please empty your brain below
My wedding was at Langtons in September 2012. It is a stunning place and our photos from the gardens really made our day special.

Rob Hey | 26.11.24 - 7:17 a.m. | #

That was far more than I'd expected from the line. Can't decide whether my favourite is the retro orange lettering or the end of the ice age.

martin | 26.11.24 - 7:22 a.m. | #

A fascinating write-up, thank you.

Many of your regular readers have heard of the Beam River as it indirectly gives its name to the proposed / delayed / cancelled station much further downstream, somwehere near here here.

Notts Observer | 26.11.24 - 7:40 a.m. | #

Billet Lane was where I was born. Langtons was where the old library was and the Registrar of Births Marriages and Deaths. Brings back a lot of happy memories.

Dave B | 26.11.24 - 7:46 a.m. | #

The Liberty Line will also take you to one of the last of the slowly dwindling band of Wimpy restaurants in the London region.

dg writes: see #10

I have a nostalgic fondness for Wimpy, one of those landmarks of my youth slowly melting away like the last puddles from the Emerson Park glacier.

When I come back to London a couple of times a year to spin around on all things transport, I'll sometimes organise my trips so that one of the Wimpy locations coincides with a meal break. But it's getting harder - the ones at Holborn and Walworth Road are long gone, Clapham Junction closed in recent years, and Teddington, so handy for for X26 (sorry, SL7) is gone too, replaced by somewhere selling smashed avacado (you couldn't get a clearer example of the changing of the guard)

Ruislip is still a handy one for transport intersections, but it's too modern. Similarly Lakeside, deep in a massive mall, feels wrong somehow.

Upminister wins my vote as the most Wimpy Wimpy, as I sit there tucking into my quarterpounder and cheese listening to Essex accents while a bottle blonde chats to the regulars, I can almost feel myself back in the 1970s.

So, a trip on the Liberty Line, a Wimpy, and maybe a 370 onwards to greener pastures.

Steve

Steve Conway | 26.11.24 - 8:29 a.m. | #

It was Hornchurch Sports Centre that was built in 1987 on the site of the current car park. The Leisure Centre opened a few years ago.

Ackshley | 26.11.24 - 9:25 a.m. | #

Not sure that's quite right re the Old Queen's Theatre, which was on the east side of Station Lane - not least as Hornchurch doesn't have a ring road. I remember the building standing derelict at some point in the 80s, I presume.

Used to be (maybe still is) an excellent pie and mash place on Hornchurch High Street within the remit of Emerson Park station too - more than just a Wimpy

Dominic H | 26.11.24 - 9:38 a.m. | #

Until 2014, I attended monthly evening meetings of the Havering Transport Circle (formerly the South-West Essex branch of the East Anglian Railway Museum), which in its later years met at Langtons. The group folded after 40 years when no-one wanted to fill the various committee posts. Despite many years of visiting, I never did get a proper look at Langtons in daylight. Perhaps a trip to savour the highlights of the Liberty line will put that right.

Alan S | 26.11.24 - 10:57 a.m. | #

At the other end of the park and across the road, the sign for the Ravensbourne River is in the wrong place. It's actually placed against the Beam River.

Ackshley | 26.11.24 - 11:11 a.m. | #

4) Retro orange lettering is definitely my thing. Including the large Qs near the top of the building in your photo. (Eurostile)

JonathanC | 26.11.24 - 11:52 a.m. | #

The Liberty line still boasts one of London's last railway foot crossings - linking Osborne Road with Cranham Road.

dg writes: indeed

Carllo | 26.11.24 - 12:42 p.m. | #

One of the highlights of a visit to Emerson Park is the opportunity to admire this historic hairdressers sign.

Graham | 26.11.24 - 1:37 p.m. | #

No point in visiting the Upminster Tithe Barn Museum. It’s closed and emptied of all its exhibits pending the complete structural renovation and replacing the thatched roof.

Bob S | 26.11.24 - 4:19 p.m. | #

Nice of TfL to name the line after Romford's shopping centre!

Cornish Cockney | 26.11.24 - 4:40 p.m. | #

Born in Upminster, lunch at the restaurant on the top floor of Roomes Stores was the height (literally) of sophistication in my youth.

My house overlooked the LTS/District line where the "Liberty Line" joined it. I can remember the "shadow" of the line connecting the Emerson Park line to the LTS main line, crossing the District on the flat. It must have been recently lifted, sometime in the late 50s/early 60s.

We used to put pennies on the branch line to be flattened by the DMU. Such larks, Pip!

mcg | 26.11.24 - 5:47 p.m. | #

Great piece. Thankyou.

Unfortunately, the '1000 things to see on the District line' is dead.

Pdm | 26.11.24 - 9:10 p.m. | #

Pdm, have a look at the date in the URL of that link.

dncn | 26.11.24 - 10:02 p.m. | #











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