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Fleet Line concourse at City Thameslink?

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urpert

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Hello all

I've read the Wikipedia article on City Thameslink a few times now, particularly this paragraph:

Due to the planned routing of the Fleet Line under the site, part of the station was built to allow a future interchange. This can be seen in the wide spaces on the Ludgate end of the station, where large doors open on to a corridor intended to lead to escalators to an Underground concourse level.


I use City Thameslink a lot and have looked all over for the 'wide spaces at the Ludgate end of the station' but can't imagine what this means, unless they're referring to the fire exit doors in the middle of the platform.

I don't suppose anyone has any better inside information about whether any of this concourse actually exists? I have searched in vain for 'behind the scene' photos.
 
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Blamethrower

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Don't think it's on the platforms, more the Holborn Viaduct entrance which has a couple of areas that you could bring subterranean escalators into.

Also worth noting the the Fleet line was the abandoned part of the jubilee line extension before they chose to route via waterloo / london bridge etc

This may help:

1939 to 1979, the Fleet line[edit]
[show] [ v t e ]Fleet line
The planning for the Tube network immediately before and after World War II considered several new routes. The main results of this study concerned two major routes: the south-to-northeast "line C" (later constructed as the Victoria line) and lines 3 and 4, new cross-town routes, linking the northeast suburbs to Fenchurch Street, Wapping and variously Lewisham and Hayes.

The Fleet line was mentioned in a 1965 Times article, discussing options after the Victoria line had been completed — suggesting that the Fleet line could take a Baker Street–Bond Street–Trafalgar Square–Strand–Fleet Street–Ludgate Circus–Cannon Street route, then proceeding into southeast London.[4]

Line C opened as the Victoria line, in stages, from 1968 to 1972. Work on the northeast–southwest route continued.

In 1971, construction began on the new 'Fleet line'. Economic pressure and doubt over the final destination of the line had led to a staged approach. Under the first stage, the Baker Street-to-Stanmore branch of the Bakerloo line was joined at Baker Street to a new 2.5-mile (4 km) segment into central London, with intermediate stops at Bond Street and Green Park and terminating at a new station at Charing Cross, thereby relieving pressure on the West End section of the Bakerloo line between Baker Street and Charing Cross and also allowing increased frequencies on the section north of Baker Street.


1983 Stock train at Kilburn in 1988
The new tube was to offer cross-platform interchange between the Bakerloo and Fleet at Baker Street, as pioneered on the Victoria line. The work was completed in 1979. As part of the works, Trafalgar Square (Bakerloo) and Strand (Northern) stations were combined into a single station complex, Charing Cross. The existing Charing Cross station on the sub-surface District and Circle lines was renamed Embankment.

The new line was to have been called the Fleet line[5] after the River Fleet (although it would only have crossed under the Fleet at Ludgate Circus; the central London section mostly follows the Tyburn). In 1975, when plans were under way to introduce the London Transport Silver Jubilee Bus fleet, the then Sales Manager of London Transport Advertising, Geoffrey Holliman, proposed to the Chairman of LTE, Kenneth Robinson, that the Fleet line should be renamed the Jubilee line. However, this idea was rejected because of the additional costs involved. Nevertheless, the project was subsequently renamed the Jubilee line for Queen Elizabeth II's 1977 Silver Jubilee following a pledge made by the Conservatives in the Greater London Council election of 1977. The original choice of battleship grey for the line's colour was based on the naval meaning of the word fleet; this became a lighter grey, representing the silver colour of the Jubilee itself.

The line was officially opened by the Prince of Wales on 30 April 1979, with passenger services operating from 1 May 1979.[6][7]
 
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swt_passenger

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The relevant "tunnel map" in the London Reconnections article seems to indicate that any practical link would have to head south from the Ludgate Hill end. That end of City T/L's platform level is effectively the same as the outside ground level, so any sensible direct link between there and the Fleet Line platforms would have to go downwards.

Direct link to drawing:
http://cdn.londonreconnections.com/2013/ludgate_fleet.jpg
 

DerekC

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The LR article suggests that what was built was "a passage at Holborn Viaduct" in which case whatever was built was presumably demolished when City Thameslink was constructed.

The big missed opportunity in this area must have been to close Farringdon and Holborn Viaduct and replace them with one station under Smithfield Market. That would have made the enhanced Thameslink service much more operable (one station instead of two, Farringdon narrow curved, graded platforms eliminated). It would also have made a much better base for interchange with Crossrail.
 

AM9

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The LR article suggests that what was built was "a passage at Holborn Viaduct" in which case whatever was built was presumably demolished when City Thameslink was constructed.

The big missed opportunity in this area must have been to close Farringdon and Holborn Viaduct and replace them with one station under Smithfield Market. That would have made the enhanced Thameslink service much more operable (one station instead of two, Farringdon narrow curved, graded platforms eliminated). It would also have made a much better base for interchange with Crossrail.
Except that from the late '80s until the opening of Crossrail, there would be no direct connection to anywhere between the flawed access from the original TL in Pentnville Road, to Blackfriars.
 

edwin_m

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Except that from the late '80s until the opening of Crossrail, there would be no direct connection to anywhere between the flawed access from the original TL in Pentnville Road, to Blackfriars.

