Video of Steam Train passing through Laindon Station

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• Awesome sight, those two Black Fives hauling those maroon coaches through Laindon. Brings back memories for me, just like Anne has said before. My train memories mainly are of going up to Barking around 1957 to see my nan with a change at Upminster if we were getting off at Becontree. Barking station then was very different as the ‘new ‘ station opened in 1964. It was dimly lit in the winter and you could see the coal glowing in the engine cab if you walked past the train and up the footbridge. ‘Evening Standard’ was the cry at Barking and trolley buses clicked past silently at Blakes Corner. Happy days of my childhood, brilliant memories.

  By Richard Haines (07/02/2017)

• I remember my mother sending me to the goods yard sidings of Laindon station, when word got around that a consignment of coal had arrived in the sidings.  I had to quickly get down there for our ration, just a quarter of a hundred weight (CWT) (like most things, not long after the war, rationing was still in force, including sweets for us kids) in old measures, equates to 25 lbs. Had an old wheelbarrow that my father had made, I remember struggling to drag this barrow from the goods yard, out of the station approach and up the hill of the bridge over the railway. Then up the unmade road of Alexander Road. All that effort for a ten year old and the coal was burnt in a couple of days! Then back to sawing up logs and splitting them with a steel wedge and sledgehammer. My Dad gave me 2/6d (half a crown) or twelve and a half pence in today’s decimal coinage for my “wages” in helping with the chores.

  By Robert Springate (06/02/2017)

• What a lovely reminder of days gone by.  As a very young child I loved going to Southend-on-Sea by train but the noise of the engine terrified me and I hid my face in my mother’s skirt and held my ears as it approached.  Once inside our carriage everything about the train fascinated me from the luggage rack and the way the window could be let down by a leather strap to the distinctive smell of the carriage, a mixture of upholstery, leather and tobacco smoke.   I loved the scenery and watching the telegraph poles rush past.  I loved the walk down the road from the station into the town, the ‘seaside’ and above all Rossi ice-cream.  On our way back in the early evening I remember the cry of the female newspaper vendor calling out “Evening News” in a distinctive, nasal voice.

  By Anne Burton (16/12/2013)