Puffing Billy becomes the Polar Express for line’s last winter
Pictured back in January 1963, here we see the Hayling Billy awaiting to depart from Havant’s bay platform. The picture was taken at the beginning of the train's last year of operation on the lovely old branch line from Havant to Hayling Island. For in November 1963 the line would be finished for good.
The locomotive A1X 32678, which was built in 1880, is still with us and based at the Kent & East Sussex Railway although it has been on loan to the Isle of Wight Steam Railway.
In her time on the London Brighton and South Coast Railway and later British Railways she ran 1,411,436 miles.
The bay platform has since been shortened and the running line area is now a car park. To the right, the left part of the footbridge cannot now be seen as a lift shaft has been put in place.
Wheelchair users could, at one time, cross to the up side on a sleepered foot crossing. It was a long way from the down side, where the booking office is located, to the up side to catch a train to London.
On December 14, I published a photograph of Milepost Cottages, Cosham, which were demolished in 1970.
Robert Pragnell tells me they were named after a milepost in London Road which still stands to this day and is Grade II listed.
The listing states that the milestone is a late eighteenth/early nineteenth century Portland stone square pillar with applied cast-iron plate which replaced the original worn inscription on the stone.
With Christmas still in our thoughts, the picture below might still brighten our thoughts in these depressing dark days of mid-winter. For here we are looking north along London Road, North End, Portsmouth, from Kingston Cross in December 1959.
On the left on the corner of Kingston Crescent is Burton the gentlemen’s tailors.
As can be seen the street Christmas decorations are somewhat
The milepost at Cosham after which Milestone Cottages were named . Picture: Robert Pragnell brighter than today’s rather pathetic attempts.
Yet more has come in on that dividing wall built in Morley Road, Southsea, that I published originally on December 17.
William Morgan, whose father played for Pompey in the 1939 cup final tells me: ‘I well remember the ‘Berlin wall’. I lived in the first house seen on the ‘riff raff ’ side of
London Road, North End, Portsmouth, Christmas 1959. the wall ( the one behind the workman) with my parents for many years.
The house was owned by my dad who was an ex-professional footballer having played for Portsmouth in the 1939 Cup Final. I remember as a lad climbing up a drainpipe on the riff-raff side of the wall to drop over to the posh side as a short cut to the beach.’