Shadows in the Steam

by David Brandon

  Hadley Wood Station is a semi-rural suburban station in a cutting between tunnels on the line out of Kings Cross. For long the double track through Hadley Wood had been a considerable bottleneck, and eventually in 1959 the line at this point was quadrupled. The tunnels go by the simple names of Hadley Wood North and Hadley Wood South. Some people believe that Hadley Wood South Tunnel is haunted by a ghostly diesel locomotive. This is D9020, later known as No.55020, one of the famed ‘Deltic’-class, named Nimbus after a classic racehorse.

  Road signs only started to become common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Since time immemorial, with the horse being the prime mover, milestones had been used to provide information about direction and distances, and signposts giving such information were rare. On the turnpikes established in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, milestones were obligatory. From the 1900s, however, the widening use of motor vehicles with their higher speeds required a new and different marker from the old established milestone. The earliest fingerpost sign is almost certainly that standing at the meeting place of the A44 and B4081 roads near Broadway Hill in Gloucestershire. On it is the date 1669.

  These signposts came in varied styles, often designed and manufactured locally, and they could be very distinctive to the local authority which erected them. Examples are those put up by the old West Riding of Yorkshire County Council. Uniquely, perhaps, and even rather eccentrically, their signs gave the grid reference of the location of the sign itself as well as the name of the place. With road traffic inexorably rising in volume, standardised and supposedly simpler and more visible signs have increasingly replaced the old, idiosyncratic signs. Where old ones can still found, they are frequently off the beaten track.

  Railways came to play an extremely important role in the life of both town and country in the nineteenth century and have continued to do so in lesser or at least different ways since then. Many passenger and goods stations and, of course, whole lines have been closed and virtually all traces of their existence obliterated. Sometimes only a superannuated sign can provide a clue to the whereabouts of an erstwhile station. Here we list a few examples of such anachronisms. These all made it into the late twentieth century but we cannot guarantee that they all remain in situ at the time of writing. We like to think of them as signs to ghost stations.

  BALNAGUARD

  In a brave but forlorn attempt to attract more business, the LMSR in 1935 opened a basic halt at Balnaguard on the Aberfeldy branch of the former Highland Railway. In the centre of the small village there was, at least as late as 1981, a black and yellow sign indicating a path to the LMSR halt. Only half the sign was still in situ, so it read ‘Balna’, but the cunning and resourceful traveller could nip round to the other side and read the ‘guard’ bit, if only for reassurance. It is to be hoped that no naïve traveller has set out along the footpath to the halt in expectation of catching a train. The line closed in 1965.

  DRUMMUIR

  This sign, still extant in 1989, pointed to the station from the main A920 road through the village. A rectangular sign showed an arrow with the words ‘Drummuir Station’, and reassured the weary traveller that it was only a quarter of a mile away. Drummuir was on the line of the Great North of Scotland Railway between Keith and Craigellachie which closed completely in May 1968.

  DUNMOW

  Still informing or perhaps confusing would-be travellers in 1980 was a sign in the small Essex town of Dunmow. One arm of this was unusual for sporting the words ‘L.N.E.R.Station & Goods Yard’. Dunmow was an intermediate station on the rural Bishops Stortford to Braintree branch of the Great Eastern Railway, which became part of the LNER. The arm containing the words quoted above seems to have been stolen, probably in the late 1990s. It may well have pride of place in the collection of a reclusive ‘enthusiast’. Passenger services ceased at Dunmow in 1952 and goods services followed suit in 1969.

  EASSIE

  Eassie was a small wayside station on the main line of the former Caledonian Railway between Perth, Forfar and Aberdeen. It closed to passengers in 1956 and to goods in 1966, but the sign was still doing sterling service at least as late as 1991. A little bit of people’s art in the medium of iron, it informed those who gazed upon it that Eassie Station was a mere one and three-quarter miles away.

