For the passenger, used to steadily improving services on the main lines, and some of the branch lines as well, the outbreak of the Second World War came as a nasty shock. Together with the blackout, cuts in railway services were amongst the earliest indications that life had changed for the worse. In a period when car ownership was the exception rather than the rule, petrol rationing affected relatively few, and food rationing was some months away. The four days on the eve of war breaking out that saw the evacuation trains run and during which off-peak services were cut to the minimum were bad enough, but although normal services were restored afterwards, this was not for long.
Many differences arose in wartime railway operation when comparing the two world wars. The most obvious, especially when viewed in retrospect, were the almost complete lack of amenities such as sleeping cars and restaurant cars on Second World War trains, while these facilities were reduced but never abandoned completely during the First World War. First-class disappeared from London suburban journeys during the Second World War, but did not during the earlier conflict.
Perhaps more important, there was another difference between the two conflicts that did not appear in the timetables, but became apparent as the war dragged on. During the First World War, railway travel had been the safest mode of transport; during the Second World War, it became the most dangerous as the men, fuel and materials being moved by the railways made them prime targets. It was not necessary either for a railway line to be bombed, as an enterprising fighter pilot could be just as effective in putting a steam locomotive out of service as a bomber crew, with the difference that the former was in and out quickly, away before anti-aircraft gunners could get into their stride. It wasn’t necessary to blow the wheels off a steam locomotive or put it into the middle of a large crater as a boiler riddled with machine gun bullets, or even better, blasted apart by cannon shell, was of no use and would take some considerable time to repair, requiring highly skilled manpower and scarce raw materials, including non-ferrous metals. In some cases, as with a branch line train near Guildford, the fighter pilot strafed the carriages, killing and wounding passengers.
Keeping the railway running was to be another problem, but one common to both wars. Men who were experienced and highly skilled could expect to be mobilised if they were reservists or called up, despite much railway work being a reserved occupation, or might already have volunteered. Once again there was the prospect of locomotives and other rolling stock being requisitioned by the military, often for use abroad. Worse still, the railway workshops were forced to devote much of their capacity to war production, including even guns, tanks and landing craft, rather than keeping the railway running. The result was that, increasingly, the railways began to assume a battered, war-weary and unappealing appearance. Yet, traffic continued to grow, much of it military. The civilian population also made increasing demands on the railways, with many more people in work and often working well away from home, even if everything was done to discourage unnecessary travel, and, understandably, people still tried to take holidays. The virtual loss of the North Sea for the movement of materials, and especially coal, meant that this traffic had to be transferred to the already overstretched railways.
Heavy use of the railways in wartime was understandable, neglect wasn’t. The Germans realised, until everything began to fall apart in 1944, that good railway maintenance was a vital part of the war effort. When they realised that the Bielefeld viaduct was a high priority British war target, and only survived because of the difficulty of hitting it, they built a camouflaged double-track diversionary route which ran down and up into the valley from both sides. By the time a bomb had been developed that didn’t need to hit the viaduct, but instead undermined it and brought it toppling down, the diversionary route was well established and railway traffic was able to continue as before.
Reductions and restrictions
Wartime meant that the railways had to economise in the provision of their services, saving fuel and making locomotive power and rolling stock available for the many specials required by the armed forces. The cuts went far beyond the railways and affected ferry services, which were very badly disrupted as ships were taken over by the Ministry of Transport, with many needed to help move the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to France and then to keep it supplied. Others took on roles such as hospital ships or even minesweeping.
There had been much rehearsal of wartime operating conditions on the railways over the previous year or so. Railwaymen had practised working in black out conditions, which meant that no lights could be shown externally, with all windows screened, while station platforms could only be lit by blue lights or, as there were still many lit by gas, specially shaded gas lamps, and drivers and motormen had to pull up their trains beside oil lamps placed on the platform as markers. Steam locomotives had canvas draped between the engine cab and tender to hide the light of their fires, while the side windows that had appeared on the more modern locomotives were blanked out.
Despite the prospect of war, the railway unions were threatening strike action in August 1939. Negotiations between the companies and the unions had broken down when the government intervened. ‘We may need you to get the children away to safety’, warned Ernest Brown, Minister of Labour, playing his only trump card.
For the traveller, amongst the changes was that the blackout acted as a spur to extending loudspeaker announcements to stations, and while initially station name signs were no longer lit, those under station canopies were allowed to be illuminated later provided that they were swung round at right angles to the platform. Those stations that had had their names painted on the canopies to help airmen with their navigation had them blanked out. A final safety measure at stations was the removal of glass from roofs and canopies, essential since even a small bomb could create so many shards of broken glass as to be an effective anti-personnel weapon.
Initially, excursion and cheap day tickets were withdrawn, but day tickets were reintroduced on 9 October 1939, although with tighter conditions that meant that they were not available before 10.00 and could not be used on trains departing from London between 16.00 and 19.00 Monday to Friday.
After the evacuation was over, services returned to normal only briefly, for on 11 September, government-inspired cuts were imposed, inflicting hardship on passengers as normal commuter traffic remained virtually at pre-war levels. Some large companies had dispersed, especially those with strategic importance such as the railways themselves and the shipping lines, which moved their head offices, but it was not possible for everyone to do so. The usual twenty minute suburban frequencies were cut to half-hourly, while off-peak and Sunday services became hourly. Some suburban services were cancelled completely. Not only did this lead to overcrowding with many passengers left behind, it also meant that station dwell times were extended as passengers struggled to alight from trains or climb aboard. Journey times were further extended with a national railway speed limit of 45 mph. After the uproar that followed, normal services were reinstated on weekdays from 18 September.
Nevertheless, this was simply a temporary reinstatement and indicated that the blanket reductions of 11 September had prepared too hastily. Wartime meant that services had to be reduced. Reductions in passenger services followed on 25 September for both the Great Western and London Midland Scottish, with the London & North Eastern following on 2 October, and the Southern Railway, with its extensive commuter network, on 16 October, but this time with better allowances for peak period travel. Off-peak, most main line services lost their hourly trains to be replaced by a service every two hours, often on extended timings as trains called at more stations. Off-peak suburban services were hourly. On some lines services were curtailed late in the evening, but others had special late services after midnight for the benefit of shift workers. The national maximum speed limit was increased to 60 mph during October.
Catering arrangements were reduced. Pullman and buffet cars were withdrawn and restaurant car service ceased on most routes. These cutbacks must have once again aroused some public reaction and been regarded as too severe, for on 1 January 1940, Pullman cars reappeared as did pantry cars and more buffet cars.