And after 2008 the area in between would have been even less accessible, as the nearest stop to the west would be at the far side of St Pancras.
 

hwl

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And Farringdon and Blackfriars will need a separate City Thameslink to handle passenger numbers post 2018
 

Tetchytyke

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The big missed opportunity in this area must have been to close Farringdon and Holborn Viaduct and replace them with one station under Smithfield Market

Given the number of people that use the Turnmill Street entrance to Farringdon, that would have been a very very bad idea. There are a lot of very prestigious employers in Clerkenwell.
 

swt_passenger

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A couple of years ago I found that the City of London planning application site includes a number of applications for the future City T/L station that refer to it as the replacement Holborn Viaduct station. As many already know it also went through a phase of being referred to as St Pauls Thameslink.

Hence any references to 'Holborn Viaduct' may not necessarily mean the old station or its immediate surroundings.
 

edwin_m

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A couple of years ago I found that the City of London planning application site includes a number of applications for the future City T/L station that refer to it as the replacement Holborn Viaduct station. As many already know it also went through a phase of being referred to as St Pauls Thameslink.

Hence any references to 'Holborn Viaduct' may not necessarily mean the old station or its immediate surroundings.

But surely if the passage was built in the mid-70s along with various other Fleet Line bits and bobs, it would have been at the old Holborn Viaduct station which continued to exist for at least another decade?

Given the amount of change that was undertaken in the construction of City Thameslink, with the tracks being lowered at Fleet Street from overbridge into tunnel, it seems improbable that any traces of Fleet Line surface infrastructure would have survived.

The station box under Cannon Street forecourt sounds much more interesting.
 

Tetchytyke

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City Thameslink's northern concourse comes out where Holborn Viaduct's concourse was. It's the same office block, just 're-fronted. But I'd be amazed if anything below ground level stayed the same, given that City Thameslink was built cut-and-cover and there were extensive excavation work to do it.
 

urpert

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The station box under Cannon Street forecourt sounds much more interesting.

It's worth reading the listing application for 80 Cannon St if you're interested:

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1424940
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
City Thameslink's northern concourse comes out where Holborn Viaduct's concourse was. It's the same office block, just 're-fronted. But I'd be amazed if anything below ground level stayed the same, given that City Thameslink was built cut-and-cover and there were extensive excavation work to do it.

Are you sure it's the same office block? One of the marble bases for the support columns credits it to Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in the early naughties (and I've a feeling I remember it being built - I do also have childhood memories of the block that was there before.)
 

swt_passenger

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City Thameslink's northern concourse comes out where Holborn Viaduct's concourse was. It's the same office block, just 're-fronted. But I'd be amazed if anything below ground level stayed the same, given that City Thameslink was built cut-and-cover and there were extensive excavation work to do it.

I've challenged this description before, in another thread. City Thameslink is actually built at the same level as local ground level on its west side. If you walk up certain dead end accesses off Farringdon Street you are on the outside of the back wall of the up platform. Yes the station was subsequently mostly covered by buildings but it wasn't dug down into a trench in the same manner as a traditional cut and cover tunnel.

There was a great deal of demolition to remove the viaduct piers that the old station approach was on, and the original ramp down to the Snow Hill tunnel entrance.

But going back to the original question about the wiki article it seems fairly clear that they are referring to the Ludgate end entrance anyway. Whatever is hidden behind the walls (referred to in certain descriptions as the LUL corridor) is probably a completely separate thing to what may or may not have been done under the earlier new Holborn Viaduct surface building. Separated by many years in time.
 

thedbdiboy

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It's worth reading the listing application for 80 Cannon St if you're interested:

https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1424940
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---


Are you sure it's the same office block? One of the marble bases for the support columns credits it to Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in the early naughties (and I've a feeling I remember it being built - I do also have childhood memories of the block that was there before.)

I believe it is the same framework but totally refitted. In effect a new building, but it occupies exactly the same footprint as the old, and as you pass under it to enter City Thameslink you are standing on what was at one time the front of the concourse for Holborn Viaduct. Have a look on Flickr, there are a number of good pictures of the Holborn Viaduct demolition/City Thameslink construction that show how the latter replaced the former.
 

urpert

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To resurrect my thread, I think I've found it:

5BUbTfB.jpg


It's on platform 2 in an otherwise unused area by the escalators. If you look through the lost property window you can see a large unfinished concrete space (behind that shutter) which is now full of lost property.
 

gimmea50anyday

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It is worth mentioning that at the original Charing cross terminus, the tunnels were apparently bored as far as the former Aldwych tube station, stopping just 100m short.

http://underground-history.co.uk/deeplevel.php#charingcross


There is also a North south tunnel in various stages of completion which was to form a northern line express service. The stations were built during ww2 as air raid shelters with the intention of completing the tunneling once hostilities ceased. However, along with the Northern Heights program, this was abandoned. The stations are still used as storage and military installations

More reading here :-

http://underground-history.co.uk/shelters.php
 

Chris125

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