chances of kings x thameslink re opening?

[Ladder23]

As above guys, what's the chances of this happening, is there any on going debates or is it a no go.

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

As above guys, what's the chances of this happening, is there any on going debates or is it a no go.

No go. It was replaced by St Pancras Thameslink platforms. Kings Cross Thameslink could not handle 12-car trains so it was closed and relocated to St Pancras when St Pancras was redeveloped.

 

[Ladder23]

Makes sense! thanks for confirming mate

 

[MML]

Spent many a late night stood on those platforms in my youth. Freezing in winter.

Sad to see it nowadays under a layer of pigeon droppings.

What I would like to know is what was the history behind the station prior to it's reopening as a Thameslink station in the 1980s ? It certainly wasn't an entirely new station as far as I could tell.

 

[transmanche]

What I would like to know is what was the history behind the station prior to it's reopening as a Thameslink station in the 1980s ? It certainly wasn't an entirely new station as far as I could tell.

It was served by trains to Moorgate from both the Midland Main Line and Great Northern routes.

There's a decent write-up and some good pictures on the Disused Station website.

 

[thedbdiboy]

It's the original Underground station for the Metropolitan/H&C and Circle Lines as well - behind the wall are the disused tube platforms, whilst the Thameslink/Midland City platforms served the 'Widened Lines'. The tube platforms were closed in the 1940s when the new platforms for those were opened underneath the front of Kings X/St Pancras.

 

[bramling]

As above guys, what's the chances of this happening, is there any on going debates or is it a no go.

No chance. The platforms are too narrow and short, both of which are nearly impossible to rectify, and it’s too far away from anything to be much use. Even 25 years ago it was hopelessly inadequate for the demands placed upon it.

It did have one positive over its replacement though, the ability for wait for a train without being subject to awful squeal from the train wheels!

As a random aside, I remember using the place on a regular basis in the 1990s, it had the rudest booking-office staff I’ve ever encountered.

 

[Mag_seven]

As above guys, what's the chances of this happening, is there any on going debates or is it a no go.

Why would you want it re-opened?

 

[DPWH]

I believe the original closure notice also included claims that keeping it open would have restricted capacity on the Thameslink core as it was too close to St Pancras. Note the whole point of the Thameslink core is maximal capacity.

 

[flitwickbeds]

It did have one positive over its replacement though, the ability for wait for a train without being subject to awful squeal from the train wheels

Two - quicker connection to Tube lines at KXSP.
Currently you have to walk through a maze of shops and fight your way through arriving Eurostar passengers working out where to go next.

 

[AM9]

Two - quicker connection to Tube lines at KXSP.
Currently you have to walk through a maze of shops and fight your way through arriving Eurostar passengers working out where to go next.

It wasn't that quick to connect with the tube lines except the Victoria line. The long subway was crowded in the peaks and as the only off-street route, it would often get very slow. The new station complex has two main routes to the underground, - 1) via the Met/Circle station which although involves a walk of about 1/2 the length of a Eurostar train (c. 200m), it is dead straight, there's no 'weaving'and it isn't always crowded, and 2) via the new northern booking hall which with many escalators, has fairly free running passageways to Northern and Piccadilly line platforms. For those in the know, there is also the shortcut to the Victoria.

 

[mattdickinson]

A new station at Mount Pleasant, at least on the Met & Circle lines would be more useful.

 

[hwl]

A new station at Mount Pleasant, at least on the Met & Circle lines would be more useful.

Agreed - but it won't happen unfortunately!

 

[AlbertBeale]

It wasn't that quick to connect with the tube lines except the Victoria line. The long subway was crowded in the peaks and as the only off-street route, it would often get very slow. The new station complex has two main routes to the underground, - 1) via the Met/Circle station which although involves a walk of about 1/2 the length of a Eurostar train (c. 200m), it is dead straight, there's no 'weaving'and it isn't always crowded, and 2) via the new northern booking hall which with many escalators, has fairly free running passageways to Northern and Piccadilly line platforms. For those in the know, there is also the shortcut to the Victoria.

And the Piccadilly line too (not just the Vic), before they shuffled all the subway connections as part of the expansion of KX-StP Underground Station. Working almost within sight of the old T/L station I'd always use that if needing the Vic or Picc - far quicker than going to the main Underground entrance if you're around there; and far far quicker for a T/L to Picc or Vic interchange than now, with the relocated T/L platforms (and indeed MML platforms) being a serious hike from the Underground following all the KX and StP changes.

