please empty your brain below
"apart from One Canada Square behind the Trellick Tower". Unamusingly, the Walkie Talkie lurches unto sight between the two, looking closely. Bah!

Gordon | 30.03.17 - 7:10 a.m. | #

Appreciative words indicating relief that you undertook thIS journey '..so we don't have to..'

Frank F | 30.03.17 - 7:16 a.m. | #

Sadly it is time to delete this blog, the number of posts about brexit has dropped to be replaced by this kind of thing week in week out and looks set to continue. BBC news site is now much more useful.

Geofftech | 30.03.17 - 7:31 a.m. | #

Nice to read an update on the Western Avenue, I have not been along there for some time, as the American Diner was still open.
I remember the road when the factories of Aladdin and Hoover were still open.
Between Park Royal station and Hanger lane you walked past Ritz parade, named after the large cinema that used to stand there.
http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/18270

There was also a cinema in Greenford Road near the Greenford Road/Western Avenue flyover which was a Granada theatre, now a Tesco supermarket last time I went by.

John | 30.03.17 - 7:52 a.m. | #

The Hanger Lane Gyratory is a late 60s early 70s confection - the 112 had its extra journeys to Park Royal Stn. withdrawn in October 1965 ahead of the construction of the underpass (the bus used to be able to turn right to stand outside the shops).

What did take place was the widening of the North Circular in the late 80s early 90s between Hanger Lane and Neasden.

Still anon | 30.03.17 - 8:01 a.m. | #

Lovely view towards the City. Is that part of the dome of St Pauls appearing to the left of Trellick Tower and the HSBC Tower?

Richard | 30.03.17 - 8:46 a.m. | #

I remember going to the Hoover building in 1959, it was a children's sports day. I think that was the start of my love of the Art Deco.
I thought that it looked like a place and not a factory, I got a china mug for winning a race.

Michael | 30.03.17 - 8:54 a.m. | #

Have your read "Leadville: A Biography of the A40" by Edward Platt? Worth a look.

dg writes: I have thanks (though I haven't mentioned it since 2004). And yes, very much worth a look.

Bryn Davies | 30.03.17 - 9:23 a.m. | #

Michael @8.54am -- I remember going to a children's sports day at the Guinness brewery at Park Royal (which you could see from the A40) at about the same time. My father worked there. There was a tug of war contest between a team from Guinness and a team from Hoover.

Charles | 30.03.17 - 9:32 a.m. | #

More sport, I played cricket at the Guinness Park Royal sports ground.

I think dg did well to walk along the side of a busy polluted road for such a distance. Sooner him than me.

John | 30.03.17 - 9:42 a.m. | #

Apropos of nothing, just listening to an LRB podcast where Iain Sinclair mentions walking round the London Overground route, in each direction. There's a thought.

Was wondering where the dome of St Pauls might be in that image... Yes, in the Flickr full scale image, I think a segment of the dome is peeping out to the left of the leftmost of the three Canary Wharf towers.

What was the traffic like?

Andrew | 30.03.17 - 9:51 a.m. | #

The sign at the station is still sort of correct. You still have to go under the bridge for trains to Ealing Broadway and Paddington. It makes no assertion that these are direct trains.

It could be better worded but it would ideally be replaced in December 2019 stating trains to West Ealing for Elizabeth line services to Ealing Broadway and central London.

Pedantic of Purley | 30.03.17 - 10:14 a.m. | #

@Still anon
The underpass was completed in 1963, but it was twenty years later that the western bridge was built, "islanding" the station and making it a gyratory.

here is a 1970 picture showing two way traffic on what is now the eastern bridge
[picture]

The removal of the 112 journeys to Park Royal in 1965 was because they was replaced by the new, but short-lived, 187A
http://www.londonbuses.co.uk/routes/187a.html

timbo | 30.03.17 - 11:01 a.m. | #

My parents were married in St Mary's Perivale in the early 1980s - believe a special licence was needed as it hadn't been a "church" for around a decade.

andy c | 30.03.17 - 11:37 a.m. | #

Thanks Timbo, that's much later than I thought, I'll stop now before we end up in a different colour!

Still anon | 30.03.17 - 11:42 a.m. | #

I was traveling along that stretch on Saturday and thought how grim it must be to live alongside it, but you managed to make it sound almost lovely!!
If I'd known that was potentially the day you were plodding along, I'd have kept my eyes peeled!

I live a couple of miles from Northala Fields and pop over for "a peer from the top" quite regularly. In fact I was there two days ago, but it was too hazy to see the City - or even the Wembley Arch!

Cornish Cockney | 30.03.17 - 5:25 p.m. | #

I remember encountering a car which was going the wrong way round the Hanger Lane gyratory just after it opened. As an ambulance with blue lights flashing was also going round (the right way) at the same time it all got a bit hairy.

Andrew S | 30.03.17 - 6:00 p.m. | #











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