chances of kings x thameslink re opening?

[Scotrail314209]

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!)

Great stuff! So I should be able to get a few nice glimpses if I head to the Victoria line?

 

[yorksrob]

The old Thameslink station might not have been perfect, but at least it represented an improvement to the network, and the death throes of the Beeching 'shut everything at all costs' mentality.

 

[TrafficEng]

As a very junior clerk...

Thank you for this post, it was a fascinating read.

I was an occasional user of the station, mainly to get to Farringdon quicker than waiting for a bus, but never really felt safe with the walk nor on the platforms.

My final visit was quite memorable. I was on my way to Gatwick and had mis-timed my journey. I was checking the timetables on the way down to Kings Cross and discovered the only way I'd get to Gatwick on time was to run and catch a service from the Thameslink station. I made it just in time - the train was already at the platform. But after that I had a bit of a soft spot for the station, without it I'd have missed the flight and an important family occasion.

Years later and my friend's boy is fascinated by trains and London stations. If we go on Thameslink I always point out the platforms as we pass through. Having grown up using the new station he still can't get his head round the idea those tiny platforms once served Kings Cross. It does bring it home how things we were familiar with soon become history.

 

[Bald Rick]

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!)

Well quite. It was worse in the PM peak. Almost until it closed a few peak time fast trains were a single 4 car 319, notably the 1724 and 1734*. They would pull into a very overcrowded platform, doors would open, no one would get off, no one could get on, and after much whistling / shouting b6 the platform staff to stand behind the yellow line (a physical impossibility) the train would carefully depart 2 minutes later, by now delayed.

*These two trains are now, effectively, the 1726 and 1736 from St Pancras. Both 12 car and each with around 7-800 people standing on departure. Try getting all those on a 319.

 

[BluePenguin]

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.

Well you can always use the other entrance by the Wetherspoons and escalators to the Southeastern platforms

 

[Dr_Paul]

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

I read a magazine article somewhere -- possibly in the London Railway Record -- which mentioned that a station was actually proposed there, but was never built. It would be useful, as it is in a fairly large area without a railway or underground station, but building one, even if only on the Underground and not on the Widened Lines, would be quite a hefty job, not least as it would be under a fair-sized hill and not just beneath the surface as at Kings Cross or Farringdon Street.

Reopening the Kings Cross station on the Widened Lines would be handy for me, but it's exceedingly unlikely for the reasons various people have stated above. As it is, I always felt that it was awkward, especially when crowded at rush-hours, with its narrow platforms and with the thick columns holding up the buildings above making them even more narrow at intervals along the platforms' length. I suspect that this was why the parallel Underground station was closed and replaced by a more spacious one further to the west.

 

[AlbertBeale]

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.
... ...

I doubt I can claim it's anything to do with my moaning here a few weeks back. But, using KX T/L (as I still think of it) to get out from the tube the other day, I found that they are finally fixing the escalator! (Still, the 80 or so stairs up to the street keep people fit I guess.)

NB - Scotrail314209 - did you ever make it to have a look at the old platforms?

 

[jon0844]

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).

I used King's Cross and the old St Pancras many times and I was never a victim of crime, but I was/am quite street wise and know how to look confident and able to deal with myself.

The problem is that I was doing that to reduce my chances of being involved and, let's be honest, make others more of a target than me.

I am no fan of gentrification, but I can't deny that I've not felt unsafe around there for pretty much that last 15-20 years.