 

[jopsuk]

To answer the question? Zero. Nil. Absolutely not. No chance at all.

 

[Mag_seven]

A new station at Mount Pleasant, at least on the Met & Circle lines would be more useful.

I've often thought that given the stretch between Kings Cross and Farringdon is quite a long one without a station.

 

[jopsuk]

St Pancras Thameslink was built not for better interchange, but because it was possible there to build a station with long, wide platforms. Not only are the old platforms at Kings Cross TL too short with no easy way to lengthen them, they're not that wide- not ideal for handling the modern (and the proposed) timetable.

 

[AM9]

St Pancras Thameslink was built not for better interchange, but because it was possible there to build a station with long, wide platforms. Not only are the old platforms at Kings Cross TL too short with no easy way to lengthen them, they're not that wide- not ideal for handling the modern (and the proposed) timetable.

They were quite hazardous in busy times as passengers passing down them had to walk well over the yellow line.

 

[AM9]

I've often thought that given the stretch between Kings Cross and Farringdon is quite a long one without a station.

Not really, it's just 1 mile 27ch. Bear in mind, the speeds run are quite low (50mph?).

 

[Bald Rick]

They were quite hazardous in busy times as passengers passing down them had to walk well over the yellow line.

Not just hazardous, but also a significant cause of performance issues due to extended dwell times. When operation swapped to St Pancras, average PPM for Thameslink lifted about 2%.

Not really, it's just 1 mile 27ch. Bear in mind, the speeds run are quite low (50mph?).

30mph. If s station was to be built on that stretch, it would be much more useful on the underground. But it won’t be happening.

 

[Scotrail314209]

If using the Pentonville Road entrance (does that still open), would you be able to see down the old corridor to the Thameslink platform or does the tube entrance go straight past it?

 

[AlbertBeale]

If using the Pentonville Road entrance (does that still open), would you be able to see down the old corridor to the Thameslink platform or does the tube entrance go straight past it?

Yes - the Pentonville Rd station entrance is still there for Underground access (though only really worth it for the Vic now; but much the quickest to and from the Vic if your origin/destination is in that bit of the KX area, or Angel-wards from KX), but it closes late evening and weekends (annoyingly for those of us for whom it's really useful). It does seem to get quite a bit of rush-hour use, but much less at some other times However, the escalator up to the entrance hall and ticket gates from the passageway to/from the Vic platforms has been out of action since some time in 2018(!); LT seem not to care and say it's NR's problem, even though it's only LT passengers using it these days.

As for your question - getting there! - the half landing on the flight of stairs has a locked door where there used to be access to the southbound platform, with a pane of glass you can look through. The overbridge from the upper level and the underpassage from the lower level (both ways to get to the northbound) are of course locked off.

There are only machines there now, but when it was used by T/L as well as LT, some NR tickets were available (though perhaps they were actually LT ticket staff selling them?). And there was a happy era when you could buy there a CDR NR ticket KX to Finsbury Park, which was cheaper than two Underground singles (LT having stopped CDRs by then); and because of the historic interavailability of KX-FP tickets as between LT and NR, you could then use it to dive on the Vic line from there (though the ticket office staff would often try to tell me that since they'd sold me a NR ticket, I had to trot along to KX mainline for my trip to FP). [This was post-KX Suburban trains - which would have gone to FP - using that station to and from Moorgate, of course, since they disappeared as part of the revamping of the route to turn it from a rush-hour extension of the BedPan route into the first stage of the T/L line we know today.] This CDR ruse saved me a few bob over the years, since my work often took me up and down on the tube from an office at KX to an office by FP station.

 

[Scotrail314209]

Yes - the Pentonville Rd station entrance is still there for Underground access (though only really worth it for the Vic now; but much the quickest to and from the Vic if your origin/destination is in that bit of the KX area, or Angel-wards from KX), but it closes late evening and weekends (annoyingly for those of us for whom it's really useful). It does seem to get quite a bit of rush-hour use, but much less at some other times However, the escalator up to the entrance hall and ticket gates from the passageway to/from the Vic platforms has been out of action since some time in 2018(!); LT seem not to care and say it's NR's problem, even though it's only LT passengers using it these days.

As for your question - getting there! - the half landing on the flight of stairs has a locked door where there used to be access to the southbound platform, with a pane of glass you can look through. The overbridge from the upper level and the underpassage from the lower level (both ways to get to the northbound) are of course locked off.

