On Sat, 16 Dec 2006, John Rowland wrote:

Ernst S Blofeld wrote:

There appears to be work going on beside Holloway Road tube station,
on some old railway land. Does anyone know what that apparent old
alignment was? Were there plans for a high-level station at any point?

http://www.islington.gov.uk/Council/...road_brief.asp

The Piccadilly stations between Kings Cross and Finsbury Park (including
York Road) were replacements for surface stations which shut as soon as (I
think) the underground stations opened.

The economics of closing 4 existing surface stations and building
underground ones have never entirely made sense to me, when they could
have built a pair of (larger) tunnels for GN trains and given over two
surface tracks, with stations, to the Piccadilly.

Perhaps because bigger tunnels would have cost rather a lot more, could
not have been worked by steam trains, and would have required some
complicated portal shenanigans at King's Cross to bring the big trains up
to the station whilst the little trains dived down to go to Russell
Square.

That said, i wonder if it was also a cultural thing - the idea of putting
suburban railways in tubes was already popular, but nobody had done it for
a main line. Indeed, we still haven't - not until the CTRL opens!

tom

--
THE DRUMMER FROM DEF LEPPARD'S ONLY GOT ONE ARM!