By Mark McConville
INCREDIBLE retro images have offered a glimpse inside London Victoria Station in the early 1950s.
The stunning pictures show holidaymakers tramping through Victoria with a girl heading for Italy ‘on the cheap’, a young boy giving money to a railway collecting dog for Southern Railway Servants Orphanage and an elderly man wearing a beret and smoking a cigarette.
Other striking shots show policemen carrying a stretcher out of the railway station, a Ceylonese woman waiting for her husband to join her before setting off together towards the South and a woman offering a little boy a cup of tea.
The remarkable photographs offer a view inside London Victoria Station in 1951 as commuters go about their daily business.
Victoria station, also known as London Victoria, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in Victoria, in the City of Westminster, managed by Network Rail.
Named after the nearby Victoria Street (not the Queen), the main line station is a terminus of the Brighton main line to Gatwick Airport and Brighton and the Chatham main line to Ramsgate and Dover via Chatham.
Victoria was built to serve both the Brighton and Chatham main lines, and has always had a “split” feel of being two separate stations. The Brighton station opened in 1860 with the Chatham station following two years later. It replaced a temporary terminus at Pimlico and construction involved building the Grosvenor Bridge over the River Thames.
It became immediately popular as a London terminus, causing delays and requiring upgrades and rebuilding. It was well known for luxury Pullman train services and continental boat train trips and became a focal point for soldiers during World War I.
