Yesterday evening, the very last ever Thameslink train to leave Moorgate station – did indeed leave Moorgate station. Being the last train, loads of train geeks turned up to be able to tell their grandchildren “yes, son – I did take the last train from Moorgate” and I was also such a person.

The last scheduled train was due to leave just after 7pm, with a final train arriving at Moorgate at 7:40pm and then running empty back to its depot.

After a bit of prodding from UK Railtours owner John Farrow, the operator First Capital Connect (FCC) had agreed to run that last empty train as a special service to say farewell to the service.

I arrived about 7:20pm and there was already a small, but growing crowd of people clustering around the platform waiting for the train to arrive – and FCC staff keeping an eye on things.

The train company was not charging for the train fares (although you had to pay just to get to the platform), but was giving away free commemorative tickets and simply asking for a donation to the Railway Children charity – which was quite a nice touch I felt. Indeed, there was a good natured vibe from the staff on the platform, which was a sadly rare pleasant surprise.

While I appreciate that the transport network is there to, well, transport people – the attitude of a worrying large percentage of train staff leaves a lot to be desired. Does a person standing in the corner with a camera really cause more problems than a family of four with a ton of luggage? I think not.

When I was over at Kings Cross the other week for the arrival of the Tornado steam train, the announcer was quite evidently exasperated with the crowds and rather than trying to light-heartedly control the throng, clearly wished we would all just bugger off somewhere else.

Anyhow – it was therefore quite a pleasure that the FCC staff were clearly in a good natured mood and shockingly for a train station, were quite happy to let people use camera tripods in places. Now that is a rarity – although, I still maintain that a camera tripod takes up less space than a pram – but prams are allowed on platforms without question while camera tripods seem to induce mild panic in station staff.

True to form, I overheard some complaint coming over the staff radios from London Underground which share the station, although I couldn’t get the detail of what had annoyed them.

The train eventually pulled in and a mix of random commuters got off to the unexpected sight of a platform packed with people waiting to get on the train – and a large number of super-geeks who were not only going to take the last train OUT of Moorgate, but were determined to have caught the last train IN to Moorgate. I am not quite so dedicated, having preferred to meet a friend at a local pub instead.

Anyhow, onto the train which unlike most evening trains which are full of tired miserable souls heading home, was full of chatty types behaving more as if they are on a day-trip to the seaside.

The trip was uneventful – just a normal train, making a normal trip, but it was the very last one to do that trip, so the mundane had become special.

And it was a silly fun thing to do.

Serious kudos to First Capital Connect for not only running the train, but for joining into the spirit of the event and not treating us train geeks as an annoyance to be tolerated.

Website for the Thameslink Programme

This Friday, Moorgate station will close to Thameslink trains forever as the track approaching it will be cut off thanks to the Thameslink 2000 – I mean, Thameslink Programme – of network upgrades.

Hinted at in this week’s issue of Railway Herald, I have just had an email to confirm that there will be a “final rites” event for the very final train to leave the station.

Being a bit of a train geek, I suspect I might be heading over to try and squeeze onto the train – probably the only time ever that we will exclaim that the more people on board the better!

The official message from Thameslink is thus:

The final scheduled service from Moorgate leaves on Friday, March 20, at 19:06. A countdown clock at the head of platforms 5 and 6 at Moorgate station is ticking away to this moment in hours, minutes and seconds.

A further service is timetabled to run into Moorgate, arriving at 19:41. This should then run empty to Kentish Town at 19:54 but First Capital Connect has responded to the requests of rail enthusiasts to operate this in passenger service, as a final celebratory run. It will call at Farringdon, St Pancras and then Kentish Town.

Places on the eight-carriage service will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis at the head of platforms 5 & 6 at Moorgate. FCC will issue special free commemorative tickets for the journey and invite donations to the Railway Children in exchange.

See you there if you care to try it as well.

Taken from a June 1896 issue of the Illustrated London News, this is one of a series of “scenes of London” – this of Ludgate Circus. Notable though is the railway bridge and steam train belonging to the Chatham and South Eastern Railway.

This was replaced with an underground tunnel in 1990 and is now the Thameslink line, with City Thameslink being the the left hand side of the road the bridge is going over.

(this was taken from my growing collection of old London newspapers)

Incidentally, had the Fleet Line of the London Underground been built, it would have had a station at Ludgate Circus.

A fantastic quote from an old journal describes the railway viaduct thus:

Of all the eyesores of modern London, surely the most hideous is the Ludgate Hill Viaduct – that enormous flat iron that lies across the chest of Ludgate Hill like a bar of metal on the breast of a wretch in a torture-chamber.

Let us hope that a time will come when all designs for City improvements will be compelled to endure the scrutiny and win the approval of a committee of taste. The useful and the beautiful must not for ever be divorced.

The railway bridge lies flat across the street, only eighteen feet above the roadway, and is a miracle of clumsy and stubborn ugliness, entirely spoiling the approach to one of the finest buildings in London. The five girders of wrought iron cross the street, here only forty-two feet wide, and the span is sixty feet, in order to allow of future enlargement of the street. Absurd lattice-work, decorative brackets, bronze armorial medallions, and gas lanterns and standards, form a combination that only the unsettled and imitative art of the ruthless nineteenth century could have put together.

Think of what the Egyptians in the times of the Pharaohs did with granite! and observe what we Englishmen of the present day do with iron. Observe this vulgar daubing of brown paint and barbaric gilding, and think of what the Moors did with colour in the courts of the Alhambra!

The stolid hammermen went to work, and the iron nightmare was set up in all its Babylonian hideousness.

Another photo of the same location taken around 1902 can be found here