1836: Train jousting at Bermondsey Spa

If you've taken the opportunity of going up the Shard, you might have seen how the railway line between London Bridge and Deptford is arrow-straight - a long, wide, railway motorway that stretches several miles, very much at odds with other lines which twist and corkscrew through inner London.

Why should this be? To discover the reason why, we have to go back to the birth of the railways, and the tail-end of popularity for "pleasure gardens" in London, of which Vauxhall and Ranelagh was perhaps the best known. Slightly less celebrated were those at Bermondsey Spa, roughly halfway between central London and Deptford.

One of the first railway lines built in London connected central London to Vauxhall Gardens - seeing the opportunities, the owners of Bermondsey Spa resolved to do the same. In 1834 they became majority shareholders of what would become the London and Greenwich Railway, but the unique topography of the area and the lack of urban development led them to consider the opportunity to do something rather different with the line than just transport visitors back and forth...

In the 1830s Gothic literature was flourishing and there was a growing interest in the romance, mystery and chivalry of the mediaeval world, typified by books such as Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (published 1820). Bermondsey's owners resolved to capitalising this by holding "train jousts" on the line between London and Deptford.

The idea was simple. Banked seating was built just south of Bermondsey Spa station. Six times idea, two trains would set off under full steam - one from London Bridge, the other Deptford. Both were stripped-down versions of conventional locomotives, with large boards erected on their backs. On each locomotive, a man stood on the running plate next to the driver, with a large metal pole; - as the trains passed at Bermondsey (at 30 miles an hour each, meaning an effective combined speed of 60) each would try to hit the other's target. Turntables at either end of the line would see the trains quickly turned for a return leg.

For a population still unfamiliar with steam locomotives it was an exciting sight. In his Sketches by Boz, Dickens records how:

We watched as a vast multitude of people peered over each other's heads to see as, faint at first, the sound of the approaching locomotives gradually built to a relentless cacophany of rattling rails set to the drumbeat of pistons. The engines were visible first only as distant plumes of smoke but frighteningly quickly they became behemoths of metal, bearing down on each other and us as the point of engagement neared. Surely they would collide? Our hosts had taken great pains to reassure us that this was impossible and, indeed, there was no rational reason to fear - but the power of the spectacle made us doubt our reason.

The moment was over too quickly. A puff of smoke, a flash of iron - a call of, "A hit - a hit" and the roar of the crowd. The engines receded.

The jousts were a big draw for the pleasure gardens from 1836 until 1840. During that period four people died - two jousters (in 1837 and 1839), and two railway passengers who had ill-advisedly walked on the tracks to get a better view. A number of injuries were also recorded, particularly among the jousters themselves, including broken bones and dislocated shoulders.

In 1841, plans were developed to share the line between London Bridge and Deptford with the South Eastern Railway and the London and Brighton Railway - having two dedicated tracks devoted to the jousts was seen as uneconomical compared to the revenue raised by running fare-paying services along LGR metals, and the jousts were abandoned.