Streetlife

The last steam trains ran from Newbury Park to Ilford on 29th November 1947. I was 14 at that time and remember travelling to Ilford with my parents to shop and to go to the ILFORD HIPPODROME to see Old Mother Riley and her daughter Kitty, Two Ton Tessie O'Shea and other Music Hall favourites. I used the Central Line from December 1947 from time to time, but tended to travel by 66 bus to Leytonstone to attend Leyton County High School for Boys.
For more about Newbury Park, please see my book - Aldborough Hatch - The Village in the Suburbs - A History - available on line from Amazon or Waterstones - or at a discounted price from me - tel: 010 8599 7250
Ron Jeffries

A few years ago as I was stepping onto a train a woman behind me stood on the back of my shoe and it flipped into the gap between the train and the platform, I got off the train, the woman and the train went. And I was left there minus one shoe, I felt a right idiot standing there with one shoe on.  Two station workers got a long stick then one laid down and the other held her legs so she could reach over the edge of the platform where she managed to hook my shoe onto the stick, I was very grateful as I did have visions of walking home with one shoe on.    Well done to the staff at Becontree station.

A friend was wearing a hat one evening when we got off a central line train and it blew on to the line fairly nearly the platform.  As he tried to reach it  I urged caution.  A young man came along and  flipped it with the tip of his umbrella back on to the platform.  As far as I was concerned he was a star but I had been anxious in case there was metal in the tip of the umbrella.  However, it did not touch any rail.  

Just shows you how stubbornly we cling to our possessions!  The hat certainly wouldn't been worth anyone getting electrocuted for!!