Southend Pier Railway

Pete,
Sir William Heygate heading along the Pier towards Pier-head station

The original wooden pier in Southend was built in 1830 and by 1851 it had acquired a horse-drawn tramway taking people from the promenade to the pierhead. The current pier was built in 1897 and was designed with a two track electric railway to replace the horse-drawn trams on the 1 1/4 mile journey. The original rolling stock was replaced in 1949 with stock similar to that running on the London Underground.

Southend Pier Train in October 1975 (By Dave Carson [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)
By 1978 however, the electric railway had become too expensive to run due to its high maintenance cost and it was closed down. The Railway was reopened in 1986 using two diesel trains purposely built for the railway.

Sir William Heygate arriving into Pier-head station
Sir William Heygate in Pier-head station
Shore Station. The second engine Sir John Betjamen can be seen at the end of the unoccupied platform
Sir William Heygate in shore station
Sir William Heygate heading along the Pier towards Pier-head station

 

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Published by Pete

I am semi-retired after a career in medical sciences. I now work from home doing independent research and consultancy amongst other things. One advantage of this is that I do have time to indulge my interests including birdwatching, natural history, steam trains and history particularly ancient history.

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