The arrival of Queen Victoria at King’s Cross station in 1853. Image: Science and Society Picture Library/National Railway Museum

• DAN Carrier’s article (Tracking the story of the railway lands, November 30) evokes the history of King’s Cross but the coal didn’t come in containers: it was in open-top, four-wheel railway coal trucks.

Coal had to be shovelled out by hand through flaps in the side, which could fall down hitting workers on the track below.

Readers of a certain age will remember the banging and clattering of coal trains which had no brakes except on the steam locomotive pulling them.

In latter days machines to turn trucks over to tip out the coal were used, but bulk coal transport was filthy and dangerous.

Andrew Whitehead’s Curious King’s Cross fills in more of the local history.

ROBERT SUMERLING
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