The train to Herford North at Finsbury Park, 1976

Comment by Gordon T 19 hours ago

Well, it was a building site in 1976! The square white sign on the building states 'No Entry for Plant'.

This was during the late stages of electrifying the lines from Moorgate and King's Cross to Hertford North and Welwyn Garden City. Also, the four-coach diesel train was about to be replaced by six-coach electric trains, so it too is looking rather shabby.

Comment by Hugh 18 hours ago

Thanks. Yes, I noticed that after posting the image! Nonetheless, my memories of British Rail at this time were of a rather run-down set-up.

I didn't move to hornsey until the late 1980s. For about 20 years I used to catch the train into town first from Hornsey then Harringay. Coming back in the evenings, I remember a station announcer at Finsbury Park who used to speak in quite a broa West Indian accent. He used to call my train home this, "Platform six for 'arringay, 'ornsey and H'alexander Palace". How I wish I'd recorded hime before he moved on. 

Comment by John Leeming 18 hours ago

The Great Northern suburban lines were very run down in the decade or two before electrification. Infrequent and unevenly-spaced services were supplied by a mixture of two-coach DMUs displaced from country branch-lines and ancient loco-hauled coaches, some of them going back to the 1920s. Some southbound trains terminated at Finsbury Park, requiring a wait of at least five minutes for a connection to Kings Cross, and even then some of those terminated at York Road rather than the Kings Cross suburban platforms. Many of the stations were still gas-lit, though they did usually have waiting rooms (heated by coke stoves). Finsbury Park station was falling to bits, though it did have the clearest public address system I can recall hearing at a station. Electrification and integration with the Northern City Line brought great improvements, and the more recent integration with Thameslink has been another step in the right direction.

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