  HAROME

  In 1999 a sign at a road junction in North Yorkshire was still proudly flaunting the words ‘Harome Siding’. This was a mute reminder of the importance of the railway in the rural economy. No passenger facilities were provided at the siding which was a considerable distance from Harome (what a wonderful name!), but doubtless in its time it had been of great use to the farmers of the district. Having gone into raptures about the name Harome, it is only fair to add that the indicator on the same post but pointing in the opposite direction tells the observer that it is only two miles to Wombleton. What about that for a name?

  Harome Siding was on the Pickering to Gilling branch of the North Eastern Railway which officially closed in August 1964.

  SCORRIER

  It was unusual for milestones to be used to provide directions to railway stations, but in 1996 one could be found beside the B3298 road at Scorrier advising that it was half a mile to Scorrier Station. Scorrier was on the main line of the former GWR between Plymouth, Truro and Penzance. It closed completely in the autumn of 1964.

  THORINGTON

  Boldly providing some succour for any stranger looking for a railway station was a sign in the village of Frating in Essex. This pointed down a country lane to Thorington Station, adding that it was only two miles. This sign was still doing what it was designed to do in 2003 although the station itself had closed for passengers in 1957. The line between Colchester and Clacton on which Thorington was a wayside station is still operational.

  A classic BBC TV series was Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass and the Pit, broadcast in the winter of 1958–59. The main setting for the series was a studio-constructed building site, whereas the film version (1967) was set mainly around a fictional Underground station, ‘Hobbs End’. In the film, workers discover what they believe to be an unexploded Second World War bomb near the station platform during the extension of what was supposed to be the Victoria Line. As they gradually begin to uncover the mysterious object it turns out to be a spacecraft, millions of years old, bearing the fossilized bodies of dead aliens. Professor Bernard Quatermass, a brilliant but unconventional scientist, is brought in to shed light on this disturbing discovery which turns out to have unforeseen effects on the local populace. Quatermass discovers that people living in the area have experienced ghostly manifestations and poltergeist outbreaks since the building of ‘Hobbs End’ Underground station in 1927. In one scene Quatermass looks at two street signs. The older sign is spelt Hob’s End. Quatermass is then informed that ‘Hob’ is an old name for the Devil.

  The story weaves all the ingredients of a supernatural story: aliens, superstition, archaeological excavation, possession, haunted houses, science, ghosts and horror. The changing of the location from a building site on the TV series to an Underground station for the film was an inspired one. Construction of the actual Victoria Line was started in the early 1960s, some five years before the film. When the line was extended south of the Thames to Brixton, engineers encountered various problems including the finding of fossils and a number of human remains from an old plague pit. The disruption to the pit soon prompted reports of a ghostly presence haunting the area.

  Other TV series with a supernatural element featured on the Underground include Doctor Who – The Dalek Invasion of the Earth (1964) which made extensive use of the derelict ‘Wood Lane’ station; The Web of Fear (1968) in which several scenes were shot in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel (although the film-makers mainly used a studio set); Mysterious Planet (1986); Blakes 7: Ultraworld (1980) and more recently Primeval (2007). The Primeval episode, as with almost all films featuring the London Underground, was filmed at Aldwych. This closed Underground station h
as also been the location for spooky films such as Death Line (1972), Ghost Story (1974), Creep (2004) and the TV series Most Haunted (September 2002). Lifeforce (filmed in 1985 at Chancery Lane) also deals with alien forces taking possession of London, although this time turning the population into zombies.

  The most interesting documentary to be made around the theme was Ghosts of the Underground, shown on Channel 5 in October 2006. The programme drew on the experience of people who had spent most of their working lives on the Underground. It was a credit to the programme that it did not sensationalise but allowed a number of employees simply to talk about experiences that they had had at work for which there did not seem to be any simple explanation. This rather understated approach brought a real sense of eeriness to the programme while at the same time making the accounts of the witnesses sound very believable.

