"We would now be lamenting that some idiot decided to shut down all the old stations" - The rest of the country outside London.

Warning: This video is a Yerkes Free Zone The Southern station would need about 50 platforms and likely end up at Clapham.

“More bombed than an 18yo on their first trip to Amsterdam. “. LOL. I am taking an 18yo for their first trip to Amsterdam in 3 months…..

Planners and the Treasury get two things wrong. Firstly they seem to miss the increase in UK population over time. Secondly they treat duplication as a waste rather than something that adds necessary resilience.

“Like an elderly backbencher…” - brilliant

This is the quintessential Jago video. Informative, well-researched, thoughtful, shedding light on our current situation -- we are at the mercy of planners who will inevitably be taking a punt on what future provision needs to be.

"a little less radical but still a bit crazy - like an elderly backbench politician" This sort of deadpan is one part of why we love you, Jago. The other parts of course being the excellent research, great footage, good maps, and having a voice that's nice to listen to.

Imagine a short notice platform alteration at one of those jumbo sized stations. You would need 15 minutes to walk from platform 1 to platform 53

It makes a refreshing change to hear a plan dreamt up by theroticians defeated by the practicalities.

Of course, on the subject of close-together stations, let's not forget that Victoria is two different stations joined together and sharing a name.

‘..a little less radical but still a bit crazy, like an elderly backbench politician’ is an all-time classic! (and quite British)

I took a train trip from upstate New York to Washington DC. I had to walk across the street to connect to my second of two trains. The loss of Pennsylvania station is one of the worst mistakes New York ever made. Preserve your stations. Otherwise you end up having to rebuild them.

Ironically, had King's Cross, St. Pancras and Euston been combined into 1 station, at least we would not have the ridiculous situation where there is no connection between HS1 and HS2, and travellers from Birmingham to Europe will have to drag their luggage onto the underground (for 1 stop only) or along the streets.

"more bombed than an 18-year old on their first trip to Amsterdam"... That's it, guys! We've got it! Best Comparison by Jago! Headlines in the news! (lol)

I always felt that the post-war period was a lost opportunity in terms of London infrastructure, but we were broke at the time, so I suppose it always would be. Long-term planning has never been a British thing. Like selling of railway real estate, rather than keep it for when things started expanding again. Still, if your wife has a road haulage company in her portfolio… Oh, and I was that 18 year-old in Amsterdam.

This is why we don't appear to have an integrated transport policy..if so called "experts" can dream up rubbish like this, its a miracle that any London termini are still standing!! ..another good one, Jago, keep em coming!

I remember catching a train up to Sheffield from st. Pancras around 2000. it was pretty rundown at that stage with not a huge amount of train services and in general looked tired and rundown. Incredible how different that station is today.

Great to hear about unworkable plans being dropped. Sadly, it's the ones that weren't dropped that have caused all our problems.

The cardinal rule of Railways is: Better overprepare

"the southern terminus would have been insane", Lmao. One of the best videos from Jago.

I only know Euston since the rebuild in the 60's , I was minus two when the Doric Arch was demolished, so my journey up there to hopefully have a last look at it in the early 70's was a waste of time!! I do remember St Pancras as it was before the massive transformation into the Eurostar terminal, with only a tiny wing on the front deducated to its original function as terninus of the Midland Main Line. Combining the remains of the old with the new at St Pancras was far more aesthetically pleasing thsn than completely wiping the old away, as at Euston.

There is nothing more dangerous than consultants who are not bound by realities like money and practicality!

In the same way anyone seeking political office should automatically be considered unfit for it, anyone pursuing a career in town planning or worse yet, architecture, should never be let near a building. Each will attempt to shape reality in their own image.

Interesting - in the 1980s there was a proposal to divert Marylebone trains into either Paddington or Baker Street. After Thameslink opened St Pancras was almost a ghost station with only a few intercity trains using it! Then railways were reborn!

