A very enjoyable evening session spent at London Kings Cross on the East Coast Mainline where we see plenty of services from Thameslink, Great Northern, London Northeastern Railway, Grand Central and Hull Trains.
Kings Cross has a huge and varied history behind it but I won't go into absolutely everything as there really is far to much to tell, and lets be honest you're not going to want to res through everything on here. Although I could be wrong. Either way let's get started.
The station was built and opened by the Great Northern Railway in 1852 and served as their London terminus, this was the fifth station to be built in London.
The stations named derived from a nearby building which was called Kings Cross building. This was a monument to the former King of England King George IV.
The actual design of the station really hadn't changed all that much abeilt with small changes having to be made to accommodate bigger trains and everything else that you would expect of a station serving the nation's capital. The design of the station came by the hands of several people including: Lewis Cubitt who was the brother of Thomas Cubitt whom designed the Bloomsbury, Belgravia and Osborne House. Sir William Cubitt who was the chief architect of Crystal Palace.
The main features of the station included two brick arched train sheds covering the platforms, there would be a brick structure at the end of the station which would reflect the archways throughout the station, there was a large clock tower reaching 34 metres in height. The inspiration for this impressive structure came from the Moscow Riding Academy.
When the station was opened it was officialy the biggest in the country. When it was first built it had one departure and one arrival Platfrom with space in between the two for a carriage sidings.
The station started gaining much more attention when the following stations were built: Holloway Road, Wood Green and Severn Sisters Road which is now known as simply Severn Sisters. These were opened in order of date, 1850, 1859 and 1861.
When the Midland Railway began operating there services from Leicester via Hitchin and Bedford they used Kings Cross as their London terminus which meant that platform 2 had to be lenthened and platform 3 was built to help with the growing traffic.
In 1866 the Metropolitan Railway made a connection to the line which then meant that the London, Chatham and Dover Railway could reach the station. The result of this caused a new suburban station to be built at Herne Hill.
As I'm sure many of you are aware there was actually a line that went around and under Kings Cross station and the tunnel entrance of this can still be seen opposite the end of Platform 1. This was known as the Kings Cross Mainline Local Station and was opened in 1875 and was followed 3 years later by the Metropolitan Railway making a further connection in 1878. In 1893 a further two platforms were built to cater for the growing demand, these are the current platforms 5 and 6. Because of the size of the station a new iron footbridge was built to connect all the platforms together. Because at the time there wasn't much in the way of long distance trains it meant that by 1880 almost half of the traffic that was serving the station was for suburban use. A rather interesting feature of the station is the Gas Works Tunnel that you see quite clearly in front of the station which has a rather sharp incline. This hadn't seen any real attention since it was first built and was all most forgot about which meant it was the sight of countless bottlenecks. Especially with freight traffic trying to get past the station. Inevitably an accident did happen between a light engine and a coal train which was caused by combination of signal man error and poor weather conditions.
When the LNER took ownership of the station from 1923 to 1948 there were an all manner of changes being made to the station to try and simply make life somewhat easier for everyone. These included adding toilets and dressing rooms beneath what is now platform 8. The lines going through the Gas Works Tunnel were redesgined and signalling greatly improved which would make things so much easier for managing the growing number of trains.
Now we think that overcrowding these days is bad. I think we have it easy when you look at what Kings Cross went through during WW2. Because of where the line travelled it meant that it became a major player in the transportation of civilian and troop traffic. Because there wasn't enough trains to cover the demand it meant that people were being crammed onto suburban and regional express trains with an average 2000 people per train!!!!
My next rush hour film will be from Linslade on the West Coast Mainline.
You can now find me on Facebook through the group Tornado922, there you will find regular updates, videos and photos from all of my goings on throughout 2023.