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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)."
I win!
Urban decay just fascinates me.
One step closer to the vision of NYC in AI (the movie by Spielberg)....
The Tube has nearly 256 miles of track and, per the following link, nearly 40 old ghost stations that are no longer in service.
/. article was just posted.
I found this old article on The Tube's Web site that really gives a nice overview of things. I actually read that a few weeks ago, so it's kind of ironic that this
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Apparently, the TTC has more than one phantom station too. I think the Tea Party filmed a video on a closed off Bay statioon level (?). There's at least one more, but I can't think of it/them offhand.
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?
Now, wouldn't some of those old tunnels and depots make for an interesting setting for a little party? No 2 hour long drives to get out to the boonies, just a nice underground party. [Cheap pun, I know.]
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
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.
Abandoned London Underground stations play a somewhat major part in several scenes in the new James Bond movie, including being the intro location for the new Bond car (a little disappointing this time around). You also get to find out what happens to old equipment, in one particular abandoned station.
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...
--The sex of hobo's and hairless people
Sex - Find It
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.
Car disapinting? Bond back in a decent car, none of this BMW crap. Of course we didnt see it much ;) - but hey, all the features got used
... The Government has put a D-notice on the publishers of London Underground maps. There are stations the public aren't supposed to know about out east; they built the Dome to discourage prospective explorers. The Forbidden Line starts near the Thames Barrier then goes 'London Below - Rl'yeh - Pandaemonium'. Another station serves the workers on the underground dragon-breeding project.
They claimed that those raiders who attacked the Dome with a JCB were aiming to steal diamonds. We know the truth now! They were aiming to break into the main shaft and expose the horrors below... Don't let them lie to you!
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
For more of the same, here's a great web site about abandoned stations in the New York City subway system, including a just gorgeous station directly underneath City Hall that sadly cannot be returned to service due to some minor technical issues (in addition to it being considered a security risk in this day and age).
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.
Oh that's just great. Now where are we going to hide out when the machines take over the planet?? The get-out has always been that mankind would take refuge in the abandoned tunnels and sewers. Now that Google has the archive of all the locations, that plan isn't going to work too well.
Please, be more responsible in the stories that you post on here. Thank You, STF
Twenty years from know, slashdot.org website
will be abandoened, with no links leaving to it
and we are going to rediscover it.
Some of these London stations are used to great effect in Neil Gaiman's book "Neverwhere".
Very cool book, IMHO
I would go check some of these out, but I hear they're really dark, and I don't want a grue to eat me. :( There's no place grues like better than dark abandoned underground transit stations.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
He mentioned that the Bull and Bush station was rumoured to be a control center incase the thames flooded the underground tunnels.. thanks now i have to live with that thought. If you think about it it makes sense.. all the lines are connected at one point or another so everywhere would flood. Can anyone explain what would actually happen, and how it could be stopped?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I didn't think so.
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}
I visited it in 2000 when I was in Berlin. I took the "guided tour" of the area.
Ostbahnhof was a station on a line that started in West Berlin, ducked into East Berlin for a little bit, through one station and then went back into West Berlin. The U-Bahn did not stop at Ostbahnhof while the city was divided. However, that did not stop some East Berliners from trying to use that train to escape East Berlin - which resulted in some fatalities until the East German government wised up.
Later, West Berliners taking the train would be able to see a "ghost" station as the train sped by Ostbahnhof with armed guards patrolling the station to prevent East Berliners from trying to escape.
Mmmm.. Donuts
I think we should really give the US audience a chance to get the hang, and use the simplified version for now...
I live on Watling Street, so that amendment stands too. Or indeed the playstation 2 version, considering the media of this discussion...
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
I know of one abandoned station on the "T" -- the old Harvard stop -- and think there may be another. It's an odd thing to glimpse in the tunnels. I can only imagine how much dirt, dust, and grime collects over the years. The bus-like Green line, which is a bit like an amusement park ride as it winds it's way under the city, has some very interesting views when, as often happens, the driver has to jump out the door to kick some ancient signal over that's preventing passage.
:) (A couple of those bridges, for example.)
Speaking of relics, the big dig (multibillion $ replacement of the main artery with tunnels) brought up all sort of oddities, such as hollowed-out tree trunks used as sewers in the 18th century. The mysteries that stir beneath.
Surely the Chicago L, Paris Metro, and so on share these features. And, given the nature of the web where one person's trivia is another's lifelong obsession, I'm sure the info is out there, somewhere.
Thanks for the NYC cite. NYC has all sorts of interesting things buried there.... And I can't help but say there are a lot of public works in the city that are not abandoned -- and should be.
Anyway, you can mostly successfully futz with your settings such that you never have to see them.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
A few years ago, I went on a tour of some of the ghost stations in the Boston Subway. It was a great experience and a litle spooky too. Many of these stations are excatly like they were when they were open...they just locked the doors and turned out the lights. I believe that you can take a tour of the Ghost Stations of the New York subway too. Of course, with all the paranoia of: 'Homeland Insecurity', maybe not.... Here are a couple of links: Boston: Http://members.aol.com/eddanamta/abandoned/abansta s.html
New York: http://www.cc.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/
Repository of all kinds of interesting stuff like this: http://www.deathrock.net/ariadne/ruins.html
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."