Some idea of the impact of the cuts and extended journey times can be gathered from a comparison between October 1938 and the same month a year later. On the LNER, the Norwich service was cut from eighteen trains daily to twelve, and the 115 miles were covered in 206 minutes compared with a pre-war best of 130 minutes and an average of 170 minutes. On the Southern, the service to Southampton was cut from twenty-eight to twenty trains daily and the timings for the seventy-nine miles was stretched from a pre-war best of eighty-five minutes and a 1938 average of 110 minutes to 123 minutes. Portsmouth, doubtless because of the Royal Navy, saw its services cut slightly from forty-five to forty daily, while the journey took an average of 118 minutes in 1939 compared to a 1938 best of ninety minutes and an average of ninety-eight minutes. The needs of the armed services were paramount and commuter traffic on its own wasn’t enough to save a service, for the Brighton line suffered one of the heaviest reductions in the number of trains, more than halved from 100 trains daily to forty-six.
There were many reasons for the extended journey times, of which the maximum speed limits were just one. Wartime shortages of materials and the disruption of the normal renewals and maintenance programme would take its toll, with many ‘temporary’ speed limits, while war damage became extensive, especially in the London area and along the southern and eastern coasts. Trains had extra stops and extra carriages. Long distance trains from some London termini had to be divided in two to fit the platforms, with the first half pulled out of the station, and then backed on to the second half to be coupled, before the journey could start. At intermediate stations, such over-long trains had to make two stops so that passengers could board and alight.
The railways were also beginning to suffer from inroads made into their rolling stock with locomotives requisitioned by the military and carriages converted for use on ambulance trains, some of them for the military while others were converted for the evacuation of civilian casualties in anticipation of widespread disruption by heavy bombing, although the latter were never needed.
Other measures were also necessary. Locomotives were modified, with a number fitted with condensing gear to save water and pipes for obtaining water from streams, anticipating widespread disruption to water supplies following bombing.
Limiting a railway service has many disadvantages, especially during bad weather when the frequent passage of trains and movement of signals and points can help to stop icing. Late December 1939 and all of January 1940, saw exceptionally severe weather which froze the conductor rails on the electrified lines and, having started on a Sunday when only a limited service was operating, froze many trains in the sidings. This was to be a problem throughout the war years which coincided with a period of exceptionally severe winters.
Reduced facilities
In addition to trimming services, as the war progressed, other restrictions were applied. On 6 October 1941, under the directions of the Minister of War Transport, all London suburban trains became third-class only, with the definition being that this applied to any train starting and ending its journey within the London Passenger Transport Board’s area. The reasons for the move were practical, the idea being not only to make the best use of all accommodation on the reduced number of trains, but also to recognise the difficulty in finding the right class of accommodation in a hurry during the blackout. To drive the point home, carpets were removed from first-class compartments and the first-class indications on the compartment doors painted out, while timetables and departure indicators described trains as ‘Third Class Only’. Blackout or not, regular travellers seemed to be able to find their way to the most comfortable part of the train and gravitated towards the superior legroom and elbow room, and plusher upholstery, of the former first-class compartments, so that these soon became shabby with intensive use.
While mainline trains retained first-class accommodation, it was important to discourage unnecessary travel. The lack of sporting events and the fact that the coastal resorts had their beaches wrapped in barbed wire, meant that the normal leisure pursuits were not available. Again on the instructions of the Minister of War Transport, on 5 October 1942, off-peak cheap returns were scrapped, leaving seasons as the only ‘cheap’, or discounted, tickets.
A means of reducing fuel consumption was to reduce heating, so the pre-war system of switching on full heat on mainline trains between October and April when the temperature fell below 48 degrees F at any one of a number of monitoring points, and half-heat when the temperature fell below 55 degrees F, had been reduced to having full heat when the temperature fell below 45 degrees F and half-heat when it fell below 50 degrees between November and March.
The ‘Blitz’ created new wartime traffic. At Chiselhurst in Kent, the caves provided a natural air raid shelter, and many people would ‘commute’ by train to Chislehurst each evening to seek shelter in the caves. This was just one example, but Paddington was amongst those termini seeing ‘reverse commuting’ in wartime, first at the height of the Blitz and then during the period of V1 and V2 rocket attacks.
Shortages of skilled staff in the workshops and the conversion of many of these to war production, as well as shortages of materials, meant that the intervals between routine overhauls were extended. Economy measures on the Great Western were typical and included a new colour scheme for passenger carriages of reddish-brown with a bronze waistline and black roof, while locomotives were painted plain green without any lining out on being sent for overhaul or repair. The colour of the locomotives soon became immaterial as standards of cleanliness dropped.
While Britain’s air raid warning system was excellent, it was always difficult to be precise about the intended target or about the number of aircraft. Inevitably, there would be areas close to a target that were included in the ‘alert’, and yet attracted little attention. In fact, a solitary aircraft could cause considerable inconvenience and loss of working time by prolonging an alert. There were those, of course, who became blasé about air raids, but railways were obviously high priority targets, so a relaxed attitude was asking for trouble.
Fortunately, it was soon found that many members of the ARP movement were in fact keen aircraft enthusiasts with equally keen eyesight, and who could be counted on to tell whether an aircraft was friendly or not. It was found that by placing such people in positions with a good field of vision, such as on top of a high roof, a good assessment of the threat could be made and the decision on whether or not to continue working or to seek shelter followed.
The railway in wartime
The changes in working or operational practices do not give a real impression of what it must have been like on the railways in the blackout, or of the problems of individual railwaymen, and women, having to report for work after a broken night’s sleep in a crowded air raid shelter, or of coming off a night shift in the morning to find that their home no longer existed, and perhaps face the loss of family members and neighbours as well. In fact, the strain of losing his house in an air raid is believed to have been a factor in the serious accident on the GWR at Norton Fitzwarren when the driver mistakenly followed the signal for an adjoining line.
The efficient working of a railway required skill and experience, but under wartime conditions, most adults had to be available for either the armed forces or prepared to be directed to essential war work, and as skilled men volunteered or were conscripted into the armed forces, many of their places were taken by women. None of the war’s belligerent nations mobilised the population as completely as the United Kingdom.
Despite many railway jobs being classified as ‘reserved occupations’, the railways saw a growing number of their personnel leaving to join the armed forces for the duration of the war. Before the war ended, the number of GWR personnel in the armed forces would rise to around 16,000. In the case of the Southern Railway, some 9,000 men were replaced by 8,000 women, who even undertook some of the heavier jobs, including those of porters. At first, the new recruits did not have uniforms, but this was quickly remedied. Uniforms were important on a railway not only because much of the work was dirty, but also for security and so that passengers knew who to turn to for advice and help.
Despite the cut in the number of trains, passenger traffic was 3 per cent higher in December 1939 than a year earlier.
Air raids often caught trains in exposed positions and it was decided that to keep moving was safer than stopping. At first, the instruction was given on all railways that on an air raid warning being given, passenger trains were to stop and passengers allowed to alight and seek shelter if they wished, after which the train would continue at a maximum speed of just 15 mph. As the full impact of the blitz took effect and air raids became so frequent, this slowed traffic down to an unacceptable extent, and the instruction was revised with trains allowed to proceed at 25 mph from early November 1940. The danger of a derailment to a train running onto bomb damaged track at high speed during an air raid was obvious, but away from the most heavily blitzed areas, many drivers took a chance and often ignored the speed limit, guessing that the risk of bomb damage was relatively light.
