Leaving the Station

A train bound for Edinburgh, Scotland, creeps out of King’s Cross station in London in December 1952. Though the locomotive appears to be departing at twilight, it’s actually in the early afternoon, but London is shrouded in fog from a devastating stretch of brutal winter weather.

“Winter has come early, freakishly and violently, to Britain and Europe this year,” The Times Magazine wrote on December 21, 1952. “London’s recent four days of stifling fog, the worst since the Thirties, was followed by a snowstorm that left drifts as high as nine feet in Birmingham. Winds of up to 90 miles an hour last week wrecked ships, including a U.S. freighter, off Europe’s coasts, and caused widespread damage on the Continent. Northern France and Paris, experience what the French call the ‘most precocious winter since 1946-47,’ were hit by snow squalls.”