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Ghost Stations of the London Underground
PinchDuck writes "Check out this site to get a tour of London Underground stations that have been abandoned during the century+ history of the commuter system. You can apparently still get to some of them! (though not by taking the Tube, obviously). I wish I had found this site 2 weeks ago, when I went to London, but now my geeky explorations must wait until my next visit (having just flown back in to Detroit today)."
There are a lot of sites out there with some info on the tunnels:
http://www.thetube.com/content/metro/01/0110/31/
http://www.londonrailways.net/ghost.htm
The BBC has a great article here.
Most older cities have a lot of steam tunnels and abandoned stations like these. Does anyone out there have some interesting exploration stories to share?
ProjectZ have undertaken some "unofficial" visits to some of these stations. Specifically Wood Lane underground station, and the abandoned part of Holborn Station and the adjoining world war two bunker. There are also some other interesting urban explorations on this site.
Another site that has similar information about places you're not supposed to go is www.infiltration.org. Ah, running around steam tunnels back when I was an undergrad....
http://triggur.org/silo/site.html
World's weirdest site--exploring an abandoned missile silo.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
You need not feel bad that you're going back to Detroit. It has no lack of abandoned structures. Check this out for a start: http://www.forgottendetroit.com/. Also try the Urban Exploration Ring for the website about your area!
It's off topic, but since you mentioned it, Detroit is also full of abandoned places to explore.
Check it out.
If abandoned subway stations are your thing, you can find plenty of them right here in New York City.
One of them is even a national historic monument.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
it's been done (twice to my knowledge). the raves are called underlondonground. the last one was in the disused aldwych station on 5 december.
For those of you not familiar with the TTC, it's the transit system in Toronto.
:)
As for the station refered to in the parent, it was called Lower Bay (or Bay Lower) station, and was shutdown after 6 months of use. It's now used mainly as a film set, and for training I believe. Since little to no maintenance is performed on it, it's easy to pass it off as a New York subway station
THIS page is a good read about exploring the TTC tunnels (and lower bay), and THIS page gives a little bit of the history of lower bay.
INFILTRATION is a website that specializes in clandestine exploration of subway tunnels, amongst other things.
Nice site here with lots of detail. I've actually seen the old city hall station (although briefly, from a passing train)
Vote Technocratic! Government by killer robots!
Sounds a bit like the Seattle Underground Tour (Link) (Link) (Link) which I took this summer out there. No, they won't tell you any dirty secrets about Microsoft. But for 7.00 it was worth it, and the tour guides were knowledgeable and funny. Apparently the original city planners for the city of Seattle were not all that smart... (if your interested about this part of Seattle there is a book called Sons of the Profits about it)
Anybody know if there is anything like this in some other big cities?
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
The TTC has a number of abandoned stations and facilities. http://www.transit.toronto.on.ca/transit.cfm?tt=su bway&id=5006
The most commonly known abandoned station is Lower Bay, the lower level of the Bay station. It was used for a few months when the Bloor-Danforth line first opened, to allow the trains to interline with the Yonge-University line.
When the Yonge line was planned, it was thought that a streetcar subway would run under Queen Street (rather than the Bloor-Danforth line we have today). A roughed-in platform was built for the streetcars under Queen Station. At Osgoode (Queen St, University line), there is no second platform, although utlities were moved to accomodate a line (should it be built).
Another abandoned "station" is located at Allen Road, along the cancelled Eglinton line. The station was the first to be built, but the new government at the time cancelled the line and the station was filled in. Work never progressed far enough for it to be called a station though.
Keele and Woodbine stations on the Bloor line were terminal stations when the Bloor-Danforth line first opened. Special tunnels were built to make it easier for passengers to transfer to/from the streetcars, but were later abandoned.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
Ironic != coincidental.
Please for the love of God learn the difference.
I'm amazed that no one has mentioned the link between this article and a book by popular-with-geeks author Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere (information on Everything).
If you've never read it, I recommend it, very reality bending and a good read besides.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
I'm sure this one was discussed on the UK transport newsgroup a few years ago.. A related discussion (but not the actual one) is linked to here.
The Victoria line has a stretch between Victoria and Green Park. The most direct route would go under Buckingham Palace, the Queen's primary residence. However, if you look at 'real' maps of the Underground, a kink is in the line which causes it to skirt the Queen's property.
Supposedly this is related to security, but also to an atomic shelter located under the Palace.
If, however, you keep your eyes peeled while looking out of the train between these two stations, you can actually see a very small platform and some dim lights. I've only seen it once, and I -think- it's out of the left hand side of the train when going northbound, but I'm not 100% sure.
The newsgroup speculation at the time was that this was a way for the Royals to access the Underground in certain 'situations'. Next time you're on that stretch of line, check it out.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Of all the deepcut lines, the Picadilly Line is probably the most fascinating for abandoned stations.
There are three notable abandonments; Aldwych, Down Street, and Brompton Road. There are also abandoned sections at Hyde Park Corner (which no longer uses it's original surface building, which is now a Pizza Restaurant), Green Park, South Ken (the lift shafts are empty), Caledonian Road, and no doubt several other stations.
Aldwych is probably the best known of the abandoned stations. It was closed in 1994 as the replacement cost for the lifts was deemed uneconomical, given the usage the station got. Aldwych runs on a branch down from Oldborn, and some tunnel extends further. This is because the Picadilly line was originally two seperate lines, the western section running to Covent Garden, the northern section running to Aldwych. The northern section was intended to run south of the river, hence the extra tunnel. This was never completed though, and the two sections wer joined at Holborn very early on.