There are only machines there now, but when it was used by T/L as well as LT, some NR tickets were available (though perhaps they were actually LT ticket staff selling them?). And there was a happy era when you could buy there a CDR NR ticket KX to Finsbury Park, which was cheaper than two Underground singles (LT having stopped CDRs by then); and because of the historic interavailability of KX-FP tickets as between LT and NR, you could then use it to dive on the Vic line from there (though the ticket office staff would often try to tell me that since they'd sold me a NR ticket, I had to trot along to KX mainline for my trip to FP). [This was post-KX Suburban trains - which would have gone to FP - using that station to and from Moorgate, of course, since they disappeared as part of the revamping of the route to turn it from a rush-hour extension of the BedPan route into the first stage of the T/L line we know today.] This CDR ruse saved me a few bob over the years, since my work often took me up and down on the tube from an office at KX to an office by FP station.

Thank you!! I’m in London next week so I’m hoping to take a quick glance at it, should I be able to get a look to the passage leading to the southbound platform?

 

[AlbertBeale]

Thank you!! I’m in London next week so I’m hoping to take a quick glance at it, should I be able to get a look to the passage leading to the southbound platform?

If I remember correctly, looking through the little pane of glass on the half-landing means you're looking more or less onto the S/B platform. I might not have a chance to look on Friday (and anyway will be on my bike and not using a tube ticket), and it's closed at weekends (including from the Vic platforms end of course), but if I get a chance, and remember, I'll confirm whether my memory is right by having a look asap after the weekend - and update on here.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

No chance. The platforms are too narrow and short, both of which are nearly impossible to rectify, and it’s too far away from anything to be much use. Even 25 years ago it was hopelessly inadequate for the demands placed upon it.

It did have one positive over its replacement though, the ability for wait for a train without being subject to awful squeal from the train wheels!

As a random aside, I remember using the place on a regular basis in the 1990s, it had the rudest booking-office staff I’ve ever encountered.

Plus the street walk from KXTLK to the main terminii - before the area was "gentrified" was just not urban edgy , but quite dangerous. Especially at the height of "Crack Camden" , the cash point outside the old entrance had one of the highest robbery rates in the city. Delighted when it closed. Awful station back in the day. SPX is vastly better in all respects.

 

[AlbertBeale]

Plus the street walk from KXTLK to the main terminii - before the area was "gentrified" was just not urban edgy , but quite dangerous. Especially at the height of "Crack Camden" , the cash point outside the old entrance had one of the highest robbery rates in the city. Delighted when it closed. Awful station back in the day. SPX is vastly better in all respects.

It's interesting how so many visitors found the area dangerous; many of us who've been in the area for decades discovered - when the seeming threat on the streets was at its worst - that there were pretty much two parallel worlds going on. I didn't bother them and they didn't bother me. And before anyone cheers on the gentrification, it must be remembered that a main reason for about two decades of the dereliction was precisely the unfulfilled promise/threat of "development" hanging over the area. If the local community's plans had been put into effect - which of course they mostly weren't because of the power of money - the developments around KX would have been sooner and more positive (ie, not tidying it up by booting lots of the ordinary people out).

 

[ChiefPlanner]

It's interesting how so many visitors found the area dangerous; many of us who've been in the area for decades discovered - when the seeming threat on the streets was at its worst - that there were pretty much two parallel worlds going on. I didn't bother them and they didn't bother me. And before anyone cheers on the gentrification, it must be remembered that a main reason for about two decades of the dereliction was precisely the unfulfilled promise/threat of "development" hanging over the area. If the local community's plans had been put into effect - which of course they mostly weren't because of the power of money - the developments around KX would have been sooner and more positive (ie, not tidying it up by booting lots of the ordinary people out).

It is true that you could just walk by and ignore the "street activity" , and I suppose I never came to any harm in walking through it for 20 years or so at various times of day and night. So while one welcomes the overall "street" improvements , I agree that "gentrification" has probably gone to the opposite , not just "improving" the area , but making it utterly unaffordable for many long standing and decent residents. There ought to be a balance and I suspect it has gone way wrong.

 

[AlbertBeale]

If I remember correctly, looking through the little pane of glass on the half-landing means you're looking more or less onto the S/B platform. I might not have a chance to look on Friday (and anyway will be on my bike and not using a tube ticket), and it's closed at weekends (including from the Vic platforms end of course), but if I get a chance, and remember, I'll confirm whether my memory is right by having a look asap after the weekend - and update on here.

