Aldwych (Strand) station ; platform scene on last day of operation ; 30 September 1994 : London Underground

            A series of images taken from a presentation I used to give on London Underground's Disused or non-operational stations when I was one of the curators at the London Transport Museum in the 1990s. Part of the day job was inspecting disused stations to see what was still there and the sites ranged from places abandoned nearly a centuty earlier, such as King William Street station that closed in 1900, up to stations such as Aldwych that had just closed.

Aldwych station closed on the 30 September 1994, the same day as the Epping - Ongar branch of the Central line, and having been out to Essex earlier I stayed in town to see the last train off Aldwych later that day. Here is seen the Piccadilly line shuttle train about to depart from the one operational platform at Aldwych to the branch platform at Holborn station. Both stations had a long disused platform for the branch line that had been removed from service in 1914/17 along with one of the two running tunnels.

As can be seen there are an unusually large number of staff present and indeed I doubt the branch was ever so busy as that last day! It closed due to low passenger numbers and the capital cost of replacingt he 'last' original style Otis lifts from 1906/7. You may wonder about the tiled name "Strand". The station opened in 1907, the last of the Leslie Green/Yerkes stations of the original UERL network to be completed and at the time is was called Strand station. This was altered in 1915 three local stations were re-named and this became Aldwych. There was no real necessity to alter the tiling so the original name was simply painted over; howeever for the closure day it was uncovered for a last day of glory!

Taken on: July 9, 2023

Tags:

Mike AShworth Collection

London

London Underground

history

heritage

1990s

disused station

closed station

ghost station

Piccadilly line

Aldwych station

Strand station

tiles

tiling

platform

platform view

30 September 1994

last day

tube train

passengers

staff

1973-tube stock

Aldwych shuttle

station architecture « less

Sets appears in: • London Underground 'disused' stations • London Transport

Groups appears in: • UK • UK Flickr users more » • Tiles Tiles Tiles • Public Transportation • Lost London • Transport In The Frame • A Picture of Britain • Public Transport Around the World • * L O N D O N - T R A N S P O R T * • Transport Photography in the UK • All Safe Pics Welcome • Old London • "U.K. Photo Gallery" ( All Welcome ) • Classic Transport • PLANET EARTH TRANSPORTATION • ★ EUROPE ★ ЕВРОПА ★ ΕΥΡΩΠΗ ★ EUROPA ★ • BELOWGROUND RAILWAYS • London, Best of (10 fav's or more) « less

Stats: 2,769 views / 1 comment

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder