Alexandra Palace miniature railway

Comment by Tony on February 13, 2021 at 11:53

I remember riding on this several times as a child in the 70's. Does anyone know what year this stopped running ?

Comment by Mr John Polley on February 13, 2021 at 14:11

Having asked Peter, he thinks it closed in 1969 or maybe 1970. Peter was told somebody was injured by the train and it was thereafter permanently closed for safety reasons.

Comment by Tony on February 13, 2021 at 16:03

If that's the case then it must of been the late 60's when I went on it shortly before it closed.

Comment by Tony on February 13, 2021 at 16:23

There are several short movie clips of the train in the following link.

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/142866-alexandra...

Comment by Jeremyb on February 19, 2021 at 10:59

There was a history of the railway in the Hornsey Historical Society Journal No 60 2019. This says that the railway closed for good at the end of the 1970 season. The accident mentioned above - in which two people were killed-was in August 1952, but the railway reopened in 1953.

Comment by Michael Berg on February 20, 2021 at 5:41

A great picture, thanks. In the late fifties I rode on this train often, but never paid! My friends and I would jump onto the back of the train as it left the station and curved round to the right. Until one day the people who ran it (I think it might have been the fairground people) planted a couple of their big tough lads in the back seat who bodily threw us off the train! That was the last time we tried it.

Comment by John Liffen on February 24, 2021 at 15:46

As the author of the article in the Hornsey Historical Society Bulletin I was pleased to see this photograph, as images of the Alexandra Park miniature railway in the public domain are scarce. One of the film clips shows Mrs A H Farley, wife of the Chairman of the Alexandra Palace Trustees, formally opening the railway on 24 May 1950 and no doubt the other clips were all taken on the same day. One of them (450032318) shows the sharp left-then-right where the train overturned in 1952, killing two passengers and injuring many others. I note that the 1970 photograph was taken by Peter Watson of Whittington Road. When I attended Bounds Green Infants and Junior Schools in the mid to late 1950s I was acquainted with a boy of that name who was in the same year as me and who also lived in Whittington Road. I wondered if they might be one and the same.

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