For the passengers, many journeys had an air of uncertainty. They would set out on their usual train or the one that had replaced it in the wartime timetable, but depending on the previous night’s air raids, punctual arrival at their destination was something of a gamble. When Waterloo was closed, or the line between Waterloo and Clapham Junction was closed, passengers had to alight at Clapham Junction and queue for a bus. The replacement bus service was sparse and barely able to cope with shortages of fuel and vehicles, while busmen had also been called up. Nor could one assume that the roads were open, and in many cases diversions had to be made to avoid burning buildings or the journey was slowed by fire hoses in the road.
Even when all was well, the blackout meant that reading was difficult, although limited light was permitted after an initial period once all windows were blacked out, with just small gaps to allow passengers to see if they had arrived at their destination.
Shortages of skilled staff in the workshops and the conversion of many of these to war production, as well as shortages of materials, meant that the intervals between routine overhauls were extended. The railway companies were also severely restricted in the type of steam locomotive that they could build, but new building was allowed both to replace locomotives lost to enemy action and also to ensure that sufficient power was available for the many military specials. In theory, just two standard types were allowed, but before this happened, on the Southern Railway, where there was a dire shortage of large locomotives, the wily chief mechanical engineer, Oliver Bulleid, introduced his famous ‘air-smoothed’, as opposed to streamlined, Pacifics, or so-called ‘spam cans’, because of their shape, by convincing the authorities that these were really mixed traffic locomotives. He compensated by also introducing a utility 0-6-0 design of unsurpassed ugliness that lacked anything that could be eliminated to save on scarce materials.
State control
Shortly before the outbreak of war the Government moved to take control of the railways. One difference with the situation on the outbreak of the First World War was that instead of the President of the Board of Trade, the Railway Executive Committee came under the control of the Minister of Transport, later, in 1940, to become the Minister of War Transport. The then Minister, Captain Euan Wallace, actually seized control of the railways on 1 September 1939, two days before the outbreak of war, using powers granted under the Defence Regulations Act 1939, with the Emergency (Railway Control) Order.
Once again the minister operated through a Railway Executive Committee, which had been formed the previous September, which included the general managers of the four main line railways and of London Transport. The London termini were obvious targets, so the railways had already evacuated many of their administrative personnel to the outskirts and to the provinces. The Railway Executive Committee itself found safety in an abandoned underground station on the Piccadilly Line at Down Street, between Green Park and Hyde Park Corner stations, which provided office accommodation and dormitories.
The Railway Executive Committee was chaired by Sir Ralph Wedgwood who was chief general manager of the London & North Eastern Railway, and when he retired early in 1939, he was asked to remain as chairman of the REC. His deputy as chairman was Sir James Milne of the Great Western Railway, while Wedgwood’s successor at the LNER also became a member of the REC. The other members were Sir William Wood of the London Midland & Scottish Railway and Gilbert Szlumper of the Southern Railway, with Frank Pick of the London Passenger Transport Board. The REC secretary was G. Cole Deacon from the Railway Companies Association. Later, when Szlumper was transferred to the War Office as Director-General of Transportation (sic), his place both as general manager at Waterloo and on the REC was taken by Eustace Missenden.
The REC worked through a series of section sub-committees which were, for the most part, based on the structure of the Railway Clearing House with its sub-divisions. There were a few additional sub-committees, however, including one set up to prepare for sabotage. In all, there were sixteen sub-committees, and pulling together their work must have been a challenge. As it happened, sabotage was not a major problem and was more likely to come from members of the Irish Republican Army than from any German agents.
Compensation and control
Meanwhile, the shareholders were still waiting to learn what compensation they would receive for what effectively amounted to the requisition of their property. The haste to grab control of the railways was in contrast to the tardiness in finalising the arrangements. In 1939, using the new Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939, the Government was dragging its feet. Encouraged by the delay in reaching agreement, the Labour MP for Bristol South asked the Minister for Transport, on 22 November, whether he would consider nationalising the railways. The Minister rejected this at the time, assuring the House that he was confident that agreement would be reached shortly, and also reminding them that unified control had already been achieved through the Railway Executive Committee. Another month passed, and the question of nationalisation was becoming more serious, as rumours that could only have been officially inspired that nationalisation was being considered began to circulate, obviously intended to apply pressure to the railway companies.
‘It cannot be for the good of the community that such a monopoly as a main line should be controlled by any group of individuals, however public spirited’, ran one statement on the matter, completely ignoring the fact that the railways were no longer controlled by the companies, but instead by the REC. Many railway journalists saw opportunism in these threats, arguing that those in favour of nationalisation would find their arguments less convincing in a period when policy could be considered at leisure. Even so, it was not until 7 February 1940 that the Minister was able to give the House of Commons the news that agreement had been reached.
State control made the railways contractors to the Government, with all revenue passing to the government which then allocated shares from a pool, initially set at a guaranteed £40 million (around £2,152 million today). The Southern share of the pool was fixed at 16 per cent, the same as for the GWR while the LPTB received 11 per cent, the LMS 34 per cent and the LNER 23 per cent. These percentages were based on the average net revenues for the companies and LPTB in the three years 1935-37, which the government took as each company’s standard revenue. Once the guaranteed £40 million had been paid, any balance was allocated to the five train operators on the same percentage terms up to a maximum of £3.5 million. After this, if there was a further balance, the revenue over £43.5 million would be divided equally between the government and the pool until the pool total reached £56 million. At this stage, if the revenue share allocated to any of the companies then exceeded its standard revenue, the excess would be shared out proportionately among the other companies.
Costs of maintenance and renewals had to be standardised, while the cost of restoring war damage would be met up to a total of £10 million in a full year. Privately-owned wagons were also requisitioned by the Ministry of War Transport, and the individual companies had to meet the costs and revenue attributed to the wagon owners out of their share of the revenue pool.
This was a ‘take it or leave it’ type of agreement, with the government leaking threats of nationalisation if the companies failed to agree, although these were officially denied. While the years in question had been bad ones for the British economy, the final year 1938, had been even worse and the railways had had great difficulty in getting the government to understand this. The railway companies had never achieved the revenues anticipated by the Railways Act 1921. All that can be said for the deal was that the government was anxious to avoid inflationary pay claims from railway employees, but the inescapable fact was that the railways were having their revenues more or less fixed while costs were bound to rise as they struggled to meet the increased demands that wartime would place upon them. The upper limit on the costs of war damage was either political expediency to keep the unions quiet and retain the Labour Party in the wartime coalition government, or simple naivety since normal insurance measures were not available in wartime.
In addition to taking over the ‘Big Four’ and London Transport, the Railway Control Order also applied to joint committees of any two or more of these railways, and to other lines, including the East Kent and the Kent & East Sussex. The government had earlier warned the railways that as many as 800 locomotives might be required for service overseas, but as the war did not follow the pattern of 1914-18, not all were required.
