London. It was not electrified when the third rail was extended east from Gravesend in 1939.

The spread of the London suburbs between the wars, with three bedroom semi-detached houses being built by speculative builders for as little as £200, was a driving force in the extension of the Southern’s network. One area enjoying such development was Chessington in Surrey, and the Southern decided to build a 4¼ mile branch off the line from Raynes Park to Epsom at Motspur Park. The new line was mainly either in cutting or on embankment as the countryside was undulating, while the heavy clay subsoil also required the extensive use of dry filling material, mainly taken from London slum clearance. The terminus, Chessington South, was in cutting and had a goods yard as well as a number of unusual features, such as having an island platform, possibly because the original plan was that the line should continue to Leatherhead. Electrified from the outset, the line opened as far as Tolworth on 29 May 1938, and to Chessington South on 28 May 1939. A major traffic generator for the line was Chessington Zoo, providing a useful two-way traffic flow on weekdays, and keeping the line busy on Sundays and holidays.

Some of the new lines reflected the way in which the railway had grown. At Ramsgate, the SER and LCDR had separate termini, and the SECR had other priorities when it took over management from its two cash-strapped predecessors in 1899. It was left to the Southern to rationalise the situation, building a new by-pass line 1½ miles long between St Lawrence on the former SER line and just south of Broadstairs on the former LCDR route, with two stations on the new line, one being a single new Ramsgate station and the other at Dumpton Park. The two termini were closed, as was the SER Ramsgate-Margate line, made redundant by the new line and the station at Margate Sands. The new line and its stations opened on 2 July 1926.

The SECR had achieved some connections between its former routes, and the Southern made further improvements with two short curves at Lewisham, opened on 7 July 1929. The first curve assisted the progress of goods trains for Hither Green marshalling yard from the LMS and LNER, while the second put Lewisham Junction station (later renamed Lewisham) on a loop off the main line between St Johns and Hither Green, allowing more suburban services to be routed through the station.

At the time of the Chessington branch being constructed, the Southern had already started work on the first of the two Portsmouth electrification schemes, the Portsmouth Direct via Guildford, and in this case known to the Southern as the ‘Portsmouth No1 Electrification Scheme’. The Guildford New Line had already been electrified, but could not be used by the new scheme which had of necessity to use the main line, requiring electrification from a point just south-west of Surbiton to Portsmouth Harbour, the longest main line electrification scheme at that time, a distance of more than sixty route miles. As with the Brighton and Eastbourne schemes, the Portsmouth No 1 would include a number of other schemes, including electrification from Woking through Aldershot to Alton, in itself hardly a minor work, and from Weybridge to Staines. All in all, this required a track mileage of 242 miles and was estimated to cost £3 million.

The Portsmouth Direct required very extensive incidental works, including rebuilding the station at Woking and extending its four through platforms to 820 ft each, but while the stations at Guildford and Haslemere also received platform lengthening, sadly neither was rebuilt and for many years the former was left with very low platform faces so that passengers almost had to climb up into the train. Havant was also rebuilt, but with the down platform served by a loop off the running line, and with a bay for the short Hayling Island branch, which was not to be electrified, suggesting that even the optimistic Southern had some doubts over the long term future for this short branch with its highly seasonal traffic. There was also platform lengthening at the high level station at Portsmouth & Southsea, as the town station was now called. The opportunity was taken to extend colour light signalling. The goods yard at Portsmouth was moved, providing a relief line between Portsmouth & Southsea and the depot at Fratton, while new carriage sheds were built at Wimbledon, Fratton and Farnham, with carriage washers at the first two.

In late 1936, trial trains were operating north of Woking and between Weybridge and Virginia Water, and on 3 January 1937, electric services were introduced between Staines and Weybridge, while electric trains were also operated from Waterloo to Guildford and Farnham but using steam timings, again to help train operating staff. The trial trains were able to operate into Portsmouth Harbour from 11 April, and a limited number of weekend departures were operated by electric trains from 29 May. Finally, the new electric train service from Waterloo to Portsmouth Harbour and Alton was introduced on 4 July 1937, with the first train having the coat of arms of Portsmouth painted on its front corridor connection. This, of course, was the most obvious difference between the new Portsmouth rolling stock and that prepared for the Brighton and Eastbourne lines, the corridor connections through the driving cabs of the electric multiple units meant that complete access could be had throughout the train, and this may also have been a factor in using four car rather than the less flexible six-car multiple units.

