Just as the map says, on May 22, 2009, I traveled east from London to the resort town Southend-on-Sea. I found this town by looking on the satellite and birdseye views at live.com and saw something strange -- a pier that extended more than 1 mile into the North Sea at the mouth of the Thames River. I was planning on going to London and looking for things to do in town and just out of town. Southend-on-Sea in East Anglia was one such place....

 

 

 

Southend-on-Sea was a resort town long before the railroad came to town in the mid-1800s (see the early 20th century poster above, seen at the London Transport Museum -- photos of that is to come). But the railroad's arrival made the coastal town accessible to more Londoners, including commonfolk.

 

Unlike America, the railroad is still a very strong presence in keeping Southend-on-Sea a resort town for people of all physical and financial abilities, with trains traveling between London Fenchurch Street and Liverpool stations to Southend on 10-minute headways throughout the day on three routes. Some services require transfers but you never have to wait more than 30 minutes for a through train with round-trip fares of 15 pounds, speeds of 80 mph, and a travel time of about one hour for the 60-mile trip. The trains are operated by a subsidized but private entity, c2c, over the publicly owned right of way maintained by Network Rail.

 

After taking the Circle Line underground to the Tower Hill Station, I walk north a couple of blocks to this cozy but least impressive of London's many grand stations. Unlike Paddington, Waterloo, Victoria, Euston, Kings Cross or St. Pancras, Fenchurch Street Station could be missed if you weren't paying attention while walking down one of London's many intimate streets...

 

 

One thing that is consistent with Fenchurch's larger brethren is the presence of the tabloids and newspapers for sale at the entryways...

 

 

I was running late so I didn't get a chance to take photos of the station's platform areas, but there weren't many people on my 10:30 a.m. eastbound train. In fact, there was no one in my car until we made a few more stops in Greater London at stations shared with the Docklands Light Railway or the Underground's line out to Barking. Anyway, the trains are for medium-distance service, offering more comfortable surroundings than the Underground but less comfortable than the intercity services to Bristol or York or Scotland which I've taken in past years. But the trains are extremely quiet and ride very smoothly....

 

 

Trains arrive the four-track station at Southend-on-Sea next to the University of Essex (seen at left or north) and the city's main shopping and business district (just past the train and below the tracks). Trains come and go here an average of every five minutes from 5 a.m. to midnight every day....

 

 

This classic, standard design pub and inn is located just south of the train station. Its name and reason for being was clearly influenced by the station platform from which I took this photo....

 

 

Stepping out into the town's main drag reveals a very active pedestrian-oriented shopping district. Much of it is pedestrian-only except for this stretch. In the distance, looking north, is the bridge for the railroad and beyond it the university. The train station is just to the left of this main drag....

 

 

The farther south and farther from the university I went on this pedestrian promenade, the older the crowd got. And, there is evidence of the recession here and there, including this recently closed Woolworth's store...

 

 

I make it to the waterfront, with an orientation shot taken from an observation deck looking back north to the town center and the main shopping district. And, yes, those are palm trees...

 

 

Looking west up the Thames River toward London....

 

 

Looking east toward to the North Sea....

 

 

And looking south toward one of the longest piers in the world. It is more than 1-mile long....

 

 

 

So what's the name of that amusement park?

 

 

Just beyond it, numerous ships make their way into and out of the Thames River to conduct waterborne commerce, which has made London the largest city in Europe and the world's first city to attain 1 million population.....

 

 

I'm back on the train again, this time I'm traveling back west toward London. If I knew my way around better, I could have taken a more direct route to my next destination but it still would have involved a change of trains. So I rode to the station of Barking on the eastern outskirts of London, then doubled-back east on another c2c train for a short distance to the station of Rainham....

 

 

My c2c train was gone by the time I got to the top of the pedestrian overpass at the Rainham station. Another sound approached. The c2c trains share tracks with freight trains like this one operated by EWS (England Wales Scotland). But my reason for coming here is below that new pedestrian overpass seen at right....

 

 

Below that overpass is High Speed 1, also called the Channel Tunnel Rail Line (or CTRL). This section, from Kent into London, much of which is in a subway into Central London, opened to traffic by the Eurostar trains to Brussels and Paris in November 2007. Eurostar trains used conventional tracks like those used by c2c and EWS trains at 90 mph into London in the 14 years previous. Now they have this new 186-mph (300km/h) speedway to use....

 

 

I didn't have to wait long for the first speedster to show up: A 700-passenger Eurostar train bound for the continent comes off the Rainham Viaduct over a small river the flows into the nearby Thames. I learned more than two decades ago from videotaping 125-mph Amtrak Metroliners on the Northeast Corridor that if you wait until you see the train before your press the camera's record button, you will never capture a high-speed train on film. So the first sound of the catenary wires "singing" caused me to raise the camera and point it in the direction of the sound. The next images were pulled off the video....

 

 

But I was especially looking forward to capturing on video the new domestic high-speed service, called the Javelin -- so-named in preparation for the 2012 Olympics which will be in London. These trains are being touted as 140-mph "commuter trains" (note the numerous doors to allow for fast loading/unloading of large crowds). Unlike the Eurostar trains which make no stops in the UK other than London's St. Pancras Station, the Javelin trains will make several stops in the UK and therefore be the nation's first domestic true high-speed service....

 

 

 

Here comes another EWS freight train past new housing built next to the Rainham train station (there's lots of transit-oriented and transit-supportive real estate development in cities big and small throughout the UK). Interestingly, the roadway is still open through the grade crossing with the older rail line but the roadway was completely severed by the high-speed line with no attempt at building an overpass or underpass. So I don't understand why the grade crossing with the old line wasn't also eliminated and the roadway closed here too....

 

 

Another c2c train shows up at Rainham. It's one of several that showed up in the hour I spent doing some "trainspotting" as the Brits call it (Americans call it "railfanning")....

 

 

As the c2c train for London pulls away, "that sound" returns again. In addition to the catenary wires singing, there also is an increasingly louder sound. It's the sound of a 180+ mph wind passing over every little crevasse and joint on the high-speed train's aerodynamic surface. It's not too different than the sound of the wind in your ears if you stick your head out of the window of a car at speed. The sound of rushing wind gets louder and quieter very quickly as the train approaches and then disappears. In between, wheels make a high-pitch and rapid series of "zing-zing-zing" as they pass over the rails...

 

 

As I return to London on a c2c train, that last high-speed train heads for Europe at 100 mph under a channel of water that neither Spanish Armadas, Napoleonic Armies or Hitler Blitzkreigs could defeat over the past 500 years. But it was the high-speed train that defeats the English Channel dozens of times every day. If you didn't know the history, it's almost anti-climatic. Almost......

Thanks!

Can't wait for the days when we can traverse Ohio and the Midwest like that.

Simply beautiful!

It would be a delight to live in a place where one could go train-riding just for a pastime, without being limited to one all-day train per day between any two cities. :-)

Fantastic!