I love the old style railway stations and that is what most people like me see traveling. Looking back a station was so much more in dimension in the middle of a town. All the sidings, tracks for goods and mail, a nearbuy goodsyard and postoffice, resources to hold and service trains, additional locomotives to pull trains in and out of the station and all the resources to keep these running like coaling and watering. Actually I love termini and they are an opportunity for planners to make enormous fields available to town development. Usually they say it is for the sake of making more lofts available to overcrouded cities, a political and social well accepted argument. Well we all know that in the end they are making more unnessesary office blocks available to anyone who can effort renting it which are not the people working in the town, who are needed to keep the town alive. I'm talking of people we all need in the town and do neither pay them as well as they can pay for a place to live in town nor offer them housing at fair conditions, i.e. cleaners, services in shops and restaurants or coffeshops, all the people keeping security up in a crowded area, on stations or streets, not to speak of craftsmen and -women. The terminus at Hamburg-Altona is just in the phase of "conversion". The historic trainstation building was gone in the seventies, and cannot be saved anymore. On the railmap one can see how vast the area is the transition is making space for. There will be a runthrough station of the same name replacing the terminus but it will not feature the same entertainment. At the moment the terminus is still the endpoint of overnight car-on-train travel from austria and the cars and motorbikes drive through the hall at loading and unloading. Anyway, thanks for your video, it's always fun for me to watch your little films and listen to your comments. Best Albrecht.

During my recent stay in London I witnessed the very creative way South Western Railway makes trains run on time; the severely delayed train was turned into the next one so it was able to leave on time. Luckily I had planned my journey so as to arrive much earlier than I had to.

There was another problem with this proposal. It's all very well getting everybody to the new 'megaterminals', but how do you get them to where they want to be? The changes required to the Underground would probably cost more that the original scheme. Definitely 'nice try but no cigar'.

Just imagine all the chaos of one station to serve all the railways south of London! Glad that didn’t happen

marvelous! you did it again Jago!

Amazing how quickly the bots manage to watch your videos and comment first. And they all have ill-fitting underwear.

Jago , I am so impressed with your video editing skills. You have a quality bit of video for almost every sentence which just adds to everything. I just love it. Adds to a fabulous weekend.

A big THANKYOU JAGGERZZZZ, another very informative video for a person like me who really didn't care who Tottenham and Arsenal are playing and also what horse to bet on at Towcester races. When I consider how big Waterloo is plus all the other ex Southern region terminals the single southern terminal would have been HUGE. Keep these none sport , none Britain's got talent videos coming, you are the life line to my boring life. Please pray for my wife as I build brass 0 gauge locos..

I had an uncle who worked at what is now, TfL. I remember looking through his back issues of work magazines about all this. I'm a reader, if I run out of stuff to read, I'll read corn flakes boxes.

0:22 the view from Mrs Wilberforce's front door, but no sign of the Professor or his gang😊

Watching your videos I'm always amazed at how much the industrial and modest residential sections of London look like Northern New Jersey. Forgetaboutit !

Outside of London, didn't Dr. Beeching close down most of the old stations, and so many of us regret that now.

Really all lines should be high speed lines to Birmingham with a massive ring loop line connecting compass points for easy interchange , so South Wales-Birmingham-Kings Lynn for example

It fascinates to learn more of my ancestor's belief they knew best in all matters. Travel in former possessions illustrates this vanity. thank you.

Great video as always jago. Love the subtle swipe at beeching in the end (at least that's what i took out of it)!

an interesting topic to research would be why Victorian-era architecture was viewed with such disfavour during the post-war period, given that their prettiness is quite plain to see

Your excellent reporting represents a subset of the almost continuous failure of sucessive British governments since the Romans departed to properly assess the importance of having any kind of transport plan, with just the occassional spark of realisation of the benefits. The London - Holyhead turnpike engineered by Telford being one such flash. When it came to canals, railways and ports there were still only a few flashes (the introduction of a "standard gauge", being a belated example). Many of your videos demostrate this lack of an overview of the global benefits of some form of plan/coordination that has resulted in a mish mash network. Further lack of vision has never really addressed the problems, again with some notable flashes such as Crossrail & the Elizabeth line. However, these flashes are dimished by such events as HS2 and the proper connection of the channel tunnel to mainland UK from the start. However, we should not be surprised, as vested interests have often scuppered attempts to rationalise transport, the landed gentry in Victorian days to Ernest Marples, (the owner of a Civil contruction company that built roads) who commissioning the Beeching Report (before fleeing to Monaco after being charged with tax avoidance !) and the "honest" Alexander dePiffle Johnson who stated that he would lie down in front of the bulldozers if a new London Airport runway was built & who thought that a pedestrian only bridge accross the Thames would help Londoners !!

splendid lecture, Sir 😍 #jagohazzard #london #thetube

Not only did I have the pleasure of hearing about these abandoned plans, but I had the challenge to see which stations I recognised. I think I've been to all the current termini at one time or another.

