European Railroad Discussion > Willesden Junction?

On my last visit to the UK, a local fan suggested going out to a location in northern London called Willesden Junction if I wanted to see predominantly freight traffic. It seems to be reasonably accessible by public transport.

Is this a worthwhile location for train watching and photography? Or are there other easily accessed locations that would be more heavily trafficked or more photogenic? We'll have a Sunday afternoon at the very least, and may have some other blocks of time free as well.

Hi there Willesden Junction is easy to access by public transport, and traffic is quite busy. But a word of advice, it is in what you could describe an urban area - far from the tourist trail, make sure you're a bit street wise if you go there. A bit like say a Brit in NYC venturing deep into Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx if that makes any sense.

Pete UK

march_hare Wrote:
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> Is this a worthwhile location for train watching
> and photography? Or are there other easily
> accessed locations that would be more heavily
> trafficked or more photogenic?

Willesden is busy but there's no real picture taking opportunities. Great for wagon spotting but not much else IMHO. A better location to see the action on the West Coast Mainline is further up the line at South Kenton or Headstone Lane. There are only a handful of freights in and around London on a Sunday - an intermodal down the West Coast mainline from Daventry which runs round North London to Tilbury around lunchtime, an empty steel from France which crosses the Thames at Chelsea, then through Willesden Junction joining the East Coast Mainline just north of King's Cross, that runs early afternoon. Finally there's a train of export steel which comes up from South Wales, leaves the GW mainline, passes Willesden and heads south across the Thames, bound for the Channel Tunnel, that runs late afternoon. Weekdays and Saturdays things are much busier.

I'm also not a fan of Willesden Junction for photography. Just north of South Kenton there is a footbridge over the railway but the electrification masts and wires can get in the way a bit. On the other hand there is another bridge a little further north which carries the Metropolitan and Chiltern trains over the West Coast Main Line so with a reasonable zoom lens you can get a real mixture of shots.

The UK freight railway (particularly around London) rather shuts down at weekends. You might catch an engineers train if you're lucky but that depends on where the works are on any particular weekend. Which reminds me there are major works at Watford Junction later this year which will close the line from Watford into Euston on the following dates (or at least that's the current plan).

2014

Saturday 9 August 2014 to Monday 11 August 2014
Saturday 16 August 2014 to Monday 18 August 2014
Saturday 23 August 2014 to Tuesday 26 August 2014
Wednesday 24 December 2014 to Monday 29 December 2014

2015

Saturday 14 February 2015 to Monday 16 February 2015
Saturday 21 February 2015 to Monday 23 February 2015
Friday 3 April 2015 to Tuesday 7 April 2015

which means even Willesden Junction will be a bit of a desert on those dates.