The citizens of Portsmouth must have been regarded as being less well-heeled than their Sussex counterparts, because a restaurant car was provided rather than the Pullmans of the lines to the Sussex Coast towns, probably because Portsmouth was not a commuter city at the time, as the steam expresses between Portsmouth and Waterloo had taken two hours, and there had been just four daily. In fact, Pullman services are only viable on lines that have few stops, so that there is time for a full meal to be served, and yet are short enough to allow just one sitting, otherwise a restaurant car service with two sittings is more likely to be viable.

The fast trains on the Portsmouth routes normally ran into the Harbour station, but the inaugural train terminated at Portsmouth & Southsea Low Level for the necessary civic niceties to be observed.

The Alton line stock, also used for the Portsmouth stopping trains, consisted of two car units without corridor connections and with only one carriage having a corridor.

The new service consisted of an hourly fast train stopping at Guildford, Haslemere and Portsmouth & Southsea, although later many trains stopped at either Havant or Woking, as did many peak period extras, with a half-hourly stopping train that ran fast to Surbiton and divided into Portsmouth & Southsea and Alton portions at Woking.

The service was accelerated, with the fast trains taking ninety-five minutes compared to the two hours of the steam trains, the difference in performance compared to the Brighton fasts being partly accounted for by the number of stops and also by the steep gradients on the line which were of little consequence to the electric trains. The Portsmouth direct had not enjoyed a particularly good service before electrification, but electrification meant that on a summer Saturday there were four fast trains every hour.

In retrospect, it seems strange that such a major city as Portsmouth should have suffered such a poor service for so long, as the largest city on the South Coast with a resort at Southsea, the extensive Royal Dockyard and many other naval facilities in and around the town, while it was the quickest route for passengers travelling to Gosport and even Fareham, using the steam launches across the harbour. It was the main port for travellers taking a ferry to the Isle of Wight, with those from Portsmouth to Ryde having the advantage that it was also the shortest and quickest route to the island’s main resorts at Ryde, Sandown, Shanklin and Ventnor. This history of neglect ended in July 1937, and was put to rest completely the following year with the ‘Portsmouth No 2 Electrification Scheme’ taking the old LBSCR line through Horsham, Arundel and Chichester.

The decision to electrify railways has not always been universally popular, despite the benefits which have led to the term ‘sparks effect’ being applied to the traffic growth generated by electrification, or even, in some cases, the mere announcement of plans to electrify a line. Landowners and farmers in West Sussex objected strongly to the Portsmouth No 2 Electrification Scheme, concerned about the dangers to persons and livestock. A deputation went to meet the Southern directors, and questions were even raised in the House of Commons. Suggestions were made that the third rail should be boxed in, which was quite impractical, or that the current should only be on when a train was about to pass, which was almost as bad, or that certain sections of line should have overhead conductor wires. The Southern’s management pointed out that adequate fencing was always used, and that the only people at risk were those who trespassed on the line.

Work on this scheme required 165 track miles of electrification and was far advanced when the Portsmouth Direct electrification was inaugurated. Incidental works were again considerable, with additional sidings electrified at New Cross Gate and carriage sheds erected at Streatham Hill with a carriage washer, and the Slade green workshops were extended, while a new carriage shed was built at Littlehampton. Almost inevitably, platform lengthening was necessary at Sutton, Dorking North, where the down bay became a loop, Pulborough, Arundel, Littlehampton and Chichester, Barnham and Bognor Regis, as well as to a lesser extent at many of the small halts along the coastal stretch of this route. There was a further extension of colour light signalling. One of the most costly items was the rebuilding of the bridge over the River Arun at Ford in Sussex, which had originally been built with lifting spans to allow ships to pass under, although this had only been used rarely, yet which also needed Parliamentary approval. The line had to be closed for the weekend of 23-25 April 1938 to enable the new spans to be lifted into position. An electricity sub-station at South Stoke, near Arundel, had to be built on 50ft concrete piles sunk into the Arun Marshes, so that it could remain above flood level.

