IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Manor Road, LONDON, W13 0JA

The 1330 Paddington to Penzance service passes West Ealing at speed. On the right now stands the Waitrose supermarket. The Railway has been electrified and overhead wires would prevent the same view today. The footbridge has been enclosed with wire mesh so you could not lean over and photograph the same view as I did then. The track work has also changed as have the trains running into Paddington these days.

Looking west along Drayton Avenue. The eastern end of the street has a variety of housing, but most of the street has very homogenous houses, built in very long terraces.

The station was opened in 1871 as "Castle Hill and Ealing Dene" by the Great Western Railway, which had opened its broad gauge tracks between Paddington and Taplow on 4th June 1838. The last broad-gauge services were operated in 1892. The station was located next to the London Co-operative Societies main creamery, and so was equipped with a dedicated milk train platform. The milk depot was closed long ago but the derelict platforms still remained in 2014. They are seen here from platform 4 which is the up stopping platform. The houses of Manor Road can be seen behind. However, as part of the Crossrail proposal, services from the Greenford Branch Line will terminate at West Ealing and this will be enabled by converting the former LCS milk train bay into an extra bay platform.

View eastward, towards Paddington; GWR main line to Reading and the West. NB Loco/MAN Type 4 2,200 hp Diesel-Hydraulic B-B No. D836 'Powerful' heads the 11.45 Paddington - Bristol. The lines going off on the left from West Ealing Junction Box are the beginning of the Greenford Loop. Behind the Box is the Milk Dock.

The driver of the 6E31 Acton to Ferme Park freight train experienced a failure of his locomotive and brought the train to a stand halfway between Ealing Broadway and West Ealing, circa 11:20. The immediate effect was that all services to Greenford were cancelled whilst the westbound Heathrow Connect services were diverted onto the main lines to avoid the blockage and were thus unable to stop at West Ealing. Around 11:30 the driver of the failed train arrived on foot at West Ealing, carrying his flag and a canister of detonators to protect his train whilst arranging for a relief locomotive with his control and taking time to inform passengers waiting on the platform about the situation. Relief finally arrived in the form of 66710 (named 'Phil Packer BRIT') which had been working the Crossrail spoil trains from Westbourne Park and bore the evidence in splashes of London Clay on her cab faces. The relief had routed round the Greenford loop and into Hanwell before reversing to run wrong line back to West Ealing to meet the driver of the failed train. He flagged her to a stand and boarded to guide his colleague back to where his train was standing. It was around 12:20 – about an hour after the initial failure. If you look closely at the photo you will see a yellow cap detonator on the rail adjacent to the signal - one of three at 10 metre intervals on the track. The three very loud bangs that accompanied the loco as it proceeded wrong line to collect the failed train certainly woke up the neighbours! Phil Packer is the founder of the British Inspiration Trust.

On the corner of Manor Road and Drayton Road is the sorting office for the London W13 area. The sorting office and the houses further down Manor Road face straight onto the Great Western mainline.