I like the use of the word ‘Termini’.

Cheers Jago, I look forward to your videos each week along with the inevitable one liner.

Dad went to his grave still worrying (but only mildly) that someone might come after him for the train he'd signed for as an Army captain in early 1944 but hadn't been able to sign off. But I suppose They knew there was a war on.

As a well-retired "putter-togetherer" of railway videos, I like looking behind the screen, shall we say. I'd love to see Jago's computer desk and its monitors. Folders full of magnificently-organised files of stills, clips, etc. To see him assembling a video would be a treat. I'm guessing that he writes his script, then scours his multitudinous store to find the bits he wants. Something missing? Out with the camera and start shooting. We know and admire all the results of this busy process. Long may it continue. Thanks a heap, Jago, and greetings from Australia 🇦🇺

It's an interesting concept which may have been trying to align with what many major European cities have ended up with, in that there's mostly just one or two massive central stations, but most importantly they're usually through stations. Part of the reason the London termini are all relatively huge is likely because they're termini instead of through stations. I do wonder how the railways across Europe managed it. Through routes are much better for everyone I think.

Btw great work on the B roll, you really capture the essence of each of these stations!

Had they followed through with the proposals think of the content this would have provided!! 😊

Some context here, I left London in 1969, commuted in to Liverpool Street until 1972 and left the UK in 1975. What amazed me the first time I landed at Gatwick and took the Thames Link to Kings X, return journey I think we were dropped at St Albans and got off at Gatwick. Had there been a large through station in London from day one, a lot of changing termini to termini could had been avoided. Great video as always, thank you!

Fascinating.

If the planners had thought up through running trains rather than termini they may have been on a winner. Direct trains from Victoria to King's Cross or Waterloo to Euston might have resulted in a complete change in traffic patterns.

There was an idea for a giant station under Hyde Park (tricky avoiding the Tyburn and the Westborne) and an Airport / Heliport on the land of Hyde Park

Is the elderly backbencher crazy because of frustrated ambition and being a backbencher for so long, or have they been a backbencher for so long because they were already crazy?

Long story short: if it ain’t broke don’t fix it

Jago, so few people understand the principles of efficient railway. Not surprised architects don't. We can treat the island of Great Britain as a metropolitan area with parts of higher and lower density. For efficiency, we cover the area with a rail grid. For efficiency, we do not terminate trains in city centres. In London we link up railway lines underground - 2 to 8 underground platforms at each existing terminal station. No stations closed, but we get efficient and effective railway services. Beeching got the whole thing wrong by focusing on costs - implementing his strategy greatly harmed the UK economy. The railway needed rationalisation, but rationalised to an island wide grid. The future should be all trains will be driverless and run by control centres. All trains will be electric, powered by continuous supply or battery - battery on lesser lines, if not all lines if battery tech becomes cheap enough. However, continuous supply reduces the max power supply. Island wide grid, autonomous, electric/battery should be the future of railway.

Famous Last Words: “Call me a cynic if you like.”

Mt cynic sir, fantastic video, award yourself many, many, many, many points!

