Lived at Hither Green and heard the railway sounds quite often. Loved the DEMU units thundering threw and the announcements from the station

Really miss sitting on the wood floor in the guards carriage listening to the squeak from the 3rd rail....

I loved the Hastings Units. Late 70s my best friend lived on the Neckinger Estate off Abbey Street and from his front door we could see the lines from London Bridge. Every time we heard the diesel engines we would rush to the door and watch them pass.

The MLV's were loved by the drivers, having 3 sets of 4CEP which inherited the very powerful traction motors from the Portsmouth line express EMU's, the MLV's also had the same traction motors and you literally had 16 cars of traction effort in a 13 car consist making the trains very sprightly on the pullaway and hill climbing. You used to feel the driver let the motors find their beans once getting past Bickley and that speed kept up lovely all the way down with full line speed down towards Reculver and the driver giving it some rizz by this time. Now there was an urban legend regarding one poor MLV, shunter for a Royal Mail parcels inadvertently hooked a MLV in line with parcel vans and the poor thing ended up doing the long west down to Plymouth where folks down there seeing it was not on a return consist sheet just parked it up in a siding and led to some backwards and forwards between SR and WR, think it ended up one day dragged to Reading and dumped on a siding there for it to be picked up and sent to Slade Green or Selhurst as the old girl was looking rough by this point.

The 2HAL deicer used to be if memory serves me right, stabled at Slades Green as the one at Grove Park sheds was a converted Tyneside EPB 2 car with a odd looking cab window arrangement.

London Bridger/New Cross/Lewisham/Hither Green brings back hose journeys to work in the 1970's - Sidcup Line to Charing Cross (Holborn Viaduct for a while, via Nunhead & the Elephant). We thought BR (Southern) was bad enough, but since then we've suffered Connex and Southeastern, God help us. I remember going home during the the hot summer of 1976. 4-EBP's that had been stewing on some siding all day with the windows closed. It was like stepping into an oven when they arrived ECS at Charing Cross!

I remember in 1971, my late father legendary signalman took me to watch the last steam train a charter to run through platform 3 at London Bridge to go onwards to Cannon St then reverse up into Charing X which still had its ramshackle signalbox back then as well. After the train had gone through, father took me into Tooley St signalbox to scrounge some tea and talk trash with the signalmen he was mates with then we wandered over to the building site of the new power box which ironically was where he finished his career with BR at. I also got to see his first box boy signalbox that being North Kent Jnc East which was quite a busy box as the Bricklayer's Arms branch was still in use by Royal Mail and for stabling engineers trains for upcoming works possessions.

Very much enjoyed those old photos

very enjoyable

Fantastic pictures, Beckenham Junction towards Shortlands was still the same view last year(2019) no changes at all, MLV building top left was the coal hard office,sadly Catford Dogs closed down about 20years ago, so many memories of EPBs thanks

Code 83! It just popped back into my head. The Holborn Viaduct service (9:19) brought back memories. It was the train I caught to school from Denmark Hill to Nunhead every day for seven years, and the one I used on my angling expeditions.

Thanks for sending me here. I love the Hastings units. They went to more places than I thought.

10:02 Dept. de-icing units: These were converted from 2-HAL's in 1967.

Very interesting. Remember this era well. I can recall the old arrangement at London Bridge with platforms 1,2 and 3 being the down platforms and platforms 4 then 6 and 7(? - if I recall rightly there was a 'missing' platform, 5 I think) being the up platforms.)

Thank you for sharing.

Amersham Arms, one of my cherished favourite boozers would always drop in for a cheeky aperitif on way to the Den and some after game shenanigans and they used to have some of the best punk bands on live there... happy days :D

Always nice to see slam door train,s on southeastern

Little blue Reliant Robin atop the roadbridge at New Cross.

looks a bit like the MLV has characteristics of what we across the drink would call a 'combine' (parcels space).

Had to pause and look closely at the image at 3-05 as it appeared the crane hook was attached to the signal gantry !!!!

Lovely trains they were they had chactetor

they used 1938 Tube stock on the East London line then then? De-icing unit 003? ? Why, that was originally the motor coaches from 4-LAV 2954 & 2955.

having returned to my Quebec roots ages ago, that British 'dutifulness' apologising for the unfortunately deteriorated state of their positives fuckingly irritates me: The spontaneity lurking within you brilliant archivists ought to be praised (e.g., neither Canadiens nor Canadians'd ever bothered to set out to document) ;) 🍸

10:05 looks like it used to be a 402/2hal