Tracking Down the Remains of Spencer Road Halt: An Abandoned Railway in South London

recently I made a video covering Bingham Road an abandoned station on the former sanderstead line in South London which is now part of the Cen tram Network except not all of the sand deadline is on the tram and a few people in the comments section informed me that there is in fact a totally disused section of track that was never reused complete with a very identifiable station the former Spencer Road halt well that sounds worth a look doesn't it I got off the tram at Lloyd Park what happens here is that the tram takes a sharp left and it leaves the former sanderstead line and heads towards new Addington new Addington is a new town built when the government didn't consider rail a priority so the tram line is completely new well nearly a quarter of a century old at this point but you know relatively new this looks to me like the way the Old Railway line would have continued now I talked about the history of this line in the aforementioned video about Bingham road so I'll keep it brief this time the sanderstead line was originally the Woodside and South Cen joint Railway which ran from Woodside to South Cen and was jointly owned by the Southeastern Railway and the London Brighton and South Coast Railway it was built in the hope of stimulating traffic on those companies other lines in the area but it wasn't popular two stations Spencer Road and Bingham Road were added in 1905 but those weren't popular either and the line was closed in 1917 it was reopened and electrified in 1935 because another new line from sanderstead to orpington was supposed to be opening but that didn't happen the line limped on until 1983 when it closed one thing I didn't mention in the previous video was exactly why may 1983 was chosen as the closure date well the final nail in the coffin was that British Rail were upgrading the signals in the area at that time and they figured the cost of doing this on the sanderstead line wasn't worth it now this road runs quite close to the disused line there are one or two subtle clues that we're approaching Spencer Road for the trained ey see if you can spot one of them here the first glimpse of the abandoned route is here down this Alleyway there's a very substantial bridge and riddle me this Batman why is a bridge that's not on a railway owned by Network rail peep over the parapet and you can see a railway cutting rather overgrown now of course back to the street and further along there's another Alleyway and here we hit the jackpot this is unmistakably the site of Spencer Road halt note the very well-maintained Footbridge even better there's still track in place buried beneath the undergrowth after the line closed the section from selon to Spencer Road was kept as a siding for Royal tankers that section of line was taken out of use in 1993 but clearly British Rail didn't think it was worth their trouble to actually pull it up or and this is purely speculation based upon how intact everything else is maybe they thought there was a possibility that they'd reopen it in the future the halt is even more abandoned than the rest of the line because rather than reopening in 1935 it was demolished apart from the bridge and the track there's not much of the actual station to see if anything really you can kind of see why it was a flop the only way to to get to it is via Alleyways in quiet residential streets and the line itself gave commuters a very indirect route into Central London meanwhile I would estimate that less than half a mile away you have South Cen station it's more substantial it's near a main road with plenty of shops it offers a quick route into Central London a couple of hundred yards from the former Spencer Road halt on the same disused line you have this bridge we've gone from a line in a cutting to a line at ground level to a line far above the road in the space of less than a mile which illustrates another of the reasons this line was such a failure it required a lot of expensive engineering when you add in the fact that it was a not very direct route through an area that already had a lot of Railways it was really quite a Gamble and the trouble with gambling is that very often you lose well I hope you enjoyed today's video if so please do leave a like and consider subscribing for more this probably won't be the last time I visit the sander deadline because I do like a good abandoned station also I've been pronouncing it sanderstead in this video but I pronounced it sanderstead in the Bingham Road one I think it's sanderstead with a short a that's how the announcement on the bus put it anyway I would like to thank my donors on Kofi and P patreon and here on YouTube for your generous support you are the oil tankers to my abandoned Railway and I'll see you all again very soon cheerio

Channel: Jago Hazzard

Views: 65,175

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Id: kVwoaGOs-Xg

Length: 6min 4sec (364 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 03 2024