Tickets for another of the London Underground’s 150th anniversary events have just gone on sale, and include some pretty decent prices for trips in a luxuriously restored Victorian steam carriage.
The trips will take place on the also recently restored Epping Ongar Railway, which was for a while part of the Central line but is now a heritage railway.
The original railway ran from Epping to Ongar, but at the moment, the link is broken, so the line runs from North Weald, with vintage buses as a shuttle link from Epping.
Prices for the special day are quite reasonable as well.
Basically, £18 (£9 for children) for an entire day of trips along the railway during the day on their other steam and diesel trains…
…and then £5 per trip between Ongar and North Weald inside Coach 353 hauled by the vintage steam locomotive Met 1.
There is also a one-off trip along the entire length of the railway for a tenner.
It’s not underground, but it is a trip along what was for many years part of the Central Line, so you can claim to have ridden a steam train on a tube line. Not even the Victorians managed that!
Trains run on the weekend of the 21st June and the 28th June.
Although you can turn up on the day, the special Victorian carriage tickets have to be bought in advance here.
For the first few years of the railway’s operation as part of the Central line, it was indeed steam-hauled, because London Transport didn’t want it and couldn’t be bothered to electrify it. They eventually did, but with an inadequate power supply on a tight budget, a factor often cited in the shuttle’s ultimate demise.
I have traveled along the section of the central line many years ago from Epping to Ongar(when Blake Hall station was open) and it was a shuttle service to and from either end.