Beckton
DLR unit 97 at Beckton terminus, awaiting departure for Tower Gateway, on 7th June 2008. The original Beckton station was at the end of a more direct branch from Custom House on the North Woolwich line, which was built principally to serve the Gas Light & Coke Company. A workmen's service was run from 1873 and a station for this was built by the factory premises and given the name Beckton, after a Mr. Beck who was the then General Manager of the GL & C Co., hence the district of Beckton was born. (Not a lot of people know that.) The line closed after the East End of London sustained heavy bomb damage on the first day of the London Blitz on 7th September 1940, which also saw the nearby Gallions branch closed. It wasn't until 1992 that passenger trains served Beckton again, on a completely new route, with the first extension of the DLR after its original 1987 opening. The courses of the old Beckton and Gallions branches have completely disappeared under new roads and other redevelopments although back in the 1960s, I can remember travelling on the RT and RTL buses on route 101 and going over the level crossing of the original Beckton branch that had been patched up for freight after the war. I am not sure when these freight trains finally ceased.
Location: Beckton
Original line: Docklands Light Railway
Photographer: David Bosher
Contact photographer: David Bosher
Photosets: Docklands Light Railway, 2008-2023
Date: 07/06/2008
Image number: 72719