I would argue that the plan to build Waterloo International was a badly thought out plan, as it involved building a flyover from a line towards Victoria over to a line from Waterloo to Wandsworth Town and stole capacity from both of those lines. Logically, we should have had a new international through station for London, that would take Eurostar trains into the Midlands, the North, Scotland and Wales. I would argue that the plan to shut down Waterloo International and turn it into a shopping centre was a badly thought out plan, as Waterloo is a very busy station and needed more capacity. Luckily that plan was defeated. I would argue that the plan to build St Pancras International was a badly thought out plan, as it repeated the stupidity of terminating high speed rail coming into the UK at London. London is merely the first large city that you get to, when you arrive from Europe. It's the start of Great Britain - not the end of Great Britain. I would argue that the plan to build HS2 to Euston, instead of building a new high speed through station for London, and bypassing St Pancras, so that our existing Javelin trains could travel to the Midlands, the North and Scotland, along with Eurostar trains, was yet again a badly thought out plan. One of the big drivers that broke through 100 or so years of Central Government not wanting to pay for London to have Crossrail was the fact that passengers arrive at London Terminals, go onto the Zone 1 section of London Underground, and then bounce around like balls in a pinball machine, trying to get from one London Terminal to another London Terminal, so that they can leave London and get to the place that they actually want to get to. None of those passengers going from London Terminal to London Terminal want to be on London Underground. They want to get where they are going. And those people chug up Zone 1 and make the whole system work less effectively. The instant success of Crossrail passenger journeys shows that removing the stupidity of having to trek between Paddington and Liverpool Street is something that we should learn from. Sometimes we can't do everything in one go, so obviously sometimes it is justified to build a temporary terminus, just so a railway can start to operate and start to provide a public service. But all of the termini in London cause large numbers of passengers to split out and flood onto other modes of transport. We need to plan to send as many people through cities, without getting off trains, as possible. And where people do need to change, we need to try to make sure all the modes of transport are as balanced as possible, so that we don't have 12 car trains dropping off passengers who all need to get onto 2 car railways or bus routes that only have one bus every half an hour. We can never be perfect, but you are very good at uncovering all the mistakes of the past. We can learn from every one of those mistakes and make sure we do not repeat those mistakes.

Replacing terminal stations with through running is a great idea, but you do actually need to build the tunnels and stations to connect all the radial railways. That’s a lot of new railway. Especially if you ALSO pull in the intercity lines through and terminate them on the other side of London.

I would have thought one of the main problems (as well as the enormous number of platforms required at the termini) would be congestion on the tracks leading into the station. The already congested Southern suburban lines would need some bonkers rerouting, and would not be workable.

As I lived in West Midlands, lost main line Snowshill replaced local railway and metro ,looking out place with modern buildings surrounded, again enjoy the video and your history, lesson,when I visited London, like travelling on Chiltern line to Marylebone

As a younger Australian, I was surprised there was no “London” railway station.

While Marylebone, just , could have passed away I am less sure about Fenchurch Street, I think the planners just forgot it was there when they walked around London.

Good stuff 👍

09:45 c2c mentioned wheyyyyy! Very glad that the many termini weren't closed, i couldn't imagine trying to board trains with that much foot traffic

The idea of a terminus for each cardinal direction makes me thing a little of Berlin, with its four similarly located interchange stations named for the compass points. (Ostkreuz, sudkreuz, etc)

The idea of consolidating the terminals just didn’t make sense because like Jago said it’s unrealistic to force all the services into one location unless you’re doing through running

If we were to go back in time and redesign all of the UK's railways from scratch in a single unified project, I think four railway termini would be sufficient so long as it was possible to build enough platforms at each. This would allow better integration between the railways going into London. However, once the railways had already been built, trying to retroactively reduce the number of termini would have been way too impractical and would have been very expensive with limited reward. While it can be annoying to have to hop on the tube to get from one main line to another (something I had to do when I visited the UK in 2019), at least the tube exists and offers fast and frequent services making getting between railway termini fairly convenient all things considered.

The only plausible way to reduce the number of London terminals is to convert all the suburban services into Thameslink/Crosslizpurp type services that don't _need_ terminals. If the stations had previously been under-used and inefficient then it might have been different ... but if you're going to replace 15 platforms at Euston, 6 platforms at San Pan and 11 platforms at Kings Cross with a 32-platform Somerstown behemoth then you aren't really saving anything!

0:23 - This shot brings back memories of ‘The Ladykillers’.

I have to agree, lots of these 40's plans seem although they were purely dreamed up on a map, without any consultation with reality. Combining everything into 4 cardinal termini sounds lovely on paper, but as you say, I doubt anybody in the industry was consulted on it

I think one of the biggest problems is just that these plans always revolved around replacing the termini with more termini, not acknowledging the problem that terminus stations are fundamentally inefficient uses of space and track capacity. If rather than replacing them with more termini, they had went with a through running concept with only some trains actually ending in the city, but most running across the city and ending somewhere on the other side (doesn't need to be far outside london), they would have been more able to accommodate higher frequencies and the central london stations would be less congested due to passengers being spread out over them rather than mostly concentrating on a single terminus.