Trial trains started to run in May 1938, and in June there were a number of specials run between London Bridge and Bognor Regis. The new services started on 3 July 1938, using further examples of the rolling stock built for the original Portsmouth electrification, plus a variation on these with a buffet car manned initially by the Pullman Car Company, and painted in a new lighter shade of green. In addition, the service was diverted from London Bridge to Victoria, with London Bridge being used only for rush hour extras.

The service was less frequent than on the Brighton and Portsmouth lines, with an hourly departure from Victoria with the front section for Portsmouth Harbour and the rear for Bognor Regis with the buffet car. Trains were initially divided at Barnham, but over the years, this varied, and sometimes the trains were divided at Arundel. Journey time to Portsmouth Harbour was 2 hour 12 minutes, and to Bognor, 1 hour 42 minutes. A new coastal electric service was introduced at the same time with two trains an hour between Brighton and Portsmouth and one an hour from Brighton to Littlehampton and Bognor, and this was amalgamated with the existing West Worthing service so that there were now six trains an hour running west from Brighton, with three of them terminating at West Worthing. In addition, the Victoria-West Worthing service was extended to Littlehampton. The extra services were slightly less than on previous electrification schemes, at around 95 per cent, but revenue still rose by 13 per cent in the first six months of operation.

A far smaller scheme was involved with the electrification of the line to Reading, since much of the route had already been covered by earlier schemes, so that just eighty-eight track miles were involved. In a sense, while the actual electrification to Reading itself was new, those from Ascot to Ash Vale and Aldershot and Guildford were infilling between existing schemes. Although station platforms were lengthened at a number of stations, the new length was just 540ft rather than the 820ft favoured on the main lines. Trial trains were operated from 30 October 1938, with a formal opening on 30 December, with the new services introduced on 1 January 1939. The new service was not strictly suburban, but the pattern of services reflected suburban practice, possibly in order to find paths through such congested spots as Richmond, with a peak period service of every twenty minutes and half-hourly off-peak. Trains usually ran fast between Waterloo and Staines, and divided at Ascot with the front section continuing to Reading and the rear to Guildford via Camberley and Aldershot, where the unit had to reverse. The overall journey time to Reading was seventy-five minutes, somewhat slower than on the GWR, but here the justification for electrification was the number of intermediate commuter or dormitory towns along the Thames Valley. The increase in frequencies was around 85 per cent.

The final electrification scheme, again an extension of existing schemes, before the outbreak of the Second World War was to Gillingham and Maidstone. This was slightly more extensive than the Thames Valley route at 117 track miles. Incidental works were extremely heavy, with many clearances having to be eased to allow 9ft-wide carriages, with platform extensions at Holborn Viaduct and additional roads electrified at Cannon Street, while a new station was needed at Swanley where the Gillingham and Maidstone East lines divided. A carriage shed was erected at Gillingham with a carriage washer. In some senses, this extension made far less sense than pressing ahead with the Sevenoaks to Hastings scheme would have done, since the route was still to carry many steam-hauled trains and the role of the electric trains was seen mainly as to collect traffic from intermediate stations. The line also carried a considerable volume, at least by Southern Railway standards, of goods trains, which were still worked by steam.

An oddity was the construction of platforms for a station at Lullingstone, where a site for a proposed new airport for London had been identified, but this was never built, probably due to the outbreak of the Second World War, and the platforms were later removed.

Trial running commenced in May 1939, and there was an official opening on 30 June, when the directors and senior officers of the Southern Railway travelled from Charing Cross to meet the mayors of Maidstone, Chatham and Gillingham. The new service was introduced on 2 July 1939. There was an hourly service from Victoria, stopping only at Bromley South and at Swanley, where the trains would divide, with the front portion running fast to Otford and then all stations to Maidstone East, while the rear portion continued all stations to Gillingham. Timings were sixty-five minutes to Maidstone East, sixty-three minutes to Gillingham. There were additional trains during peak periods to and from Holborn Viaduct. Now that the electric network had become so extensive, new opportunities for electric trains were opened up, and it was possible to operate special summer excursion trains from Gillingham to Portsmouth via London Bridge, Epsom, Effingham Junction and Guildford.

