SHORT THREAD/Continuing with the railway theme, London's rail termini suffered their share of damage during the Blitz and over the next few tweets, we can have a look at some of the damage. First up, we have Charing Cross, which sits on the north side of the Thames just a short

walk from Trafalgar Square and Whitehall. The station was hit on numerous occasions but for this first photo, we can see damage to Hungerford Bridge caused on 9 September 1940 by a bomb which glanced off the bridge span, before exploding in the Thames by one of the buttresses

on the upstream side of the bridge. In the second photo, we can see the buttress which has temporary shoring erected around it which supports the main spans of the bridge whilst more permanent repairs are put in hand. On the next page, we can see damage caused by incendiaries at

platform level, which is still smouldering whilst on the right we can see a damaged train alongside one of the platforms. Charing Cross had a very narrow escape from even greater damage on the night of 16/17 April 1941, when a parachute mine fell on to the tracks on Hungerford..

Bridge but failed to exploded. These mines, being adapted anti-shipping weapons were the responsibility of the Royal Navy to deal with and a team under the command of Lieut. Ernest "Mick" Gidden RNVR was sent to make it safe. The mine had welded itself to the live conductor rail

so, often working alone, Gidden resorted to using a hammer and chisel to prise the mine into a position where he could work on it. After working solidly for around ten hours, the mine was finally made safe and removed from the bridge as we can see in this LFB archive photo. The..

bridge was not so fortunate on 18 June 1944, when a V-1 buzz bomb made a direct hit on one of the spans, completely destroying it, as we see here. Repairs were not completed until after the return of peace. Further upstream, lays Victoria Station which also suffered its share of

damage. The first two photographs show the aftermath of damage following a raid on 9 October 1940, with the clean up just beginning. The station platforms are just out of shot but are beyond the bridge supports at the extreme top left of this photo. The next photo was taken on..

same date and shows the considerable damage to the retaining cutting wall as well as to properties adjoining the railway. Like Charing Cross, Victoria Station did not escape the attentions of the "Vengeance" Weapons and suffered a direct hit in the early hours of 25 June 1944.

This impacted on station buildings in Hudson's Place, adjoining Platform 1 and sadly on this occasion, 14 people were killed, with a further 82 seriously injured. The repairs can still be faintly made out even to this day. Going back to the very beginning of the Blitz, Victoria..

had the misfortune to have an enemy aircraft crash on the main forecourt on 15 September 1940, which was the Do-17 which had been rammed by Sgt. Ray Holmes in his Hurricane. Ray was able to bale out from his crippled aircraft and came down safely in Ebury Bridge Road in a tale..

that I covered in a previous virtual walk. The bulk of the Dornier came down on the forecourt of the station and today, the masonry of the adjoining station buildings still carries the scars from that event that can be clearly seen. Our final port of call of these former Southern

Railway termini, takes us to London Bridge, which probably suffered more than all of the other Southern Railway London termini. The damage wasn't properly repaired until the stations recent reconstruction, as previous works had only really papered over the cracks. Our first photo

shows us the view looking up into the station from the Stainer Street arch, which was being used as an air raid shelter. As we have seen from a previous walk, the conditions here were squalid in the extreme and action had been taken to try to improve the sanitary conditions here.

Sadly, on the night of 17 February 1941, a bomb penetrated the arch before exploding in the shelter. The blast proof doors at one of the shelter were blown off by the explosion and carved an awful path of destruction through the shelterers. 68 were killed + a further 175 injured

in one of the worst incidents of its type during the Blitz. Just outside the station, another arch at Druid Street was also used as a shelter and was similarly pierced by a bomb on 25 October 1940, killing 77 people sheltering there. For our final shot of the station today, we..

venture just outside the station to St Thomas Street to view the damage on the Platform 22 side of the station. This view isn't dated but was probably on the same day as the Stainer Street incident./END