While the railways were expected to give up manpower and equipment for the armed forces, the impact was less than during the First World War in which 184,475 men were conscripted. Some 110,000 men had to be given up for national service, with more than 100,000 actually conscripted into the armed forces, while 298 steam locomotives and forty-five of the still rare diesel locomotives, all of them shunting engines, were also taken for service overseas. These figures were in addition to the use of railway workshops for war work, which naturally moved a further substantial number of personnel away from railway work.
The financial basis of state control of the railways in wartime had been imposed. However, it was soon clear that the original scheme had many deficiencies, and as early as December 1940, a short Act of Parliament allowed those railways under the control of the Minister of Transport to make agreements with the Minister to cover financial matters arising from the period of control. The railway companies were given the freedom to enter into arrangements provided that the Minister laid an order.
Part of the problem was that the government never really understood, or perhaps even cared about, the problems encountered by the pre-war railways, let alone the difficulties facing them in this new conflict.
As usual, the Treasury was unsympathetic and unrealistic. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood, decided that war damage would not be treated as an element within working expenses, which could be offset against the guaranteed sums paid by the government, but instead were to be charged to the capital account, transferring these uninsurable costs from the government to the railways. On 7 April 1941, in his budget speech, the Chancellor announced that its policy was to combat inflation and restrict price increases as far as possible, and that included railway fares and rates for goods traffic. This was important news but it took more than a week for the minister, Moore-Brabazon, to write to Lord Stamp of the LMS, as chairman of the Railway Companies Association, but Stamp was killed that night, 16 April, in an air raid.
Moore-Brabazon moved on, and so it was left to his successor, Lord Leathers, to explain to the railway companies the bad news about pricing and war damage, and even then, June 1941, the advice was oral, almost as if the government was ashamed to commit itself to paper! Instead of the original agreement of a £40 million guarantee and a share in net revenue in excess of that amount up to £56 million, there would be a fixed annual guarantee. The railway companies were in an impossible situation, with the nation still expecting German invasion and having come through the Blitz. To argue would be construed as being unpatriotic, and many would have had memories of how war profiteers had been vilified by the press and politicians in the First World War, although no one had ever suggested that such charges applied to the railways. The railway companies were negotiating under duress, and the government had clearly already settled on the fixed figure of £43 million, eventually referring to the changes in the light of the previous year’s legislation permitting an amendment. The government promised to make good any deficiency in the fixed figure, but would also take any surplus.
Division of the £43 million and the relative shares were to be:
| Great Western | £6,670,603 | 15.5% | ||||||||||||
| Southern | £6,607,639 | 15.4% | ||||||||||||
| London Midland Scottish | £14,749,698 | 34.3% | ||||||||||||
| London & North Eastern | £10,136,355 | 23.6% | ||||||||||||
| London Transport | £4,835,705 | 11.2% |
Clearly, there were winners and losers, although the variation in percentage terms was marginal. The Southern and Great Western were both slightly worse off in percentage terms, the former the more so, while the LMS, LNER and LPTB all made marginal gains. Shareholder protests that the deal was mean in the extreme was countered by socialists claiming that the deal was far too generous.
‘Certain sections of the community, always vocal in these matters, have not disguised their disappointment that the government has decided not to adopt the advice they have given so freely and with so little practical knowledge, to nationalise the transport system of the country,’ thundered the Railway Gazette. ‘The new agreement, which provides for renting the railways by the State, has also been criticised on the grounds that its terms are unduly generous to the transport system. How little substance there is in these protestations is easy to see if one is prepared to delve far enough into the facts of the case, to divest one’s mind of prejudice, and to approach the problem from the basis of equity. On this basis, the original agreement can by no means be judged generous to the proprietors of the railways; nor can the second. At best it provides a very meagre return upon the capital which has been invested in the undertakings and without which, allied to the patience which, perforce, has been exercised by a long-suffering body of stockholders, the railways of this country could not have reached their present high standard of efficiency, which has contributed so greatly to the successful prosecution of the war.
Of recent years there has been all too prevalent an idea that the standard revenue which was fixed by the Railways Act, 1921, as fair and reasonable and in the public interest is beyond the possibility of attainment – that the £51,359,000 at which it now stands has become but a mythical figure. It should be remembered that Parliament considered the attainment of that standard revenue was so expedient in the public interest that it placed a duty on the Railway Rates Tribunal to fix charges so as to enable a company to earn its standard revenue. Although it is a fact that Parliament’s object was not attained…this has been due very largely to acute and unregulated competition by road interests. There can be no doubt that in present circumstances the railway companies could earn their standard revenues…Moreover, the use now made of the capital provided by the railways is much greater than in the period before the war, and includes the use of assets that were then operated at a loss, but were continued in use to meet conditions which now exist. Taking into consideration…the London Passenger Transport Board, a total of £56,853,000 would be required as the total standard revenue of the whole of the undertakings, and it is this figure that should be borne in mind when comparisons are made with the fixed annual revenue of the five major parties in the revised arrangements which provide for a rental of £43,000,000 in addition to the net revenue from certain excluded items.
The excluded items were the railways revenue from associated businesses such as bus operations. The Railway Gazette continued to emphasise that the railways had made considerable sacrifices in accepting the deal, but were obviously influenced by two factors, the national interest, and that, while the earnings even for 1941 were far in excess of the sums provided by the deal, there could be developments that would reverse this situation, such as invasion. It went on to remind its readers that the railways would now have to pay for restoring their own war damage, and that there could be no grounds for suggesting that the £43 million annually was a subsidy to the railways, but instead it was clear that the railways were subsidising the government. Gross expenditure by the five railway undertakings controlled by the REC during 1940 had amounted to £203.5 million, of which more than £150 million was accounted for by labour costs, while the capital cost of the five undertakings amounted to £130 million. The £43 million included the revenue from ancillary businesses, and amounted to a return of less than 3.5 per cent on the capital.
Further adjustments were not made in the later stages of the war when it was clear that the invasion threat was long past, even though the net earnings of the railways were by this time well in excess of their fixed annual payments by upwards of 100 per cent for three years running. In fact, the surplus profits taken by the government for 1943, 1944 and 1945, reached a total of £155 million. By this time, the railways were not simply serving the British armed forces, but in addition they were playing their part in supporting the build-up of men and equipment for the invasion of Europe. There were also the leave specials, and not just for British servicemen, who wanted to get home to see their families, but for Americans whose idea of a good time off-duty meant heading for London.
