Time | Stevemayne's Blog

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Alexandra Palace, british-history, History, London, Time, Trains, Travel

I’ve not written anything for ages, so, as it’s well into the new year, I thought I should knuckle down. The trouble is that there’s so much “noise” out and about, what with Trump, Musk, et al. Still, life goes on and I can always look away from the awfulness unfolding around me.

Someone posted a photograph on Facebook of an old railway station at Alexandra Palace in North London (UK). It was built right into the main structure of the Palace, too, which caught my eye, not least because I didn’t know there had been a railway there. I have no great connection with Alexandra Palace beyond my living in North London myself for a few years, but I did travel past the place every day when I was commuting from Stevenage in Hertfordshire into London every day in the early 1980s.

Alexandra Palace isn’t a palace in the royal sense, but a palace of entertainment and sports. It’s known affectionately as “Ally Pally”, and because it sits atop a big hill, you can see it for miles around, even in the suburban jungle of North London. It was opened in 1873 and has gone through many iterations in its lifetime, most notably perhaps as the BBC’s first home for a regular television service, starting in 1936. Ally Pally is still functioning, too, as concert, exhibition, and community venue. Curiously, though, despite having seen it every day for years, and lived relatively close by, I’ve never been inside.

But I digress. The station was the terminal point for a broad loop of line coming out from the London to Edinburgh Eastern main line. It must have been quite a slog up the hill with a full load, because it’s some climb up to the Palace. The branch was opened in 1873, along with the venue, but closed in 1954. The track bed is still in use, only now as walking trail, known as the Parkland Walk (North), and still utilises some of the old railway infrastructure to traverse the now busy roads.

I write all of this as a way of both highlighting my total ignorance of the history of North London and it’s many esteemed buildings and infrastructure, and the fact that my trips past Ally Pally were now over forty years ago. Where on earth did the time go? Indeed, this realisation of time past manifested itself on a trip to the UK in 2023. We were on a train going from Hackney Downs into Liverpool Street and I was remarking to the good lady wife that the trains were somewhat improved compared to the ones I’d used on that route in, wait for it, 1981! I hadn’t even begun to consider the passage of time, beyond a decade or two, but four decades and counting? It was no wonder things had changed.

Anyway, enjoy the photographs of Ally Pally station, and check out the links below, while I go away and consider how time passes so darned quickly.