You won’t be able to use your oyster card on these trains, but they may look familiar. We may be use to the Northern line stopping at stations like Battersea, Leicester Square, and Hampstead – but some locomotives decided to leave the big smoke for a quieter life some 200 miles away from the city. It sits around 80 miles from the coastline of England.
They moved over to Alderney, an island in the Bailiwick of Guernsey, that’s only three square miles in size and home to around 2,000 residents, serving on the island’s only railway that transports locals and tourists across the island. That’s right, The Alderney Railway uses original Northern Line carriages that operated in London between 1959 and 2000.
It’s a much more pleasant route, whipping along the coast, offering scenic views of beaches and historic sites opposed to dark, dinghy tunnels. “The carriages have been perfectly preserved and still boast an old London Tube map and the classic London Underground logo,” reports Secret Ldn. “Aside from now being run on a diesel engine locomotive, the trains themselves haven’t changed all that much.”
Starting at Braye Road Station, the train hugs the coast until it passes Fort Albert – built in the 1850s – before heading mainland through Corblets Quarry and ending up in Mannez Station. Ticket prices for 2024 were listed at £10 for an adult return, or £6 for a single. Fares for children (aged 3-16) were £5 and £3 respectively wile those under three could travel for free.
Unlike the constant arrival of trains on the northern line, the Alderney Railway operates on a much smaller scale. In fact, it only runs on Saturdays at 2pm and 3.30pm from May-September. On March 31 last year, the train did a special route for the Spring holidays.
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The Alderney Railway existed long before it received locomotives from London. It first opened in 1847, 22 years after the first commercial railway in the entire world. Back then it was used by the Admiralty and carried its first passengers in April 1854, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in a horse drawn tender.
“Its original purpose was to bring stone from the quarries for the construction of the breakwater. For the next 130 years the railway carried the stone for the necessary programme of continuous repair,” the railway’s website explained. “In the mid 1970’s The British Home Office who were responsible for maintenance and operation, (there being only a minimal use of the track at this time), were approached to see if the line could be used for Passenger transport and after several years permission was obtained. Alderney Railway Society was established in 1978.”
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