Further update for Scotrail314209 - I did manage to have a look today after all, and the situation is as follows. If you go down the first little flight of steps from the street / ticket gates level, there are two sets of locked doors on that landing. One leads to a flight of stairs down to the old southbound platform, and the other to an over-passage across the tracks to the northbound. You can see through both doors, but nothing is visible of the platforms etc,

However, that landing also feeds you onto the long and wide flights of stairs down to the Victoria line access. And (as I thought I remembered), there are more doors on the landing halfway down those stairs. They don't lead to a passage to the southbound, but directly onto the southbound platform. What's closed off by those doors is the archway through which you accessed the southbound platform if you were coming up from the Underground to interchange (from the street, you could use the route I referred to earlier from the higher level). And given the notoriously cramped platforms there, if you press your nose against the pane of glass in those doors you're only a gnat's whisker from the southbound T/Ls trundling past.

Looking at it in detail again, I'm reminded of how hairy it was at peak hours there - an 8-coach train (some were only 4) disgorging there led to quite a crush. So it's clear that without a rebuild on a scale that's not really feasible in that location, current 12-coach T/Ls stopping there would be simply impossible. (More's the pity from my personal point of view!)

 

[AlbertBeale]

It is true that you could just walk by and ignore the "street activity" , and I suppose I never came to any harm in walking through it for 20 years or so at various times of day and night. So while one welcomes the overall "street" improvements , I agree that "gentrification" has probably gone to the opposite , not just "improving" the area , but making it utterly unaffordable for many long standing and decent residents. There ought to be a balance and I suspect it has gone way wrong.

And not only for long-standing residents, but unaffordable for many local businesses too, driven out by rent hikes by development companies and by rich international chains. One shop I'm connected with - based in the area for over 60 years now - only survived on account of years of support from (not commercially motivated) sympathetic landlords (landlords who also refused to sell up to "developers" at one stage, to help thwart a plan to raze half of that block to build an office tower).

 

[Dr Hoo]

As a very junior clerk I worked on the fringes of the Midland Suburban Electrification project as it was known back in the late 1970s. This was an amazing privilege and I got 'dogsbodied' into all sorts of meetings as note-taker and general 'continuity presentee-ist'. I could browse through all the papers, plans and photographs without opposition whilst researching background for public relations purposes. I visited what we called King's Cross Midland City many times.

One amusing recollection concerns an off-peak visit for surveying purposes. Having picked up the keys to 'Pentonville Road' (as they were labelled) from the main Underground station a couple of us let ourselves in with a London Transport minder. During a general mooch round we visited the Underground-operated signalbox that still controlled the junction for the King's Cross and Dock Junction lines. Obviously there were no train movements for hours and the signaller was bored to tears. Having been invited in we were offered a cup of tea and a chat. The chap put a kettle on an old gas ring to boil it up. The Underground guy nearly had a fit! "We haven't allowed gas underground for decades. How did you slip through the net?"

LT re-wired the box to get rid of the gas ring even though it had an extremely limited remaining life.

More widely it was evident that the LM Region was extremely jealous of the Eastern 'Great Northern' project that had quite good interchange with the tube at Finsbury Park, Highbury & Islington, Old Street AND Moorgate. Our links at Kentish Town and King's Cross were extremely poor. The single uni-directional escalator was a desperate attempt to look comprehensive. We also squeezed in public toilets as a way of getting 'one over' both the ER and 'Sewer Rats' (as our valued Underground partners were affectionately called when out of earshot). These were a total waste of time and immediately had to be taken out of use, once opened, as they were turned into an instant pop-up soliciting/prostitution/drug taking/selling facility.

Although it would have not helped with the tube interchange we were also unable to include lift access to the platforms. Most suburban trains had, of course, previously used St Pancras with level access. We were thus ridiculed by our Liverpool Division colleagues who had made sure that the contemporaneous Merseyrail Loop and Link project had lift access at all five underground stations. They also lorded it over as as they were getting a CCTV control room. Both aspects really advanced for their time.

The whole project was sadly done on the cheap and produced what I can only agree was an awful and depressing station. In later years (when Thameslink had opened and it had become quite busy) I used it quite a lot whilst commuting and really hated the queues and narrow platforms.

Ah, the joys of a harmonious, integrated, happy family of public transport managers dedicated to no other cause than exceeding the expectations of our valued customers. We won't see those days again.