"Robin9" wrote in message ...
You can see the tunnels when you travel between Upper Holloway and
Gospel Oak, immediately after the line crosses Highgate Road.

Robin9,

If you're talking about the tunnels which I think you are from what you
wrote in your post above, they are not on the closed route.

I have in front of me an old (paper) map from before the closure, the
streetmap.com version of the area today, the current Baker rail atlas, and
the Google Earth view of the area. The old map does not show a tunnel on
the now closed section. I have older rail atlases from before the closure,
but they are in store, and not readily accessible at the moment. Google
Earth has nothing between 1945 and 1999. By 1999 the line was closed; I
think I can see track on the closed route in the 1945 view, which would mean
that it was not in tunnel, but the quality of the image is very poor when
zoomed in, and I cannot be certain about this.

The whole of the route between Upper Holloway and Gospel Oak/Kentish town
can be seen on streetmap.com at 1:5000. From Upper Holloway the line runs
South West until it passes under Junction Road just to the North of it's
junction with Station Road, presumably the location of the closed Junction
Road station. (Too many junctions around here!) It then reaches Junction
Road Junction where the routes to Gospel Oak and the the Midland line
diverge, but then run parallel to each other for a while. Both sets of
lines pass through Covered Way, but then the Midland route only, which is at
a lower level passes through two short tunnels, Tottenham North Curve Nos. 3
and 2, before passing under Highgate Road. The Gospel Oak route passes over
the road, and then joins the North London just beyond the station. The now
freight only Midland route turns South, and then West before passing under
the North London, and joining the midland line towards West Hampstead at
Carlton Road Junction.. Most of this curve to the West is in tunnel,
Tottenham North Curve No. 1; from your description, I think this is the
tunnel you are talking about; it is still open for freight. Just to the
North of this tunnel, at Engine Shed Junction, the route towards Kentish
Town diverged, crossing what is now Murphy's yard, before joining the main
line at Mortimer Street Junction. The yard extends over the tunnel.

There are buildings to the East/North of the closed curve, several of which
seem to have corners 'cut' to avoid the route of the tracks; one small
building does seem to have been built partly on the line of the route. I
don't know whether the large buildings pre-date the closure of the line, or
were built later to avoid it. I think the route was in shallow cutting
which has been filled in. If the route had been in tunnel, then
re-instating it would probably be easy, but as somebody else has stated, it
would now bisect Murphy's yard, and render a large part of it inaccessible.

It seems highly unlikely that this route will ever re-open, but with the
development of Thameslink it could possibly have been useful. combined with
the re-instatement of the South Tottenham to Tottenham Hale line it could
also have enabled through services to Stanstead, which might have been
useful if the airport is expanded in the future; Stanstead Airport is a pain
to reach from South London and beyond at present.

It's a pity that such a short section of line at Kentish Town was lost, but
selling it off for other use was probably a reasonable decision at the time.