  Neverwhere was a six-part television serial first shown in 1996. Based on the book by Neil Gaiman, it tells the surreal tale of a sinister world known as ‘London Below’. Set in modern-day London (London above), the series uses the Underground to reflect an uncongenial city that has been left behind. The central character, Richard Mayhew, an average sort of man, stumbles into the murky world of London Below, which consists of a city of monsters, murderers, monks and angels. Familiar names take on a new significance in London Below. The Angel, Islington, is a real angel, the Black Friars are dark priests, and Old Bailey is a character who wears clothing made of feathers. The closed Down Street Station on the Piccadilly Line, which had been converted for use as a secret command centre during the Second World War, was used for the banquet scene in the serial. The station, which was close to Hyde Park Corner tube station, closed in 1932, but its bulls’ blood-red faience tiling is still visible at street level.

  The idea of people or creatures living in the Underground over many years has been the stuff of both urban legend as well as providing inspiration for films. These subterranean species have varied from large mutant rodents, hybrid creatures, to a forgotten troglodytic race whose ranks have been swelled by vagabonds, escaped prisoners, and even people who never returned to the surface during the Blitz. According to Fortean Times reporter Michael Goss, these survivors have been reduced ‘to near-bestial form…They [allegedly] prowl the sewers and railway tunnels showing themselves as little as possible… They probably eat the sandwiches and burgers we discard and it is “widely believed” that they also eat tramps, drunks and other isolated late-night commuters.’ Mass Observation (the social research organisation founded in 1937) reported in April 1943 on a study of tube life among the regular shelterers. They commented that some families had ‘established themselves permanently in the shelters, having abandoned their homes altogether. Children almost three years old had never spent a night at home…’

  In the British horror film Creep (released in 2005) a young woman, Kate, having failed to catch a taxi, heads for the Underground where she waits for a train and promptly falls asleep on a seat (supposedly at Charing Cross). When a train eventually arrives Kate realises she is the only passenger. As the film progresses she meets up with a couple who have made their home in a small room at the station. They tell Kate about a creature creeping around killing homeless people. Kate inevitably encounters the ‘creep’, a mentally deranged cannibalistic hermit who feeds on strays and workers alone in the Underground. A controversial aside to this was that the poster for the film, which shows the bloody hand of a murdered passenger on an Underground train, was banned from all subway stations because it was deemed ‘too gory’.

  Death Line (1972, aka Raw Meat), starring Donald Pleasance, must have inspired Creep as it takes up the theme of a lost tribe of people. These are the descendants of workers (men and women) who were buried by a railway tunnel cave-in in 1895 during the excavation of a line between Holborn and Russell Square. The ‘lost tribe’ survived and bred for many years. They ate people who ventured alone into the rabbit warren of tunnels. However, only one of the tribe is now alive and he is in search of new victims. When the body of a prominent Ministry of Defence official is found a search begins to uncover a secret enclave of survivors beneath the tunnels.

  A scene in the film American Werewolf in London (1981) shows an unfortunate commuter getting off a train onto an empty ‘Tottenham Court Road’ platform. As he makes his way to the exit via the escalator he is stalked by the lurking presence of a werewolf. The man desperately runs to get away from the creature but soon falls prey to it. Another type of mythical creature, a dragon, is released from its long hibernation in Reign of Fire (2002), as a result of the building of the ‘Docklands Extension Line’. Once free, it breeds at a phenomenal rate, eventually wiping out most of the world by 2024. Other apocalyptic and dystopian-style films have also made use of the Underground, such as 28 Days Later (2002 – Canary Wharf); 28 Weeks Later (2007 – the actual exterior of the Jubilee line platform); Survivors – The Lights of London, parts 1 & 2 (1977); and Code 46 (2004 – Canary Wharf). The 1999 film Tube Tales follows a series of mysterious and funny encounters, based on the true-life experiences of London Underground passengers. One of the nine stories, Steal Away, follows two young people escaping from a robbery that they have committed. Using Holborn and Aldwych stations as locations, they try to escape and find themselves on what appears to be a disused station until a mysterious train pulls up and they board. Events soon take the form of a series of ghostly encounters.