While in theory, the railways could keep the money earned by their investment in road haulage and bus companies in the pre-war years, these were also constrained by the requisitioning of their property by the military, while buses, for example, could be directed from one company to another, as demand fluctuated. Companies in what had been, pre-war, holiday areas, suddenly found themselves with large military training camps and other bases to serve. They might be expected to provide vehicles without notice for troop movements, and this was especially the case for those in what would be regarded as ‘invasion areas’, such as the Isle of Wight, for example. Road transport was also constrained by its fuel supply, which on the outbreak of war was cut by 20 per cent, and later controlled thoroughly. Many bus operators experimented with low pressure gas, towing trailers behind the double deck buses and sometime putting gas bags on top of single-deck buses, but this was generally unsatisfactory. It was, in any case, easier to convert the petrol-engined vehicles than those with the increasingly common diesel engine, and when gas was used, it was given to the petrol-engined vehicles.
As noted earlier, the inclusion of the railway operations of the London Passenger Transport Board in the government’s compensation scheme dismayed the main line companies, largely because they expected travel on the London Underground to fall during the war years. There was also the wider issue that the compensation scheme was inadequate for the demands being placed on the railways and inflexible, indeed the revised scheme was even worse than the original.
While the wartime London Underground system was smaller than that of today, most of the network was already completed while extensions to the Piccadilly and Central Lines were well advanced.
London at War
The London Underground faced two conflicting problems during wartime. The population of the London Passenger Transport area actually fell by 2.7 million to 7,147,000 between 1939 and 1944, largely due to evacuation, and the reduced travel caused by the blackout and German bombing, reduced traffic substantially at first. On the other hand, heavy movement of forces personnel brought heavy and sometimes unpredictable traffic peaks, while for service personnel from the British Empire and, later, the United States, even without the bright lights London continued to be the prime destination when on leave. This service leave traffic was encouraged with the offer of a ticket, costing a shilling, which gave visiting service personnel the use of most of London Transport’s bus, tram, trolleybus and underground services for a day, starting at 10.30 am.
Because of the original mass evacuation of children, the war started busily enough for the underground network, with London Transport and the four mainline railway companies told to make arrangements to evacuate 1¼ million people, mainly children, although in the end only 600,000 were moved. While the main line companies handled the real evacuation, London Transport was responsible for getting them to the departure stations, which were usually not the mainline termini, and in addition to the underground system, more than 5,000 buses were also used.
This was at a time when fuel supplies to London Transport’s bus services were cut by a quarter, although to a small extent this was offset by the cancellation of the cross-London Greenline limited stop bus network, with the Greenline ‘coaches’ converted to ambulances. The number of standing passengers on buses was increased from five to eight, the legal limit at the time, but the cuts in services meant that the Underground, contrary to expectations, became busier. Many commuters started to cycle for part of their daily journey, and at suburban stations London Transport introduced arrangements, wherever space allowed, for these to be left at the station during the day. At some of the interchange stations in central London, snack trolleys were introduced for service personnel.
In common with the surface railways, the London Underground was badly disrupted by the bad weather that started after Christmas 1939 and continued throughout January 1940. The surface sections suffered and despite de-icing trains being used and steel brushes fitted to trains in passenger service, conductor rails often re-froze between trains. In one case, a train was stalled at Osterley on the Piccadilly Line having left Hounslow West at 4.13 pm. The following train was coupled to it a quarter of an hour later, but despite scraping the rails, they froze again before the trains could move very far. Eventually, both trains arrived at Northfields at 11.45 pm. In normal conditions, this journey would have taken ten minutes.
Protecting the system
Preparing for war imposed some engineering and logistical feats on the London Transport railways. The deep level tubes may have seemed safe and secure from German bombing, but they had an Achille’s heel in the fact that both the Northern and Bakerloo Lines ran under the River Thames, with both having their own lines between Charing Cross (now known as Embankment) and Waterloo, and the Northern also running between Monument and London Bridge. At the time of the Munich Crisis in 1938, when a sudden outbreak of war, possibly without prior declaration, was widely expected, the Bakerloo and Northern Line tunnels under the Thames were plugged with concrete, but this was a temporary measure.
Early in 1939, plans were drawn up for floodgates on either side of the Thames to protect the lines running under the river, needing eighteen floodgates each weighing almost ten tons, in all, and much of this work was completed before the outbreak of war, although the Northern Line between London Bridge and Monument did not re-open to traffic until May 1940, having been closed for the previous eight months. The practice was to be that on receipt of an air raid warning by a traffic office at Leicester Square, the gates would be closed as soon as the line they protected was free of trains, something that could be verified by track circuiting. Closure of the gates took just a minute, and procedures were put in hand to allow the severed sections of line to continue to work independently. In the case of a gate malfunctioning, steel diaphragms were placed nearby, but the gates could be worked manually if needed.
There were also additional floodgates, smaller and weighing just 4.5 tons each, at Charing Cross (now known as Embankment), to isolate the passages leading from the District and Circle Lines to the Northern Line. Further floodgates were installed at vulnerable sections of the District and Circle Lines as west as South Kensington, while on the East London section of the Metropolitan Line, vertical lift floodgates were installed at the southern end of the Thames tunnel.
Elsewhere on the system, precautions were taken to protect it from burst water mains and sewers.
A further line of defence was the positioning of detector devices on the bed of the Thames as a safeguard against acoustic bombs that could be set off by the noise and vibration of a train running through a tunnel. At times, services had to be suspended on the lines under the Thames while the Royal Navy swept the river for mines.
Electricity supply cables were duplicated to ensure continuation of supply in the event of bomb damage.
Disused deep level tube stations were used by the government, including the Railway Executive Committee which took over Down Street station on the Piccadilly Line, closed in 1932. The Aldwych branch was closed for the duration of the war and used to store equipment and other valuable items, including much of the collection from the British Museum, amongst which was the Elgin Marbles. The unopened Central Line tunnels for the extension eastwards into Essex between Leytonstone and Gants Hill were used as a factory for the defence equipment manufacturer, Plessey, and a narrow gauge railway line was laid so that supplies could be moved quickly and easily to the workbenches and completed work taken away. The tunnels provided 300,000 sq ft of floor space and were used by 2,000 people working day and night shifts.
The deep level tube tunnels soon became a popular spot for those seeking shelter from the air raids once these became heavy during 1940. This practice was discouraged at first, but Londoners started to break into tube stations after they had closed for the night, and finally the authorities gave in. Officially, the station platforms were allowed to be used from 7 September 1940 and sanitary and drainage arrangements were installed quickly at eighty-one stations, with sewage pumped to the surface. Most of the ‘shelterers’ slept on the platforms, but in due course bunks were provided for 22,800, although the peak population in the shelters, reached on 27 September 1940, was 177,000, with another 17,000 using the extensions to the system that still had to be brought into use. Admission to the tube stations was by ticket, provided free by the local authority on a permanent season ticket basis, or on a nightly basis by the ticket office at the tube station if space permitted. Arrangements were even made for feeding the shelterers, sometimes by the Salvation Army, but there was also a ‘Tube Refreshments Special’, converted tube train travelled the deep level lines carrying supplies to 124 canteens set up throughout the system. All in all, at the peak 120,000 people were fed each night by one means or another.
