As you rush to catch a train, spare a moment to remember the nostalgic days of railway porters and steam trains. Carshalton would have had a head porter, assistant porter, junior porter, ticket collector and more. Their duties would include helping passengers, keeping the station clean and tidy, and stoking the waiting room fires in winter.
Meet Edwin Searle, a respected member of staff at the station. He worked at Carshalton from a young age and lived on West Street, just yards from where he served. He was born in 1863 and was married to Edith Clara.
The old photo was recently purchased by collector, Chris Pocock, saving it from possible oblivion. The image was taken by local amateur photographer and train fan, Sidney Oborne of Wallace Crescent, who as a child remembered Edwin.
Around the time of the photo, Sidney remarked “This is a portrait of Mr Searle, who sad to record, passed away in the early part of the New Year 1930 shortly after having served his time on the Railway. The writer can remember him, in his very early youth, when Carshalton had but a small wooden station”.
The newer station we see today was rebuilt in 1902. Read more about that here.
Mr Searle was still living at West Street when he died on the 8th of January 1930, aged 67. He passed away at the War Memorial Hospital next to Carshalton Park and was buried at Carshalton Parish Church. He had no children.
The photographer Mr Oborne, passed away aged 61, in 1941.
Below is the original photo that can be seen at the top of the page. The photo has been extended at the top and the bottom using AI. The technology extended the platform, and legs and put a cap on top of the wall on the left – it gives an all-round fuller picture.
There is a row of four Grade 2 listed buildings, dated circa 1850 in West Street, Carshalton. Number 72 on the far right was lived in by Edwin Searle, a porter at nearby Carshalton Station. It was possibly called Stone Cottage and Edwin lived here with his wife Edith until 1930, from perhaps as far back as the 1880s. More on West Street
With thanks to Chris Pocock for permission to use pics and for providing research, and London Borough of Sutton Museum and Heritage Service for the old photo of Carshalton station.
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My grandfather (who must have known this gentleman) told me many stories of the railway – some tall, some sad. He knew of three firemen killed by the overhead electric wires, at Sutton station, where the firemen used to go onto the tender of steam locomotives to move coal forward and got too close to the ‘knitting’. Of course only a few suburban lines were electrified, so the majority of trains were steam-hauled. He initiated me into the secrets of the third rail, how part of the time it was ‘off’ when there wasn’t a train in the section and a railwayman who knew when that was could show off by touching the rail. Risky…
Because Carshalton Station was on an embankment there was no goods yard, and parcels and other items delivered to one platform but required on the other had to be manhandled across the tracks. I remember there were steps – just a ledge – on the platform edge and a gap in the electrified rails with a sort of small wooden level crossing, and the porters would drop a sackbarrow down from one platform, trundle it across the crossing and then haul it up onto the other platform.
We lived in Colston Avenue in the 50s and I was regularly woken by the morning ‘milk train’ (actually bringing the newspapers and other goods) which was steam-hauled by a Bulleid light pacific and used to make a lot of noise pulling out of the station en route to Sutton and the goods yard there.
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As I have written elsewhere my grandfather, Bill Smith, was a porter at Carshalton station from before WW1 until the fifties, serving the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, the Southern Railway and British Railways. I think that in the background you can just see a gantry for the overhead electrification equipment which was installed c1913, and replaced by the 3rd rail system after 1926, of which there is no sign in this picture, so it will have been taken before 1929 when the 3rd rail was installed.
Lovely stuff! More of this sort of thing