This marked the end of one of the most ambitious electrification schemes ever, and amongst the most extensive at the time, giving the Southern the world’s largest suburban electric railway network. The increase in frequencies that accompanied electrification is almost beyond belief. At Waterloo, for example, off-peak services had gone from just two main line departures an hour in the steam era to twenty-one, and during the peak from four to twenty-nine, while on Sundays they had gone from one to eighteen. On the busy Central Section at Victoria, off-peak departures had gone from one an hour hauled by steam to eighteen, and in the peak from two to twenty-eight.

The annual report and accounts for the Southern Railway for 1938 provided some interesting information on the running of a railway. During that year, 46.7 million miles had been worked by steam at a total cost of £3,079,000, while 37.47 million miles had been worked by electric at a total cost of £1,642,000. Wages for the steam mileage amounted to £1,668,000, but for the electric mileage were just £327,000. Electricity itself was expensive, costing £1,190,000 against £1,295,000 for coal and water, but obviously this was more than offset by greater labour productivity. The volume of stores used was also less for the electric trains, at £10,000 against £60,000 for steam, but this may have been affected by the fact that the electric trains were on average much newer. The high volume of shunting movements for steam trains has already been mentioned, but for the electric trains, only 123,000 miles out of more than 37 million were due to empty working or shunting.

The Southern had taken the few isolated electric services of the LSWR and LBSCR and created a network of 1,759 track miles, with 3,040 motor, trailer, restaurant and Pullman cars on its electric trains, with a total of 176,905 seats, against 3,618 steam passenger carriages with a total of 185,339 seats.

The ‘Jazz Service’

Although competition from the expanding London Underground and the electric trams meant that electrification was considered as early as 1903 for services from Liverpool Street, which had passed from the Great Eastern Railway to the London & North Eastern Railway on grouping, and parliamentary approval obtained, nothing was done. Even without the ‘sparks effect’, daily passenger numbers rose from around 200,000 in 1912 to 229,073 in 1921, but just fourteen trains were added to the timetable. The cost of electrification for the Liverpool Street suburban services was enormous, however, estimated in 1919 at £3.5 million (equivalent to more than £70 million today), with little prospect of achieving a worthwhile return. The alternative, a stop-gap measure, costing £80,000, was to change the layout of the approaches, the station arrangements and signalling, so that steam trains could continue to operate, but at the maximum efficiency.

The new service was officially described as the ‘Intensive Service’, but was named the ‘Jazz Service’ by one evening newspaper, partly because jazz music was the rage at then time and also because to speed loading, second-class carriages had a yellow line painted above the windows, and first-class had blue lines, while third remained unmarked. Sixteen-carriage trains of four-wheeled carriages operated with twenty-four per hour at peak periods on just one line between Liverpool Street and Bethnal Green, still using manual signalling and 0-6-0 tank locomotives that had first appeared in 1886. Trains spent just four minutes in a platform, while platforms 1 to 4 had their own engine docks and layouts that enabled locomotives to be shunted without going beyond platform limits. At peak periods, trains started every two minutes in sequence from platforms 4 to 1, followed by a four minute gap for arrivals.

A miners’ strike in 1921 meant that the intensive service had to be suspended to save coal, and again during the General Strike and prolonged miners’ lock-out of 1926. Nevertheless, the pressure began to ease not just because of the additional trains but because commuters were moving further out into the country. The LNER’s chief engineer, Sir Nigel Gresley, improved the standard of the elderly four-wheel rolling stock by producing five-car articulated units with a much improved ride. But, traffic continued to fall, with the daily number of passengers peaking at 244,000 in 1923, but dropping to 209,000 in 1938, and eventually to 171,000 in 1959. Despite much ribbon development along the line from Liverpool Street to Southend, the stimulus of electrification was not there and anyone who had decided to live in suburbia would have chosen a town on the Southern over the LNER. No doubt the fall in passenger numbers would have been even more dramatic had the extension eastwards of the Central Line been opened before the outbreak of the Second World War.