West Ham station

[revupminster]

Passed West Ham station on the C2C and did I see the Olympic footbridge had gone? If so when?

[Colin]

It was gone by the middle of October.

[causton]

I remember seeing it being removed through a weekend closure

www.flickr.com/photos/0causton0/8084229770/

[kabsonline]

Would it have been of no use then after the Olympics to locals and people passing through the station?

[Colin]

West Ham is primarily an interchange station.

There's not enough usage to justify another entrance/exit - the current one only has a couple of gates for entry & exit, and they're quite sufficient.

[superteacher]

Nov 9, 2012 14:03:39 GMT Colin said:

West Ham is primarily an interchange station.

There's not enough usage to justify another entrance/exit - the current one only has a couple of gates for entry & exit, and they're quite sufficient.

Indeed. Back in the days when it was only District and NLL services at the station (plus H&C at peaks), it really was a very quiet station, and quite spooky in the evenings!

[Deleted]

I did a late shift Sunday in the ticket office there in c.1971. Hardly saw a soul. And as there was no safe to put the takings in, I had to take them in a bag by train to Plaistow. Unthinkable today that we had to do that, but nobody gave it a second thought.

[metman]

Blimey! That reminds me of my old retail job in the early 2000s when we had to convey our takings in a bag or under a coat to the bank! The 'after xmas' run was the worst! In the end we got a well known (but not well liked!) security company to do it for us. I don't know what was more risky! ;D

Great photo of the bridge being removed. I wonder where it was taken to?

[revupminster]

I worked at West Ham in the seventies and remember taking the takings from West Ham to Plaistow but it was not that unusual. The same happened between Shoreditch and Whitechapel. In the sixties as a small 16 year old I was sent from Embankment to Victoria to get a £100 bag of silver. They always had plenty and Embankment was always short. It was heavy and I used to stand in the train doorway with the bag between my feet. The Station Master at Shadwell used to walk through watney Street market to the bank and everybody knew what he had in his hand. He never used the poachers pocket of his uniform and always wore his uniform hat which he was not supposed to.

[railtechnician]

Nov 14, 2012 22:27:06 GMT @reganorak said:

I did a late shift Sunday in the ticket office there in c.1971. Hardly saw a soul. And as there was no safe to put the takings in, I had to take them in a bag by train to Plaistow. Unthinkable today that we had to do that, but nobody gave it a second thought.

I recall working at West Ham station, apparently a dodgy and/or dangerous place day and night back then in the 1980s.
When working there during the day I parked my car in the adjacent housing estate for about half an hour while checking some new PA equipment. The station supervisor hinted that I'd be lucky to find the car intact even if I parked it there for five minutes so I was relieved to see that it had not been tampered with.
When working there on night shift gaining access was a problem if arriving in non-traffic hours as the station supervisor used to lock himself into an office and leave the station to the contract cleaner.
Apparently the booking office had been robbed more than once and the supervisor was scared of his own shadow, let alone that of anyone else.
It was the cleaner that told me not to park the company transit van right outside the station as it was bound to be broken into as some contractors had learned to their cost, so I parked it about 100 yards down the road at his suggestion under a street lampo which proved to be quite safe.
I recall a few week earlier working at Plaistow one night and having a van load of material to unload. We parked up right outside the station entrance and went in to see the supervisor, as we exited to unload less than 5 minutes later we were greeted by two policemen who had caught a villain in the act of TDA our van. They told us never to leave a van unguarded even for a second at that and several other stations between there and Upminster.
I knew of several staff losing vehicles or items within them to vandals and thieves at the east end of the District although luckily in many years of using my own car and parking it at or near stations on all lines for decades I never had any trouble at all until I worked out of Bollo House, Acton and discovered that while I was out working some scroat had been trying to break into my car inside the 'secure' staff car park. ISTR one of the operating managers taking a severe beating when challenging someone tampering with private vehicles there one night.

[revupminster]

Bromley by Bow to Upminster was often called bandit country in my day. Elm Park was lovely in the seventies when the Elm Park hotel was a hotel. It then became a drug pub as did the phone in the booking hall at Elm Park and the toilets were a haven of needles. If you rang the BT police at East Ham they would be along on the next train!!! When cameras came in they would be along the next day.

[Dstock7080]

The blue hoardings alongside the EB track within the platform area were being removed today.

[railtechnician]

Nov 15, 2012 10:57:50 GMT revupminster said:

Bromley by Bow to Upminster was often called bandit country in my day. Elm Park was lovely in the seventies when the Elm Park hotel was a hotel. It then became a drug pub as did the phone in the booking hall at Elm Park and the toilets were a haven of needles. If you rang the BT police at East Ham they would be along on the next train!!! When cameras came in they would be along the next day.

In the late 1980s I commissioned the 14 PA racks from BBB to UPM on day shifts and was lucky to get away with parking my car at every one of those stations without either damage or a parking ticket. However, it was known as bandit country then both on and off the railway. On the railway, maintenance staff were thieving the cards from the brand new equipment racks leaving us faulty replacements. This kind of thing often happened back then making commissioning of new equipment very difficult. The maintenance manager would not accept the new racks as they were all faulty when they were passed to him for inspection. My solution was to drag him along repairing them as I went and getting a handover signature for each one, his staff then had to look after them.
I recall East Ham as the rack was installed in the public toilet right next to the urinals although I believe the toilet had been closed to the public. At any station where the racks were installed on the platforms or in waiting rooms they were treated as urinals by some passengers. On other lines such as at Moor Park and Queen's Park the racks were at the ends of the platforms and it didn't take too long for the bottoms of the cabinets to be rotted out by the ingress of urine. It's not just syringes and drug addicts that are dangerous to health, in general the travelling public have some very dirty habits and always have had!