Did I miss the mention of New York City's "grand central station" . . . ?

If you compare station consolidations proposed in London with other station consolidations in Liverpool/Merseyside and Manchester, you can see the consistency in the thinking at that time. Post-industrialization was starting to hit many economic sectors, causing declines in freight receipts. The advent of high speed motorways was syphoning off passenger traffic. For newly formed British Railways, maintaining the portfolio of stations and termini across the network must have been a tremendous cost, especially post-war when so many facilities were either heavily damaged by bombing or just plain worn out from decades of minimal investment and upkeep. Certainly fortuitous that large scale consolidation didn’t happen in London given current and future demand, but 60 years ago it was a different reality.

Barman, a cynic for Mr Jago. Make it a double.

Must keep in mind yhat not only were there (and are) gazillions of passenger trains to worry about, there were more goods trains, parcels/mail trains, newspaper trains, etc.

Curious that they arrived at 4 as the number of termini required. 8 feels instinctively more simple as you can line up the stations with compass points, although clearly some would clearly be larger than others. A missed opportunity, perhaps, but I'm certainly glad that many of the old buildings are still standing, particularly St Pancras.

Also, in the US rail companies created large central union stations they built and ran together

great indepth video , as ever JH

The plan to build 4 stations at the 4 cardinal points made me think of Monopoly game board

I wonder if they were thinking about Paris, with the Gare du Nord, Gare du Sud etc

North America provides an interesting contrast. In a number of cities, but not all, the railways were basically forced to create a "Union Station" because government wouldn't let each railway build a downtown station since there would no longer be a downtown left ! Same with Los Angeless. Chicago has a Union station because it made it convenient to connect from one railway from New York to the railway going west to pacific. (but despite that, Chicago also has other stations). Toronto has a Union station because it made business sense for both railways (CN and predecessor raiways) as well as CP (and subsidiaries) that both had tracks there to build a single station. Québec city also built a "Union Station" (Gare du Palais) though this station was more of a CP property which also gave access to CN (and predecessor) trains. Both railways had tracks to the port, so it wasn't a big construction problem. But when you look at cities such as Paris or Moscow, t he lines going in make it very had to creaate a single central station as they all stop around downtown arriving from different directions. Moscow does have a number of stations at Komsomolskaya square (Leningradsky, Yaroslavskiy and Kazansky). But as tracks come from different directions, would be a big deal to unify ito a single station. If London stations are all at capacity, it makes no sense to try to combine 2 adjacent ones, ecept to jus facilitate transfers. In the end, you need as many tracks/platforms as you can get and there is no goal of consolidating. (and if you did consolidate, how would you do this withourt disrupting traven of 2 stations need to be demolished while you rebuild the new super mega station?) Berlin is perhaps lucky in in that with re-unification, it was able to rethink and optimise its downtown serviecs and build one such mega station. But still doesn't mean all trains terminate there as lower cost options often terminate a station or two away to avoid the costs of operating into Berlin Haufbanhof (sp?)

Guangdong South is a good example of a monstrous badly designed 'super' terminal.

America has 'Union' stations worked by different companies, so it can be done, although American rail passenger trains are not generally working at anything like UK levels of intensity.

Excellent video very interesting. I think the beaching cuts was the worst thing to happen to the railways.

I don't know how you manage to keep track of all the history of London railways. It just seems to go on forever. Back there the week after next. Looking forward to the buses, Tube and Overground again plus this time the DLR as well. I imagine some Londoners must think I'm crazy - maybe they're right? (Still, they might check out the alternatives in other huge cities before being too judgemental). Thanks Jago.

This video is funnier than it has any right to be.