  The London Underground has also provided the setting for many novels and short stories. Clare Clark’s dark and gruesome murder story, The Great Stink (Viking 2005) is set in the sewers of mid-Victorian London just prior to the building of the London Underground. However, compared with films, fictional stories about supernatural Underground activity are thinner on the ground, which is surprising given the ominous and eerie subterranean setting of parts of the Underground.

  One of the first ghost stories set on the Underground was by Sir Thomas Graham Jackson (1835–1924), a leading architect as well as a writer of ghost stories. In A Romance of the Piccadilly Tube the central character, George Markham, catches a crowded train at Piccadilly Station where he later witnesses a very grisly accident involving a man he knows who is swept under a passing train.

  A commuter nightmare is the theme in the short story by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Non-Paying Passengers (1974) where the main character, Percy Fortesque, sees the ghost of his despised late wife Doris reflected in a train window.

  In one of his last ghost stories, Bad Company (1956), Walter De La Mare opens with the chilling line, ‘It is very seldom that one encounters evil in a human face…’ The story opens with the narrator descending to one of London’s ‘many subterranean railway stations’ and describes the eeriness of the platform with its ‘glare and glitter, the noise, the very air one breathes affect nerves and spirits’. The story unfolds when the man boards the train and sits next to a cadaverous-looking old man whose appearance makes the narrator recoil in disgust. The haunting figure continues to lure the man to a decrepit London residence in order to reveal a last will and testament.

  The Eighth Lamp by Roy Vickers appeared in The Novel Magazine in July 1916 – reproduced in Macabre Railway Stories (1982) edited by Ronald Holmes. It opens with the last train of the night on the Underground pulling into a fictitious Cheyne Road Station. We learn that ‘Cheyne Road station was wholly underground…and the regulations did not apply to it. There are eight lamps on each platform.’ Signalman George Raoul, ‘transferred from Baker Street’, sets about his work on the deserted station. As he walks past the third lamp on the platform he stops and shudders at the sight of a recruiting poster (the story was written during the First World War) with the ‘beckoning smile of a young soldier like a mirthless grin of a death mask’. George convinces himself it was the ‘new station that was doing it’. As he continues switching off each of the lamps we are told that George cannot look at a ‘Circle train without a faint shudder.’ By the time he reaches the fifth switch his nerve begins to falt
er. As he reaches the seventh lamp he is whistling to himself in order to allay his nerves as well as attempting to humanise the desolation. George finally approaches the eighth lamp and extinguishes it. He then waits within a couple of feet of the staircase, crouching. ‘He could not see more than a few feet in front of him, but he could hear, distinct and unmistakable, the rumbling murmur of an approaching train.’ Impossible, he thinks, no trains are running, but the sounds grow louder. The train appears but it has no lights and George can see that it is a Circle train. Despite telling people what he saw, it is difficult to convince them that a train was running at that time of night. For George the horror is only just beginning as he has to face the spectral force and the mystery behind it on his next shift.

  South Kentish Town is an atmospheric and eerie short story by Sir John Betjeman (1906–84). It concerns a clerk, a regular traveller on the line, who mistakenly gets off a tube train on the Northern Line when the doors accidentally open at a disused station. To the man’s horror the train moves off, leaving him all alone on the pitch-black platform. Confused and obviously disorientated, he gropes around and locates the emergency spiral staircase, all 294 steps, up to the old station buildings at street level. As he nears the top he bangs his head on the floorboards of one of the shops where the station concourse used to be. He calls out but no one hears him. Utterly deflated, the man then gropes his way back down the seemingly never-ending staircase to the platform. The terrifying feeling of being trapped and not knowing how to escape from an awful predicament is superbly conveyed. Betjeman’s subtly understated tale taps into our fears of the dark and of being alone with untold possibilities of nasty things lurking, particularly in the bowels of this labyrinthine network. There was indeed a South Kentish Town Station on the Northern Line. It opened in 1907 and closed as early as 1924. Its red tiled exterior can still be seen at the junction of Castle Road and Kentish Town Road. It is currently used for commercial purposes.