The Lost Crystal Palace Railway - from Crystal Palace High Level station to Honor Oak station

Please note that slide 18 shows platforms 3 & 4 from the turntable (southern) end of the Crystal Palace High Level station and not platforms 1 & 2 from the tunnel (northern) end (ie. slide 18 isn’t the same view as slide 17 as the caption suggests). Apologies!

The journey in this video starts at Crystal Palace High Level station and follows a route heading broadly north. This leads to Upper Sydenham station, Lordship Lane station, and Honor Oak station before continuing into London ie. Nunhead, Victoria & elsewhere. This journey terminates just after Honor Oak station (for now!).

This video began life in 2008/09 when simply teaching myself how to use PowerPoint. Intended only for myself, taking modern photos to compare with the old was done just for fun. It was never intended as a detailed history. Rather, it was intended as a ‘then & now’ of places of interest along the route, glimpses of history hiding in plain sight.

If it’s history you want, try ‘The Crystal Palace High Level Railway’ by John Gale published by Lightmoor Press in 2011 (ISBN 9781899889 62 4). I’ve no connection with Mr. Gale – it’s just a jolly good book! Similarly, if you enjoy rummaging in the past and discovering the UK’s lost railway heritage, try www.disusedstations.org.uk or www.abandonedstations.org.uk for starters. When I say “lost” heritage, this actually means sadly ‘destroyed’ in many cases!

One issue has always been balance. Is each slide visible long enough for a decent look? Is there time to read the caption too? Is enough said but not too much? Does it hold the interest? Overall is it too long or too short etc etc etc? You will have to judge the results for yourself!

Two factual points may be helpful:

1: Did the Crystal Palace High Level station have four or six platforms? This query relates to the two outer platforms being ‘island’ platforms with tracks either side so some have counted these as four platforms rather than two. However, I’ve gone with four in total as identified, for example, in the Southern Railway diagram of 1945 (page 68 of Mr. Gale’s book).

2: What is meant by the ‘Up’ side and the ‘Down’ side of a railway? In railway parlance here, trains are on the ‘Up’ side when on the left track and heading (north) toward central London, while trains are on the ‘Down’ side when on the left track and heading (south) toward Crystal Palace.

Finally, please also note that I do not own any of the historical material used in the slideshow (only some of the modern photographs). No infringement of copyright is intended and no money is being made here. All the found credits are listed below with matching numbers on the relevant slides and thank you to all those identified – where a credit isn’t identified, the material originated with me. Any/ all errors are entirely my own! This project was only ever intended to be educational, and, hopefully, interesting. Any issues are best sent to [email protected] as that is likely to be seen more quickly.

1: Photo credits
abandonedstations.org
39
John Alsop collection
17, 62
artofit.org
47
Ian Baker collection
20, 69, 85, 102, 103, 110, 113
britainfromabove.org.uk
53, 54, 55
Ben Brooksbank
40
Nick Catford/ disusedstations.org
36, 64, 65, 70, 91, 92, 105, 109
Vivian Davis
33
Brian Halford collection
8, 22, 23, 24, 37, 38, 100, 103, 135
Phil Hewitt
44
Illustrated London News/ John Gale
1, 46
Alan A. Jackson
19, 89, 90
London Corporation/ London Metropolitan Archives/ abandonedstations.org
14
londonstereo.com
42
O.J. Morris/ Melvyn Harrison
49
Pamlin Prints
3
picclick.co.uk
79, 80
John L. Smith
4, 13, 21, 27, 28, 32, 63, 73, 76, 81, 86, 93, 98, 108, 111, 118
Michael Stewart
01 (the tickets)
The Sydenham Society/cpsubway.org/ iconeye.
50
sydenham.org.uk
48
To be confirmed
9, 11, 18, 34, 35, 56, 57, 60, 72, 117

2: Art/ film/ video credits
Farallone Films
5
British Film Institute
29, 30, 31
Chemical Brothers/ Oil Factory
51
Lost Tribe Productions & Minds Eye Films Ltd
83
The Courtauld Gallery
88
If you last as long as image 88 and would like to know more, you can access an informative short talk about it given at the The Courtauld Gallery here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/aud...

3: Map credits
“© OpenStreetMap contributors” and documentation/ data is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license (CC BY-SA 2.0). Cartography is licensed as CC BY-SA.
121-134

4: Music credits
Track 1, 3, 5: Signal to Noise
Track 2: Wayfarer
Track 4: Castles in the Sky

Each track is by Scott Buckley (www.scottbuckley.co.au) and licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. The tracks have been modified so they may fade in or out, and may be shorter than the original.

5: Last but not least
Thanks to the lovely people at no.36 in the Lapse Wood Walk estate who once kindly let me explore the back garden when searching for the trackbed, and shared what they knew about Lordship Lane station!