A nice bit of blue

I haven’t had much time to blog lately. The past few months have been swallowed up by the day job and house-hunting. But I did find time last Saturday to accept the kind invitation of the People for Portland Road/South Norwood Arts Festival, who asked me to unveil a blue plaque commemorating the site of the old Norwood (‘Jolly Sailor’) atmospheric railway pumping station.

This was one of three such pumping stations built to operate the air-powered railway line that briefly ran from Forest Hill (later New Cross) to West Croydon from 1845 to 1847. It was a key ancestor to the pneumatic railways later trialled by Thomas Webster Rammell, which form the subject of my novel Strange Air. Having spent so long researching the history of the air-powered railways for that book – and indeed having set some of my opening chapters on the Croydon line – it was a great privilege to reveal the plaque. All being well, it will provide a long-lasting reminder of the inspiring railway that once ran through the heart of what feels like a newly-invigorated South London suburb.