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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?
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.
... 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.
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.
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
Some of these London stations are used to great effect in Neil Gaiman's book "Neverwhere".
Very cool book, IMHO
Yeah, but the problem is giving out directions to these parties.
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."
Now just try to get to the drinks without running into a grue.
Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble... can't we just go to Starbuck's for coffee?
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();
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!
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
Here is a link to a comment I posted recently about the long history of seattle urban planning intelligence. Bitching about Seattle urban planning is kind of a local pastime.
-Sean
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.
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."
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?
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 :-)
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
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
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
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...