The Electrical Control Room at Woking

 21/9/25

This place has been on my list of places for quite a while but today I finally visited it.

I booked my visit through the Heritage Open Days website.

The description below is from the Network Rail website.

The Woking electrical control room was built in 1936 by Swedish firm Asean for Southern Railways. Used as a control centre after the electrification of the line, the room was taken out of use in the late 1990s, although parts of the building remain occupied.

The space has many striking Art Deco features including four copper and iron uplighters, track diagrams with working lights and switches, and the original control desk.

Please note: This building is Grade II listed, and access to the site is restricted. 

Here is a link to the Historic England listing.

Enough with the long introduction, here are my photos.

Site entrance;

Note the concrete lamppost

Outside theres not much to see 

The entrance

Nearly at the main room

This is what I wanted to see

Lots more photos with some captioned.

uplighter

 

National Grid supply

Behind the scenes

circuit breaker, still used today

IIRC coreectly substations are every 3 miles with a track paralling hut in between.

diagram of replacement control

green was the first areas to be modernised

 A wonderful piece of railway history preserved. Well worth a visit if you can.

Heritage Bus Rides in Guildford

 13/9/25

As part of the national Heritage Open Days my friend Richard Kirwin arranged free bus rides in Guildford. I volunteered to help him and he asked me to be a bus controller and relief coductor on the saturday. 

You may remember that last year I helped Richard by being his conductor on Epsom Derby day. See here for my blog post.

The 2 images below formed the publicity for the bus event. 

The service bus was RF354 with OPC26R as backup/crew bus.

The 2 buses are seen here in Guildford bus station. 

I took one trip on the RF seen here at Guildford Business Park.

 This was formerley the site of Dennis Bros, builders of buses and other commercial vehicles.

 See here for more history of the company.

 Fortunately the weather was good with only short heavy rain shower.

 A very pleasant day helping a number of people enjoy a ride on an old bus. 

Ruislip Lido Railway

25/8/25

This trip was planned a few months ago and today was the day the stars aligned and I was able to do it. 

In hindsight a hot sunny Bank Holiday Monday was probably not the best day to do this, but I survived.

 

 

 

 

 

 

£5 for a return trip didn't break the bank.

So How did I get here? Tube to Ruislip station (Picadilly or Meropolitan Line).

Then a H13 bus to the terminus.

 A couple of photos taken on the short walk to Willow Lawn station

 Willow Lawn station.

 Woody Bay station

 Back at Willow Lawn station 

 Then I took the H13 bus back towards Ruislip, stopping off at the Hop & Vine micropub.

For more about the railway their website is here