On 27 Nov, 00:01, David of Broadway
wrote:
On Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:09:41 +0000, Paul Scott wrote:
Perhaps some well financed enthusiasts could tunnel from Charing Cross
(Jubilee) to Aldwych, and set up a preserved line...

Charing Cross seems to me to be an excellent location for a museum annex,
with two tracks available for static car displays. The station is
presumably still reasonably accessible, and it's even in walking distance
of the main museum at Covent Garden.

I've modeled this idea on the New York Transit Museum, which is housed in
a decommissioned terminal station. The platform level has a static car
display while the other exhibits are on the mezzanine level. The museum
buses are, unfortunately, kept off-site, and are only brought out for
special events. (snip)

OK, where do I start!

Charing Cross Tube station is sill very much open for business on the
Northern and Bakerloo lines, it is only the Jubilee line that is now
closed to passengers (since 1999 and the Jubilee line extension
diverted the line from Green Park to Westminster and then on east).
However the Jubilee platforms are still used fairly regularly as a
useful place to reverse trains if there's been some fowl-up somewhere
on the line.

So that's the first problem. The second is that there isn't actually
much space down there - sure, there's two full length platforms but
these are of the deep-level tube type, with an associated central
concourse tunnel and a set of escalators (and a number of other
passageways - I forget the layout). But this isn't any significant
amount of space whatsoever - no mezzanine level or anything like that,
so it's not a similar space to the New York Transit Museum (at least
going by the the photos I've just looked at on the net).

I'm also quite sure that even if these two intractable problems with
this plan somehow weren't intractable, there'd be no desire to have
museum goers intermingling with passengers within the station, as
there isn't any independent access to the platforms other than through
the station complex.

Then of course there'd be the issue of actually getting the rolling
stock to those platforms - bearing in mind that the LU lines aren't
that interconnected, and that increasingly each of the deep-level tube
lines are set up to use their specific stock only. Moving other stuff
around is certainly possible under an engineering possession (perhaps
with the need to use battery locos), but as you can see things are
getting complicated. And of course only deep-level tube stock would
actually fit down there!

So I dare suggest the Charing Cross annexe isn't at the top of the LT
Museum curator's to-do list!