Aldwych also has other random tunnel going to it, as the Jubilee line was built all the way to Aldwych, but never used that far. Now the Charring Cross section of the Jubilee line is completely abandoned as the Jubilee extension takes the line through Westminster instead.
Down Street was closed in the 1930s along with Brompton Road to thin down the number of Central London stations on the Picadilly line when the line was extended further east and west. Down Street, due to it's proximity to Green Park, was never a particularly busy station, and hence was an easy target. During the war it was converted into a transport command HQ and government bunker.
Brompton Road was likely chosen for closure due its very high proximity to South Ken - much of the surface building still stands next to the Kensington Oratory, just a few minutes walk away. Brompton Road was also used during the war, although it's uses were entirely military, and somewhat murky. The military still own the shafts, making access from the ground impossible. Several years ago a man died after breaking in and falling down one of the shafts. His remains were not discovered for quite some time!
Both Brompton Road and Down Street can be spotted from passing tube trains - the platforms were bricked up during their war usage, so you can see where the platforms would be by looking where the tube wall turns into a brick wall. Brompton Road is between South Ken and Knightsbridge, Down Street is between Hyde Park Corner and Green Park. Also look out for the cross-over / passing tunnels between Hyde Park Corner and Down Street :-)
Usage Note: The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply "coincidental" or "improbable," in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly. Thus 78 percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use of ironically in the sentence In 1969 Susie moved from Ithaca to California where she met her husband-to-be, who, ironically, also came from upstate New York. Some Panelists noted that this particular usage might be acceptable if Susie had in fact moved to California in order to find a husband, in which case the story could be taken as exemplifying the folly of supposing that we can know what fate has in store for us. By contrast, 73 percent accepted the sentence Ironically, even as the government was fulminating against American policy, American jeans and videocassettes were the hottest items in the stalls of the market, where the incongruity can be seen as an example of human inconsistency.
This is a fascinating subject. Some of my favorites...
c om
http://www.nelsap.org
http://www.forgotten-ny.
And exactly on the subject of abandoned subway tunnels, here's an index for New York...
http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
After seeing Die Another Day, I decided to do some research on the abandoned tube station that Bond went to. The name of the station was "Vauxhall Cross". It turns out, that a Vauxhall Cross station never existed, but it is the offical name of the building better known as MI6 headquarters. Also here are some more pictures of Vauxhall Cross. I'll give them credit for throwing in a little easter egg like that.
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"And may your days be long upon the earth."
Point in order. Your opening move at Aldwich clearly put Wood Lane inside the elliptic, so according to the Hugenots' Sphere Convention, your next move must be inside the corrolary zone.
Anyway, when the scheme inevitably collapsed most of the Rabbit access point signs disappeared, but a noble few were left behind, either as largish stickers high on the wall, or as sticking out signs next to boxes on the ceiling/wall. I guess it was too much trouble to take them down, or they were just overlooked as they were covered in tube grime.
IIRC there was one in Tottenham Court Road, and another in Westminster, but I haven't noticed them in a year or so. I used to catch sight of them every once in a while and they always amused me.
After the war, the U-Bahn and the Buses were run by West Berlin and the S-Bahn + Trams were allocated to East Berlin.
The U in U-Bahn means Underground, although they often run about 30 feet above ground. The U-Bahn runs in the built-up areas.
The S in S-Bahn means Stadt (city), they went way out into tge surrounding areas.
There were 4 U-Bahn lines affected by the wall:
- U1, the station at it's eastern end was Warschauer Brücke and was cut off by the wall and closed.
- U3, there were 2 seperate ones for years, one in the West (3 stations) and one in the East (12 stations). The 4 stations between them (Nollendorfplatz, Bülowstraße and Gleisdreieck in the W, Potsdamer Platz in the E) were closed. The 3 W stations more-or-less duplicated another line, Bülowstraße was a permanent (!) Flea Market.
- (The U5 was entirely in the E and ran normally)
- U6, Runs N to S. 5 Stations in the E (one was called Nordbahnhof) were closed for years, a sixth (Friedrichstraße) was a border crossing. The trains used to slow down a bit in their way through the others and there were armed guards at each one
- U8, parallel to the U6 had 6 stations closed with armed guards.
All stations on all U-Bahn lines have now re-opened.The S-Bahn was more or less boycotted after the wall was built in 1961. When the staff went on strike around 20 years later, the E-Germans reacted by closing most of the existing lines and stations. All (I believe) are open again.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Here is a page about the Paris subway ghost stations (only eleven, much less than London).
What is the most amazing to me is that these stations seem to have escaped time: you can see ads from the 50s on the wall. When there was some works done at the Roosevelt station, they removed a part of the wall coverings, revealing the original wall, covered with ads, and a map of the subway as it was in the mid 60s.
The article is slightly inaccuarte. The idea was that the Northern line would terminate at Highgate and the service from Finsbury Park would run on to High Barnet. When I did this walk the first time (about 20 years ago) one could walk through the southern tunnels and right on the Highgate upper level station. The Northern tunnels were closed because they lead straight on to the electrified sidings about 500 metres south of East Finchley station - that spur (from East Finchley to the sidings) is all that remains of the original plan.
There are still rows round here about rebuilding the line - which would relieve a lot of bus congestion but at the price of the loss of a local amenity (the Parkland Walk nb: not the Woodland walk as stated in the article).
Of course the Tories (boo hiss) wanted to turn the Parkland Walk into a motorway and only abandoned the plan when they realised they were about to get slaughtered in the 1990 local elections...
mUshA