Realising that I have managed to leave some of them out, I decided that it was time to cover the rest of the London Tilbury and Southend Lines. Today when you look at the route map for these lines, run by C2C, it looks like a simple enough operation. However its history is relatively complex. The line from Fenchuch Street opened in 1854 and originally ran via Stratford, Barking and Tilbury to Southend. A few years later a more direct route via Upminster and Pitsea was built and the whole thing extended to Shoeburyness. A few decades later a branch from Grays to Romford via Upminster was built. This gives us largely what we have today - except that the latter branch is now operated as a Romford-Upminster shuttle - and Upminster to Grays from Fenchurch Street.
In the early 20th century the line was put up for sale and bought by the Midland Railway. At around the same time the District Railway connected their line and began running trains over Midland metals. Their trains went all the way from Ealing Broadway to Shoeburyness until the outbreak of war in 1939. By this time London Underground had taken over the District Railway and electrified it as far as Upminster. This was now part of the nationalised London Underground.
After the war, the non-underground line became part of British Railways under the London Midland Region - an anomaly that persisted for a few years, until rather more sensibly, the Eastern Region finally got the line! In 1962 BR electrified their tracks east of Upminster. There were now two electrified routes running parallel from Bow to Upminster, one operated by BR and one by LT, and consequently BR withdrew all their trains from all stations bar West Ham, Barking and Upminster, and concentrated on faster services from London through to stations east of Upminster.
By the 1990's the line was in trouble. The electric trains had been running for 30 years and were increasingly unreliable and the infrastructure was crumbling. It became dubbed as the "misery line," the least reliable commuter line in London. The private sector inherited this and bore the brunt of the blame until Railtrack re-signalled it and C2C invested in shiny new Electrostar trains. And this is where I came in...
I set off to Fenchurch Street at around midday, only to be greeted at Tower Hill tube with the news that a signal failure had closed the line as far as Barking. A pain, because now I had to get the District Line all the way to Barking before I could start on the main journey, going SLOWLY through all the ropey places I would have preferred to have sped through on a proper train. At Barking the usual breakdown of communication had happened that seems to occur any time there's a problem on the railway. Hardly any information or announcements. And a tosser on the platform slagging off the passing West Ham fans in surely a drug-induced manner and proclaiming his loyalty to Arsenal. He was asking for a thump from one of the Hammers fans and I don't know how he didn't get one.
Luckily I didn't have to wait long for a train to Leigh. It flies past all the District Line stations before Upminster that used to be served by the railway. You can still see the majority of the old mummified LTS platforms in situ. I wonder why they have been left? Finally at Upminster the tube terminates and LTS is on its own as it crosses where the Essex border has been since 1965. The landscape is chiefly marshy flat lands, as you would expect on the Thames floodplain.
We arrive at Leigh on Sea in decent weather, despite the forecast of rain for that day. The first thing I notice is that the approaches to the station are designed for cars not people, forcing you to take a less pleasant and longer way round than is needed on foot. Oh well. The town is effectively split into two parts, an upper area where the shops and church are, and the lower part by the waterfront. It's the latter I'm heading for.
The street along the waterfront is the High Street even though the shops etc are up the hill. This runs parallel to the railway as it heads east from Leigh on to Southend, and I notice that right up against the line is a very station-like building which is the Sailing Club. However those canopies and the proximity to the track tell me this was once a station. Later research reveals that this was indeed the station until the 1930s, when for reasons that are not clear, it was closed and rebuilt in the far less convenient location I have just had to walk from!
The Leigh waterfront is a delight. There is a small harbour that looks out over Canvey Island, and further away, the south bank of the Thames where the Kent coast and the Isle of Grain can be seen. The tide is high and it's easy now to see how the low lying Canvey was so badly overcome by the 1953 floods. There are several nice pubs and seafood shops clustered along the harbour. I sample three of the pubs, the last one being tied to a seafood stall. The shellfish does look gorgeous but I am a bit funny about shellfish texture, apart from not really knowing how to peel it. I settle for some chips before heading back to the station.
I get a train back that is going back over the same route I came down on. Therefore I had to change at Pitsea, the junction for the original line through Tilbury, which I hadn't travelled yet. I wish I'd done the down journey via this route so I didn't have to do it now. It's everything I imagined the route would be in this part of the world. Dozens of chavs playing music off their mobiles at top volume and smoking dope on the train. And no security or guards where they are really needed. I put my I-Pod on top volume and shut it all out until we get back to London, though most of the scum get off at Grays or Barking.
This particular train returns to London via the latterly opened Grays to Upminster branch rather than the original one through Rainham. This is still single track though I gather doubling it is on the cards, it serving the growing Thames Gateway and enormous Lakeside complex at Chafford Hundred, where a new station was opened in 1995. Why did this open three years AFTER the shopping centre?
I make it alive back to Fenchurch Street, but one problem remains. I now have to complete Barking to Grays via Rainham, having completed the Leigh to Southend section in 2002. Having experienced the south Essex ambience, I'm in some trepidation about pursuing this. Perhaps I should take the approach I took on the Dartford lines and travel with the rush hour commuters? Tune in for the next installment...
Itineary:
Barking-Basildon-Leigh
Leigh-Pitsea-Barking-London Fenchurch Street
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