A Historical Dictionary of Railways in the British Isles by David Wragg

A Historical Dictionary of Railways in the British Isles by David Wragg

Author:David Wragg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: TRA000000
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781844683031
Publisher: Wharncliffe
Published: 2009-04-20T16:00:00+00:00


The Growing Station

The new suburban lines, the continued growth on the earlier lines and a growing business to and from the holiday resorts and market towns of East Anglia, meant that by 1884 it was realised that the traffic at Liverpool Street itself would soon outgrow the station. Fortunately, the GER had been steadily acquiring land to the east of the station, and had eventually land up to Bishopsgate 188-ft wide and six acres in extent. Clearance began and on 1890 work began on what was to become the East Side Station. A sign of social change was that Parliament insisted that alternative accommodation be found for the tenants in the properties cleared away, and indeed that they be rehoused at low rents. Accommodation could only be found for 137 tenants in existing property, so another 600 were housed in tenements built by the GER.

It was not enough simply to expand the station: the approach lines had to be expanded as well to avoid congestion. A third pair of approach tracks was built between Bethnal Green and Liverpool Street, enabling the westernmost set of tracks to be reserved entirely for the Enfield and Walthamstow services, so from 1891, these were known as the suburban lines, the middle set became the local lines and the easternmost, the through lines. The four tracks continued as far as Romford. Inside the terminus, platforms 1 to 5 became West Side Suburban, handling suburban and local services, while 6 also handled Cambridge trains; platforms 7 to 14 handled both local and through services, and 15 to 18 handled through services only. The services to and from the ELR used platform 14, or if this was not available, 18.

The new Liverpool Street was the largest London terminus until Victoria opened, rebuilt, in 1908. By the number of passengers handled daily, it remained the busiest terminus even after 1908. In a typical day, it handled 851 passenger arrivals and departures, as well as 224 empty carriage trains, ten goods trains and five light engine movements.

The new East Side frontage was taken by the Great Eastern Hotel, completed in May 1884, and the largest hotel in the City. Designed by C E Barry, the hotel presented a far more impressive face to the world than the original station buildings. Beneath the hotel, an area known as the ‘backs’ included an extension of the tracks from platforms 9 and 10. This was used by a nightly goods train that brought in coal for the hotel and the engine docks, as well as small consignments for the offices and the hotel, while taking away the hotel’s refuse and ashes from the engine docks. The eastward extension also meant that these two platforms split the station in two, and so a footbridge was built right across the station, although on two levels and too narrow to accommodate the numbers needing to use it at peak times. Relief came when the Central London Railway reached the terminus in 1912, with the tube station under the west side, but the subway to the booking office ran the full width of the station.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.