The other issue with the plan is that it was heavily predicated on the concept of termini stations, whereas the modern-day concept is to have through-running trains across the city to not only allow someone coming in from one side of the city to reach the other side without changing, but to also reduce the instantaneous load on each station by not having an entire train disembark in one go (St Pancras gets ridiculously busy if the Thameslink core is shut, even at weekends). St Pancras, London Bridge, Blackfriars, Paddington and Liverpool Street already through-run to varying degrees with Thameslink and the Elizabeth line, it would be great to make the others through-run with more Crossrail lines as well. I'm thinking something like Victoria-Euston as with the Crossrail 2 plan, or Waterloo-Liverpool Street would be massively beneficial. And of course HS2 really ought to through-run onto HS1.

As a train need I have to say a fun thing to do is read back the railway magazine for "this month and year in X decade" since they have their complete archive from 1897 available for a very reasonable fee. The war years were full of big "plans for peace". On Marylebone I suspect there was thought the GCR would have its Western parts into Paddington. And northern into the northern terminus...unless they forgot about it which has been known to happen...poor old Watkin can't catch a break on this channel.

A long time ago, for unimportant reasons, I was doing the announcing at Cannon Street one evening. Towards the end of the rush hour there was a delay to an incoming train and the station inspector sitting beside me in the goldfish bowl above the barriers decided to change the platform. I duly announced the new platform and a crocodile of waiting passengers set off. No sooner had I spoken and before the inspector called the signal box, they came on to say they were switching the train to a different platform! I had to quickly call "stop" to the crocodile and reverse it to the new platform. I didn't hear of any complaints but had they been heading for Platform 1 and it was now to be Platform 53, the story might have been different. I wasn't asked back.

1943 Plan? Yeah. That was a priority. 😂

The 40s it seems in regard to railways people were throwing ideas around hoping it’ll stick, very short term solution’s, St. Pancras being a prime example, it’s no longer just a Midland terminal but also a terminal for Kent express trains and an international terminal, something we would never have had, the gigantic South London station didn’t take into account that they’d have to demolish half of inner South London just girl rearrange the lines and to build this new station!

It is really odd to think that the reason St Pancras still exists is because it became a terminus for European trains (not to mention Kent - so I wont). A "Northern" terminus repurposed for Southern destinations. though there are still some northern services (Derby, Sheffield etc). Its quite handy if you want to go from Paris to Edinburgh as its a two minute walk to Kings Cross. Sometime way back when, I seem to remember someone writing about a London Central station. Lower than current subsurface lines but able to cater for "through" trains. The idea I suspect was to have a station which would see trains from Cardiff, Glasgow, Edinburgh (to name a few) have the possibility to go through London on their way to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Rome. Not so much a tube line, more a pipe dream.

It may have been possible to divert the midland mainline into Euston by redirecting the tunnel from West Hampstead to Kentish Town. After leaving West Hampstead trains would enter the tunnel, but turn south and re-emerge at Primrose Hill

Instead of "elderly backbench politician" I heard "elderly French politician" and was seriously considering whether these scripts are getting all too continental in orientation, much like St. Pancras.

I suspect the WW2 ' remodeling ' probably also had a hand in the death of Broad Street station, as well as it being too close to Liverpool Street station, but closing it meant that the inside of Liverpool Street station had to be redeveloped. Interestingly the Labour Party has plans to reintegrate the rail network, because of the now ludicrous plethora of tickets. I hope they win, because I would love to go back to that part of British Rail's ways. For example I was once at Hastings with my younger brother and the Charing Cross train was the semi fast service, leaving before the slow train to Victoria, so we took the Charing Cross train, something you can't do now, because they are run by different companies. Likewise I was with my late father and both my brothers once at Victoria and the ticket barrier guard, told us that one of the trains on the other side of the barrier, was to be delayed and a slow service, so we got on the other train, that was going to our chosen destination. I doubt that the modern company staff, would bother to tell you stuff like that, because of the profit motives of their bosses. That's why the services are so bad now. An integrated ticket and network system is always more efficient. Further to that the rolling stock leasing companies will be able to be more efficient, without interference from the privatised companies obsessions with branding.

Could you include maps where the stations are so we can see what the plans would have changed? I know that St Pancras and Kings Cross are right next to one another but the others i barely know, so, you know, share this knowledge as it seems pretty important to the video topic

Another way of removing termini is to make them through running stations. Where there such plans? Following the example of the RER in Paris?