please empty your brain below

Another cracking railway article DG. Why don't you just come out of the closet and admit to being a keen railway enthusiast?

I'm already looking forward to your 'East London Railway: a welcoming' sometime around mid-2010!

Me, a keen railway enthusiast? I think I was the only person trying to take a photograph of that tunnel without a train in it.

Apparently it was graffiti at Shadwell tube station that inspired Paul Simon to write 'Poem on the Underground Wall'.

And 'Homeward Bound' was written at Widnes station - home being London at the time.

Didn't the ELL close for 1-2 years quite recently as well, or did I imagine that? The locals must be thrilled.

To avoid the inevitable collective of blokes with cameras, I went on my own little goodbye tour last Saturday. The Tunnel Tour was definitely worth a fiver.

I really couldn't be a trainspotter in real life though - the embarrassment of being stared at whilst trying to get pics of the murals at Shadwell on the way home was a bit too much for me.

Anyway, a fitting tribute, DG, thanks for capturing the memories of this tube line. Shadwell DLR has been impressively tarted up but it doesn't quite make up for losing a bona fide tube station.

Infrastructure Enthusiast doesn't have quite the same ring.

Did they leave any of the original brickwork exposed when they concreted the tunnel over?

As 'not a rail enthusiast' I like the term infrastructure enthusiast as that was what I was photographing yesterday - and it isn't me in DG's pics.

Yes the line has been shut before as DG points out. By the time it re-opens in 2010 it will have spent a 3rd of its last 15 years shut.

And yes, a section of original brickwork was left, it's the part of the tunnel beneath the museum at Rotherhithe.

The ELL was shut when I moved here 10 years ago and it'll be shut when I move on next year. I remember an estate agent telling me that the 95-98 replacement bus service was actually better than the tube service it replaced (not that I believe a single word they say).
Anyway, farewell to a little line with a LOT of history.

I'll miss it too - never got the chance for a last-day trip, but it did come in very handy when the Jubilee Line was buggered the other week. A very evocative little line.

The neighbouring Rotherhithe road tunnel opened 100 years ago on 12th June 1908. Pictures of the opening ceremony are here http://tinyurl.com/5slpra as well as pictures of the construction











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