Feature: Platform for history tour

THE railway came to Brighton in May 1840 when the line to Shoreham was opened.

A year later, the Brighton to London line opened, as did an Italianate station building.

The terminus was designed by David Mocatta, who also worked on other local stations including Portslade, Hove and London Road.

It had three wooden train sheds and covered a fraction of the huge site used today.

The magnificent glass and cast iron train shed, designed by Henry Wallis, was added in 1882/83 when the station was enlarged.

It was registered as Grade II listed in 1973 but by the early Nineties had fallen into disrepair.

A recent three-year Railtrack restoration project replaced glass panels and corroded girders and restored the station to its full Victorian splendour at a cost of £28 million.

Local historian Jackie Marsh-Hobbs was so impressed that she obtained permission to take tours around the station as part of last year's Brighton Festival and more are planned.

She said: "When the scaffolding was taken down I thought it was so beautiful. As a tour guide I had an impulse to tell people about it.

"The tour would not be possible without train company South Central which has been really good about letting me take people around the parts of the station none of us would ever normally get to see."

Ms Marsh-Hobbs, who lectures in decorative history at Brighton University, takes the visitors on to the roof at the front of the station for an impressive view over the rooftops and down to the sea. It is also an ideal position to survey the magnificent glass canopy and marvel at the visionary Victorian engineers who constructed it.

Ms Marsh-Hobbs said: "When they extended the station they built the glass and cast iron structure over the existing wooden train sheds. They did it allmanually, without any machinery, and all the materials were transported by rail.

"The trains carried on running underneath while the work was done. It was a major engineering feat.

"The whole shape of the station is curved because they built it to follow the line of the Shoreham line."

Although much of the station looks as it did in Victorian days, there have been many changes behind the scenes.

A vast works which built engines for use all over the country until 1957 is now a car park. The goods yard in what is now Trafalgar Place has also disappeared.

After a walk through the station interior, Ms Marsh-Hobbs takes her tours into the forgotten depths of the complex. First stop is the Victorian cab run, which runs from Trafalgar Street to the end of platform eight.

It has a cobbled floor and lies directly below the train tracks. Sometimes trains arrive and depart while a tour is below and people experience the deafening noise and glimpse them through gaps in the boards above.

The run was used by licensed cab drivers from the station's first days until the early 20th Century, when cars began to take over from horse-drawn carriages.

Ms Marsh-Hobbs said: "When the station was first built it was outside the town, which was concentrated around North Street, East Street and West Street. Queen's Road did not exist and the only access was from Trafalgar Street.

"Horses and carriages could not climb the end section of the road to reach the station because it was too steep so they put in the cab run along the side where the approach was easier."

In the early days the cab run was an open street. But when the station was extended in the 1880s, it was enclosed to form a tunnel running below the new platforms built 30ft above ground level and supported by huge cast iron pillars.

Ms Marsh-Hobbs said: "You can imagine it must have been very noisy in the cab run with the horses' hooves, the iron wheels on the cobbles and the trains rattling through overhead."

The wooden doors used by the carriages to access the tunnel can still be seen opposite the Prince Albert pub in Trafalgar Street.

The drivers would go up Trafalgar Street and through the cab run to pick up passengers at the edge of the platform straight from the London train. By this time, Queen's Road had been built and they would drive them away down it.

The next stage of the tour goes into the oldest part of the station, the 160-year-old former goods tunnel running beneath the platforms which originally connected the Shoreham line to the goods yard.

Used for 12 years in the station's earliest days, goods wagons would be uncoupled from trains and hauled by men or horses to the yard to be unloaded. In the end it proved too labour intensive and was replaced by a separate goods line but the old tunnel remains.

During the Second World War, the tunnel was converted into a secret communications centre.

Ms Marsh-Hobbs said: "They used this tunnel because it would have been the safest place if the station was bombed.

"For years no one knew what it had been used for and it took me ages to find out.

"People love coming to places they don't normally get to see. When I found out about this tunnel and the cab run about two years ago I was amazed."

The goods tunnel emerges at the east side of the station in an area which used to be stables for the many horses needed to shift loads and move goods around the site.

Because the station was built on a hill, this side is about 30ft higher above ground level than the west side.

Ms Marsh-Hobbs said: "The floor on this side is wooden instead of stone because this whole side of the building, including the tracks, is held up by huge iron pillars, which is quite amazing."

She is still researching the station's history and would like to hear from anyone who worked in the goods yard, engine works or the wartime communications centre.

Tours will take place on January 26 and 27 and February 2 and 10 at 10am, noon and 2.30pm. Places, which need to be booked, are limited to ten people per group. Children under 14 cannot take part for health and safety reasons.

Tickets cost £5, or £4 concessions. Call the Dome box office on 01273 709709 to book.