Many of the inner city tube stations became so overcrowded that special trains had to be operated to disperse ‘shelterers’ to less busy stations. There were also strict rules on how close to the platform edge the ‘shelterers’ could sleep while trains were still in operation, with them having to pull back four feet from the edge after 6.15 am in the morning.
Not that the shelters were always as safe as the public imagined.
Caught on the tube
No one expected the sub-surface lines, sometimes referred to by London Transport as the ‘surface’ lines, of the Circle, District, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City Lines to be safe from heavy bombing. Indeed, having been built on the ‘cut and cover’ technique, these lines ran in and out of the open, with some of the stations even having glazed roofs, although this was removed on the outbreak of war.
An early casualty was Praed Street on the Circle Line, a convenient station for travellers to and from Paddington. On the night of 13 October 1940, just after 11 pm, three bombs landed in Praed Street itself, outside the Great Western Royal Hotel. The first two exploded in the street, causing considerable damage to the surrounding buildings, but the third exploded on the Circle Line underground station, which at the time was fairly busy with many passengers waiting for trains. Girders and large wooden beams went crashing down into the station, adding to the chaos and the casualties. Immediate rescue came from the air raid precaution (ARP) personnel of the Great Western Railway at Paddington Station, so that all of the casualties were at hospital within an hour or so.
An early indication of what could happen even with the deep level underground of the tube lines came on 12 October 1940, at Trafalgar Square Station on the Bakerloo Line, when a bomb penetrated the pavement and killed seven people. The next day, another bomb struck Bounds Green on the Piccadilly Line, causing part of the station tunnel to cave in and killing nineteen people while another fifty-two were injured.
There was even worse to come. On 14 October 1940, a bomb pierced the station tunnel roof at Balham, fracturing water mains which flooded both tunnels and swept gravel and other debris into the station, killing four London Transport staff and sixty-eight shelterers. The Northern Line had to be closed for three months, compared with the ten days or so that was more usual in other cases of bomb damage. Earlier that evening, London Transport’s headquarters at 55 Broadway, under which lay St James’s Park Station on the Circle and District Lines, received a direct hit.
On 21 October, the line between Edgware Road and Addison Road was closed due to severe bomb damage, and never re-opened.
Given the concerns over the system’s vulnerability to flooding, there was a near escape on 12 November 1940, when the station at Sloane Square on the District and Circle Lines, which had only re-opened after rebuilding some eight months earlier, was destroyed by bombs. A conduit carried the West Bourne stream over the station, and it was fortunate that this was not broken otherwise a substantial section of this busy line, along which lay six main line termini, could have been flooded.
Nevertheless, the worst accident on the London Underground system and the worst during the Second World War on the railways had nothing to do with the enemy or with trains. On 3 March 1943, the still unopened Central Line station at Bethnal Green was being used as an air raid shelter, and as the warning sounded, the local population headed for what they thought would be safety. A woman carrying a baby tripped as she went down a short staircase of just nineteen steps, with the press of those behind meaning that others fell. Within a few minutes 173 people, sixty-two of them children, were killed by suffocation and crush injuries.
Waterloo suffered badly during the Blitz, as we will see shortly. Later, while the Blitz was roughly halfway through, the sub-surface booking hall for the Bakerloo and Northern lines was badly damaged on 5 January 1941. Less than a week later, the worst incident of all came on the night of Saturday, 11 January, at 7.57 pm. During a long air raid that lasted from 6.25 pm to 9.30 pm, with 145 enemy bombers operating over London, a high explosive bomb was dropped by either a Junkers Ju88 or a Heinkel He111, and this crashed through the road into the circular subway under the surface of Bank Station, before exploding at the top of the Central Line escalators, destroying the ticket hall and three escalators, and blowing out the windows of two trains standing on the Central Line platforms. Yet again, a water main was fractured, and lighting failed as far away as Holborn Station, 1½ miles away. Three minutes later, in the blackout, a bus on route 21 crashed into the crater. Inevitably, there were heavy casualties, with four London Transport personnel and fifty-three other people killed, while three London Transport personnel, fourteen passengers and fifty-two others were injured – many would have been people who believed that they were safer underground than on the surface.
The damage at Bank had little impact on the Waterloo & City Line as the service was suspended due to the problems at Waterloo, but the Central Line service was stopped immediately, but resumed at 7.11 am the next morning, although for a period trains ran through Bank Station without stopping; later trains stopped so that passengers entered and exited the station by way of the Northern Line station at Monument, with which there were connecting pedestrian tunnels. It seems incredible that it only took two months to restore Bank Station to working order.
This time, the Royal Engineers had to take over repair work, creating a box girder bridge 164 feet long to carry road traffic across the large crater between Queen Victoria Street and Poultry to Cornhill and Threadneedle Street. The RE were able to do this using large prefabricated assemblies that had been built and put in stock before the war ready for just such an eventuality.
Yet another major interruption to services came after the exceptionally heavy air raid of 10 May 1941, with damage that resulted in a five-month suspension of services between King’s Cross and Euston Square on the Circle and Metropolitan lines.
Despite the difficulties of using deep level tube stations, further deep level station platforms were built below some existing stations on the Northern and Central lines, with no less than eight of these at an average depth of 80 feet below ground level built at Belsize Park, Camden Town, Goodge Street, Stockwell, Clapham Common, Clapham North and Clapham South, as well as at Chancery Lane. In all, ten were originally proposed, with the hope that with the return of peace these could form part of a deep level express tube network – the progenitor of today’s much delayed ‘Cross Rail’ scheme. These new extra deep level tunnels were built in pairs and were 1,400 feet long, far longer than that needed for even a surface train, were of 16 ft 6 in diameter with a floor built halfway up, and each location had 8,000 bunks fitted. These were ready from 1942 onwards, but first used in mid-1944. Each end of the section of tunnel had a double spiral staircase and a lift for five persons – completely inadequate had an express tube network ever been built.
The two deep shelters that were not built were to have been at the Oval on the Northern Line, where the water table was too close to the surface for work to proceed, and at St Paul’s on the Central Line, where an Act of Parliament prohibited construction of such works so close to the Cathedral.
The threat from the air was taken very seriously indeed. Even the deep level tubes had some sections on the surface, such as between Golders Green and Edgware on the Northern Line which, except for a short length of tunnel north of Hendon Central, ran on the surface. Between Hendon and Golders Green, the Northern Line was very much an ‘overground’, running on embankment or viaduct.
As with the surface railways, colour light signals had to have extra long hoods fitted. Also with blackout in mind, on all lines, train windows were covered with cream netting, except for a small area in the centre. The cream netting gradually turned black. Many passengers found it tempting to peel off small areas, and advertisements featuring a character called Billy Brown then appeared in tube carriages with the message:
‘I trust you’ll pardon my correction
That stuff is there for your protection.’
There was further advice to passengers, warning them not to leave a train (clearly aimed at those on the surface lines) between stations during air raids or after an alert had been sounded unless requested to do so by a member of staff. Gas attacks were widely anticipated, and the advice was to close all windows and ventilation, not to smoke, and not to touch any exterior part of a carriage, and, of course, always to carry a gas mask.