No sooner do I write what I wrote, so I notice that of course there is a page dedicated to Boston, cited from the very helpful NYC reference. Should've figured! Other pages for othe cities abound. I only thought this was an obscure interest. :)
Isn't the net cool? For bringing us information like this that we really, really need? Well, beats watching sitcoms.
In 1983 I was in Berlin and a reponsible adult (?) took us out on the S-Bahn and for whatever reason on that night the train took a spin through (under) East Berlin and through 3 stations that had been closed for 40 years.
It was wierd as hell, the stations looked... well... bombed out and there was debris everywhere. At each station there was a lone bare bulb and a lone polizei with an AK-47. The air was extremly stale too. The train wasn't allowed to stop, it just slowed.
Like a litle tram trip through the Twilight Zone.
I can only assume that all that is a memory and those stations have been re-built now and are operational, no? Any Berliners care to comment?
Which one of the abandoned tubes has a river of mood slime flowing through it?
Too bad i dont have a single subwaystation in a 500 mile radius.
A well, cant win them all.
HTTP/1.1 400
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
On the page about Down Street, the station used as a shelter by Churchill, he says this:
On the splash-guard above the sink I was very surprised to read written recently in the dust "Hywel 2000" - so another person bearing my name has recently visited this complex!
His name is Hywel. If I had such an uncommon name, and such an uncommon hobby, I would've been scared half to death by this.
Even the interpretation that he has been there before, but can't remember it, is quite scary.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
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 :-)
cx site...Wood Lane...Holborn..."unofficial visits"...urban explorations...
No clicky for me!
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
"In order to better understand the location of these stations on today's network, you may wish to download a copy of the world famous underground map (well, technically it's a diagram not a map)"
Um. Take a trained geographer's word, that's a map. I guess Polynesian wave and star charts are not maps because they don't show geomorphological features in an easily discernible way to Westerners... We are part of the landscape. Get over it.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
There goes
Man this place is going to the dogs..
Trolling is a art,
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.
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
I have gone down many old gold mines and caves in Colorado. Just wish we had taken a camera, not that they had digital ones back in the day.
/.ing on a adsl! and great story and pictures. Its just more fun actually doing the exploration with a friend. So now when we are doing a trip, I guess we will do a little net exploration first, to narrow down the candiates.
But while the sites are impressive. (taking a good
Rabbit mobile phone access points
I am interested in this. Please describe further.
--J(K) DOS is like Unix in exactly the same way that a pinto is like an aircraft carrier.
Do you think we can find one of those camouflaging Austens in one of those ghost stations too?
....we have an entire abandoned subway LINE!!! It's called the Sheppard line....
-psy
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.
It was a bit of Holborn which is now closed.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Cheers,
Ian
Mods: Take a look at the I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" site, and the mysteries of Mornington Crescent, not having a clue, one tune to the sound of another and all manner of oddities will be revealed.
I'm invoking the 1822 revision of the slave release rule and starting with "Embankment"
.02
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
So here goes, I'll counter your move with the John Prescott article 2.92.11.iii section of the 1991 London Transport Act and boldly go with
"Barons Court"
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
This is great news to all those tramps with net connections... now they can select their accomidation before moving in :-)
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.
to Google for "Urban Exploration", "Urbex" or "Buildering" - you should discover links to pictures & stories of unauthori - sorry, 'informal' visits to the same & similar places in the UK. If you pick the right site then you'll discover the explanation for the "unexplained woman's laughter" mentioned in the Down St section of the Slashdot featured site.
I just thought it was really weird that my story was rejected, knowing that the exact same story would be posted some hours later, which it just was. So let's see, the story was rejected because it wasn't old news yet?
I think your right about getting a life. Absolutely. This page has been sucking my time away ever since I found it.
It didn't say they were being repaired, just that it was resetting the system. Maybe it was figuring out a way of using the remaining emitters to compensate for the rest. Or maybe a fuse was blown inside, and it had to figure a way round it, like an immobot. But since it gave an exact time to when it could restart, I'm guessing it was Windows based and just crashed :)
Come to think of it, Windows does have a spookily accurate way of crashing in the most inopportune of moments. So it would kind of make sense for the invisibility to fault in the heat of battle. Perhaps Bill Gates is actually a member of SPECTRE?
Nah, the Berlin U2 won that one on 'prior usage'. Bono would have had to move his date of birth back around 75 years. :-)
You are right about where the U2 is, though
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
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...
You too can explore the dark and dangerous realm of the Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller, while seeing a piece of British history firsthand. Please do not disturb the soccer hooligan breeding tanks.
Rule # 1: There are no rules to Mornington Crescent.
Rule # 2: Never admit to rule #1.
Oops.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
mUshA
This site has a fine collection of abandoned stations on Boston's MBTA system.