Place Name
Laid out over former agricultural fields this is an awkward bit of land that was sandwiched between the London North Eastern Railway and the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway lines. Rubbish dumps have always presented a challenge for street namers, reluctant to be forthright and simply call it Dump Road or Tip Avenue, they chose instead euphemistic alternatives or corruptions of older names, Midden (meaning dung of rubbish heap became Maiden for example). Others chose to use long-standing humorous sobriquets, such as Mount Pleasant, they were anything but. By the 1970s, with new municipal dumps being opened on virgin ground, street namers didn’t have these options to fall back on. Of course, neither could they name a road after a local dignitary, it’s unlikely anyone would appreciate being immortalised in a road name leading to rubbish tips. So when in 1978, the Victoria Road Waste Transfer Station opened, the access road needed a name that conveyed what it was without being too explicit, hence the chosen name (one many other councils use for the roads to their town halls) in this case. Strictly speaking this is not the end journey for the rubbish. With ready access to the railways, household refuse and recycling from all over West London is taken here by truck. It is a transfer station where the waste is tipped from the refuse trucks, packed and loaded into sealed containers, each holding about 12 tonnes of waste. These containers are then loaded on to railway wagons. There is enough room on the railway wagons for 78 full containers – creating a train the length of 26 rail carriages. Not long ago, there was so much waste that 11 trains of waste left the sites each week. Now, thanks to a reduction in waste, the reusing of materials, and recycling, this has been reduced to five trains per week. The amount is, thankfully, still falling. Originally run by the council, it is now operated by contractor Suez.