London was the primary target for both the V-1 and V-2 flying bombs, and not surprisingly no less than 149 of these ‘revenge’ weapons fell on London Transport facilities. The first of these came in mid-June 1944, when the viaducts carrying the District and Piccadilly Line tracks between Hammersmith and Ravenscourt Park were badly damaged. While the engineers managed to restore train services, albeit at low speed, in just two days, another V-1 landed close to the point of impact of the first, and caused further damage so that it was six weeks before full services could be restored.
Overall, the war years saw the London Underground system suffer more than 2,000 incidents resulting in damage to the infrastructure, and there were 1,050 cases of damage to rolling stock, with nineteen railway carriages completely destroyed. As with the surface railways, massive arrears of maintenance accrued as the workshops went over to war work, including making parts for tanks and armoured fighting vehicles and the overhaul and modification of more than 500 armoured fighting vehicles. The main effort, however, was in aircraft manufacture, including more than 500 Handley Page Halifax heavy bombers, built by people of whom four-fifths had no previous engineering experience. Perhaps the oddest part of this effort took place in the subway running from Earl’s Court station to the exhibition hall, where a part-time voluntary work factory was established in mid-June 1942 to produce aircraft components, and which continued its work for three years, not closing until after the war in Europe had ended. The unopened eastern extension of the Central Line was used to manufacture electronic components.
London and the Underground survived the blitz; despite there being only one night without an air raid from the night of 7/8 September for the next sixty-five nights, and that was because of bad weather. Yet, bad though it undoubtedly was, it could all have been much worse. Some years before the war, the Luftwaffe had decided to produce large numbers of dive-bombers and medium bombers rather than the heavy bombers favoured by the British and Americans. There might not have been a London Underground system had even a handful of heavy bombers been available to the Luftwaffe in 1940 or 1941. Even the deep level tube lines would have been gouged out and doubtless the resulting mess would have been flooded with water and sewage. Had just 4,000-lb bombs been used, incidents such as those at Balham and the Bank would have become commonplace. Even these would have been enough to bring the system to a complete halt.
The main line termini
The surface lines of the ‘Big Four’ fared little better. Waterloo was vulnerable with its approaches mainly on viaduct and the station itself built up high with cellars underneath. St Pancras, built on a deck, would also have suffered disproportionately. These were not the only vulnerable termini, London Bridge and Liverpool Street were others. The tunnels at Liverpool Street, King’s Cross and Euston could all have been blocked, closing the stations for months.
Waterloo, with a spirits store under the station which soared above surrounding streets, suffered accordingly. On 7 September 1940, a bomb fell just outside the station and seriously damaged the viaduct over John Street. Railwaymen and the Royal Engineers worked to restore services, but the station was closed until 19 September, and services could not be fully restored until 1 October. The disruption affected more than just passengers, and at one stage there were 5,000 bags of unsorted mail. The overnight newspaper trains switched to Clapham Yard, and after further enemy action moved to Wimbledon, and then to Surbiton after bombing destroyed the roads around Wimbledon station. Waterloo was one of the worst affected of the Southern termini in London, as it was out of action due to incendiary bombs from the night of 29/30 December 1940, until 5 January 1941, which itself was not a quiet night as the old LSWR offices in York Road were destroyed that night and the underground lifts and booking hall badly damaged. A further closure came after the raid on the night of 10/11 May 1941, when around fifty high explosive and incendiary bombs and parachute mines set fires blazing and destroyed the Necropolis Station before penetrating to the basement arches setting alight large quantities of spirits stored there: the station could not function until a partial re-opening on 15 May. The disruption to services was severe, with many passengers delayed by several hours as the crowds overwhelmed the replacement bus service from Clapham Junction, with a queue of more than a mile in length at one point and the road towards Waterloo difficult to drive over as it was cluttered with many fire hoses. One unexploded bomb was to remain undetected until work started on an office building in York Road in 1959: at 2,000lbs, had it exploded during the intervening years, the destruction and loss of life at the height of the rush hour would have been terrible. The original LSWR terminus at Nine Elms also lost its roof on 10/11 May.
To the north of Waterloo and on the other side of the Thames, Charing Cross, so important during the First World War, was left on the sidelines as with the evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk, there was no longer any need for senior officers to make hasty trips to France. During 8 October 1940, a daylight raid inflicted serious damage on a train standing in the station, but the worst raid of all was during the night of 16/17 April 1941, with the hotel and station both badly damaged by fire and other fires started on Hungerford Bridge. Three trains in the terminus were set alight along with a fourth on the bridge, while further disruption was caused when a landmine was discovered near the signal cabin with its parachute caught on the bridge girders. The mine was eventually defused and removed, but not before a fire under platform 4 had come within four yards of it. Charing Cross was closed throughout 17 April. Another closure followed a further raid on the night of 10/11 May. On 18 June 1944, a flying bomb blew out a span of the original bridge near the south bank, but trains managed to continue using the station by using the newer section of the bridge, although full service could not be resumed until 4 December.
At another Southern terminus clinging to the north bank of the Thames, Blackfriars saw services reduced as a wartime emergency measure from 16 October 1939, including the complete withdrawal of rush hour services to Dartford via Lewisham. The worst night of the blitz was that of 16/17 April 1941 when a bomb wrecked the old Blackfriars signal cabin on the south side of the river. Immediately, flagmen were put into position to signal trains through the section and work the points, but worse was to come when either a large bomb or landmine destroyed the bridge over Southwark Street and seven flagmen seeking refuge in a shelter were caught by the blast, with three being killed outright, another three dying in hospital from severe burns, and just one surviving to make a slow recovery in hospital. With military help, a temporary bridge with two running roads was ready in fifteen days, but a permanent replacement repair was not in place until 9 October 1942. The terminal roads at Blackfriars were locked out of use until the end of the war, while temporary signalling arrangements were provided.
It was not until 12 August 1946 that a full restoration of services could be made at Blackfriars, with wartime cuts in services reversed and a new signal cabin at Blackfriars opened on that day and the terminal roads reopened. The station’s platforms were re-numbered 1 to 5 from east to west at the same time.
The problems at Blackfriars also impacted on Holborn Viaduct, whose trains ran past the Thameside terminus. Services were badly affected following the collapse of the bridge over Southwark Street during the heavy raid on the night of 16/17 April 1941, and while services were reinstated when a temporary bridge was erected, more was to follow. Earlier, the old hotel building was hit on 26 October 1940, and on the night of 10/11 May, it was hit again, and completely gutted by fire, with the damage to the station itself so extensive that it could not be used by trains until 1 June, and a temporary booking office had to be provided.
