Secrets of the Hainault Shuttle

Geoff - in 1979, myself and two friends (all aged 11) once went to Grange Hill station and spent hours looking for Grange Hill school. We ended up getting a really friendly driver to take us to the depot and he showed us around some of it before getting us put back on a train home. Epic day. We wrote to the BBC and we got autographs from Tucker, Benny and Alan.

It’s like I’m watching Londonist again

I assume those 4 steps are still the equivalent of 15 floors though?

Love how you consider 20 minutes a bit of a wait. I'd love to live somewhere where that's a long time.

Can't be Grange Hill without a flying sausage

Walked through that underpass hundreds of times… never once thought it was lovely 😂

Loved the Grange Hill sausage on a fork flying into shot just like the original series, nice touch that Geoff.

Geoff Marshall - The only person who could describe an underpass as "lovely".

That took me back. I lived in Chigwell for eighteen years, traveling on the central line to get to work at Tower Hill. It was nice to see the old sights again. Thanks

🎶 Hainault, Hainault, don't dream it's over🎵

Hainault... a great inspiration to Crowded House - "Hainault, Hainault, don't dream it's over..." :-)

Fun Fact: The original theme for Grange Hill is called Chicken Man, and was also used for the first series of Give Us A Clue on ITV.

Geoff, got lots to say about this loop. When I was a teen in the early 1970's I went to what was then Loughton College (actually in Debden) and is now called New City College. I chose to use the tube train to get me from Barkingside station around the loop to Woodford and then up to Debden and then back again in the evening. I had two very powerful reasons for going the long (aka, SLOWER) way round the loop and going to Leytonstone and then taking the Epping line was a lot quicker. First, the journey itself was charming, easy and not at all crowded. I was going against the direction of the commuters, after all, and secondly, I had girl friends who lived close to both Woodford and Loughton stations. Ah!!! the memories of ones youth. Thanks for this video.

Excellent use of the Grange Hill sausage and fork....

There is another impressive viaduct over Debden brook, just north of Debden Tube station. Grange Hill, Chigwell and Roding Valley are not just in Essex, they are in the Essex District of Epping Forest where they join the 5 Epping line stations Buckhurst Hill, Loughton, Debden, Theydon Bois and Epping to make up the district's 8 tube stations, down from the 11 it has until 1994 (it lost Blake Hall, North Weald and Ongar on 30/9/1994). The district has just one National Rail station at Roydon. It would be interesting to see a league table of non-Greater-London districts with the most tube stations, I imagine Epping Forest would be near the top (albeit below the City of London)

Proper job Geoff. I really find it interesting as a Yankee all these different lines that have callbacks to the old days but yet modern equipment still runs on them!

Every time I think of Grange Hill, The station actually appears in my head along with the 1978 BBC TV series

He's even wearing a red shirt. Brilliant.

Please, if you’re gonna keep with this series, make the ruislip branch and the uxbridge branch. Would make me happier to see that you’re still making these

2:30 Also at Grange Hill, if you exit the station, go left a bit and look through, you can see a siding. Sometimes, trains are stabled there when terminating at Grange Hill and heading to the depot.