East of Blackfriars and closer to the centre of the City, Cannon Street was closed between 10.00 and 16.00 and after 19.30 daily, and from 15.00 on Saturday until Monday morning with effect from 16 October 1939. Even rush hour services were severely curtailed in wartime, so that by 1944, there were just twenty-four peak hour departures, only one of which was for the Kent coast. Before this, on the night of 10/11 May 1941, the station was bombed and caught fire, with railwaymen braving molten glass dripping from the roof to rescue locomotives and carriages, but one of the former, St Lawrence, was caught by a bomb on the bridge.
Severe damage to London Bridge could have had the potential to close both Cannon Street and Charing Cross, and while this did not happen, the station also suffered during the war years. Its importance to the other two termini can be illustrated by the fact that, in 1939, London Bridge handled 250,000 passengers daily, with no less than 80,000 of these on the trains continuing through to the City and West End. The station handled 2,407 railway movements daily, and in the morning peak hour received ninety-four trains, of which forty-six terminated while twenty-nine continued to Cannon Street and another nineteen to Charing Cross. On 9 December 1940, the signal box had a parachute mine settle against its wall with its parachute caught on a signal, and displaying great heroism, the three signalmen continued working while a naval officer and a rating defused the mine. On the night of 29/30 December 1940, the station, while not in the City, shared in the massive raid using incendiary bombs, and at 00.27, the upper floors of the station buildings were gutted by fire, which also destroyed many station offices. In an attempt to get the station working again, a wooden temporary ticket office was sited on the main concourse.
Broad Street was put out of action on the night of 3/4 October 1940, and remained closed for several days. It also had to close on 13 October and 11 November following further enemy action. Services to the LNER were cancelled to make way for war traffic, but reinstated post-war. Heavy air raids on London’s East End also meant the withdrawal of services east of Dalston Junction, which were not reinstated after the war.
Broad Street’s neighbour, Liverpool Street, suffered even worse than during the earlier conflict. When bombs fell on Platforms 1 and 4 during the Blitz, a train was wrecked and this took some days to remove. The East Side booking office was also damaged as was platform 18, while a delayed action bomb exploded in the engine sidings beyond platform 10 and killed two men, despite being surrounded by four trucks of ballast. A bomb that fell on Broad Street threw a wagon onto the roof of Liverpool Street. The station buildings also suffered heavy damage, with the clock tower burnt out, and it took British Railways until 1961 to replace the clock.
Marylebone itself escaped unscathed during the Second World War, with a few incendiary bombs soon extinguished, but the tunnel approach through St John’s Wood was badly damaged, forcing Marylebone to close between 5 October and 26 November 1940, with single line working until August 1942. The goods depot was destroyed by fire on 16 April 1941. Finally, towards the end of the war, the signal box was hit by a flying bomb, killing two men.
One of the more fortunate of the London termini during the war years was Euston, left comparatively unscathed. In 1940, at the height of the Blitz, a bomb damaged the roof of the Great Hall, while another bomb landed between platforms 2 and 3 and wrecked offices and damaged part of the hotel. In fact, only Fenchurch Street fared better.
King’s Cross did not escape the impact of enemy action. Two 1,000lb bombs, chained together, fell on the west side during the Blitz early on Sunday 11 May 1941, destroying much of the general offices, the grill room and bar, and wrecking the booking hall, killing twelve men. Fortunately, the station was quiet at the time. Temporary booking and refreshment facilities were organised quickly, and no trains were cancelled. On the London Transport Metropolitan line, bombing meant that services to Moorgate were suspended from 30 December 1940, and not reinstated until after the war.
All too often the King’s Cross long distance trains carried as many as 2,000 passengers, and were often as long as twenty or more carriages. Locomotives would pull one portion out of the platform, and then reverse on to the second portion. This imposed risks of its own. On 4 February 1945, the 6 pm to Leeds stalled in the tunnel and then ran backwards into the front of the 7 pm ‘Aberdonian’ standing in platform 10. Despite the low speed, the moving carriages rose into the air and demolished the signal gantry, while two passengers were killed. It took two weeks before a new gantry could be installed, causing the termination of all up suburban services at Finsbury Park.
Across the road from King’s Cross, the Second World War saw St Pancras suffer bombs and land mines, but the station’s structure, despite being built over cellars and vaults, as at Waterloo, proved resilient. During the night of 15/16 October 1940, at the height of the Blitz, a land mine wrecked much of the train shed roof, closing the station for five days. As the Blitz drew to a close, on the night of 10/11 May 1941, the station had to be closed for eight days after a bomb passed through the station floor at the inner end of platform 3, and while no serious structural damage occurred, there was considerable damage to trains.
At Paddington, wartime enforced many changes, and through working of trains to and from the Metropolitan ended on 16 September 1939, by which time emergency cuts were being made to timetables. Paddington did not escape its share of wartime wounds, with a parachute mine demolishing part of the departure side building in 1941, while in 1944 a V-1 flying bomb damaged the roof and platforms 6 and 7. But traffic was not disrupted for long.
Despite the restricted train service, commuter traffic actually increased as many moved to the outer suburbs or even further out to escape the worst of the bombing. For holidays and for evacuees the West of England and Wales were seen as the best options, not least because most of the South Coast was taken over for military purposes with beaches cordoned off behind barbed wire, and during the period before the Normandy invasion in 1944, only residents and those with special business were allowed near the South Coast. On the morning of 29 July 1944, a summer Saturday, Paddington was closed for three hours, and no underground tickets were sold to Paddington, because the main concourse and platforms were blocked solid with people waiting to catch trains. The problems of wartime had been compounded by government restrictions on extra trains and even on extra carriages on existing trains, added to the much reduced frequencies and extended journey times. It took three telephone calls by the general manager, Sir James Milne, to the Ministry of War Transport, and the threat of a visit to Downing Street, before a man from the ministry arrived and authorised the use of the locomotives and carriages that were standing idle at Old Oak Common depot. The restrictions were eased somewhat after this, but even so, at August bank holiday weekend, then taken early in August and not at the end as today, mounted police had to be called in and the queues snaked along Eastbourne terrace, which did at least have the advantage of allowing passengers to get to and from the trains.
There was disruption of a different kind on 16 October 1944. The locomotive of a down empty carriage train was derailed outside Paddington close to the parcels depot. This was soon followed by two coaches of the down Cornish Riviera express being derailed at the same point, and although there were no casualties, the line was blocked and normal working could not resume until morning of the next day.
At Victoria, the Second World War brought about major restrictions with train services cut back and, of course, not only did the Continental traffic end on the outbreak of war, but trains carrying service personnel to Europe also disappeared with the fall of France. The heavy air raids during the Blitz of 1940 and 1941 saw Victoria closed at times as bombs and parachute mines closed the approaches, but the station itself was spared serious damage, despite a Dornier Do17 crashing onto the Eastern Section on 15 September 1940. Later, a flying bomb hit the Eastern Section on 27 June 1944, destroying offices and also damaging the booking office.
The invasion of France soon brought back the daily leave trains, and a limited service for civilian traffic to Europe started after German surrender, but a more complete service did not follow until 15 April 1946.