In a way, that "Grand Central" concept eventually came to fruition, just not in the way it was first imagined. With the opening of the Elizabeth line, Farringdon now is certainly the most pivotal interchange station in London, and will continue to be so.
@@grahamwhitworth9454 As well as easy transfers for trains to the other three - one more train from Liv Street to Stansted, from Shenfield to Southend and you could theoretically walk from the Liz to London City if you were committed enough
Not sure being an interchange between three routes qualifies it as “the grand central” station even in modern terms. By that logic, Oxford Circus and Green Park have been “grand central” for decades.
@@KasabianFan44 the two you mention are not the meeting point of the two principal cross-London rail routes. It's that which gives it it's strategic importance.
I used to commute each week from Reading to Huntingdon and back. It was great to get off the Thameslink train from Huntingdon at Farringdon and cross straight across to the Metropolitan line to reach Paddington. With the coming of the Elizabeth Line, I would now be able to change from Thameslink to the Elizabeth Line and soon will be able to travel straight through to Reading without a change at Paddington. So as a major interchange between north/south to east/west it’s going to become even more important!
I also tested the secret lift a little while ago to test Geoff Marshall’s infinite loop. It was satisfying to get a train back to where you started without leaving a station.
@@JP_TaVeryMuch or you go from Kennington to Kennington, even though most trains go to Battersea Power Station now, also you technically aren't allowed to take that train.
My wife and I just had a holiday in London during July to visit our girls. They live in the Barbican estate area and so we wound up using both the Barbican and Farringdon stations almost daily. We were shown and used the lift by the staff at the new Farringdon entrance just down the street from Barbican. Although we only wound up using it once. FYI. We’re Australian.
Farringdon changed my entire commute and saved me 30 mins each way. I used to go thr Northern Line from High Barnet Waterloo, then across the Jubilee to Canary Wharf. Now the journey is New Barnet to Farringdon and then on the Elizabeth Line to Canary Wharf. Complete game-changer.
You were quite correct about the building of the first Farringdon Station, I was at the meeting in 1862 that planned it all [told you I was old] and it was built out of timber as it was known that it would have to be moved, due mainly to the fact that Charles Pearson owned the land that the second, more substantial station would be built on. In fact the first station was built from the cheapest timber available, some of which is still propping my shed up.
When I first used Farringdon in the 1980s, it was to have lunch with a friend who was working at the offices of The Guardian, which at that time were on Farringdon Road. Otherwise, there was little reason for me to ever use this lesser stopping place on the Circle Line, although it was clear that the station shed had been built to accommodate more lines and traffic. I was reminded of the revival and enhancement of its status only a fortnight ago when I changed there from the Elizabeth Line to Thameslink, traveling from Woolwich to Herne Hill, on what would, only recently, have been a much lengthier and more convoluted journey. Moving from the vast, purlescent cavities of the new subterranean railway, to the old narrow platforms above, with tracks winding off into the weathered brick tunnel entrances, I wondered about the station's history Now I know a lot more than I did then! London's tangled railway network is like a palimpsest - scratch away at the modern diagram, and a quite different one is revealed underneath. How can one man have gained mastery over so many of its mysteries, and hold down a day-job? Are you a wizzard, Mr Hazzard?
I don't think that I had ever used Farringdon station until this year. My first Elizabeth line journey terminated there and it was the nicest London Underground journey of my life.
I was trying to remember why I ended up at Farringdon, and I think that was why - Elizabeth Line from near Ilford - but I could be wrong. I'd have to check my Google Maps history. It's quite a lovely station, less confusing than London Bridge and less vast than Waterloo, or so I recall.
I like those green mosaic walls! 😍🥰 Who doesn't love old architecture!? I can't help but feeling that modern architecture (most of the time anyway), have less life, soul in it, than you find in a morgue.... Keep them videos coming uncle Jago! 🤜🏻🤛🏻🍻
Wow! Love the high speed cooks tour of the history of Farringdon. Only got confused when Snow Hill appeared on the map and I thought momentarily that I’d caught HS2 to Birmingham. Luckily the high speed commentary clarified all that.
Hello Jago, and thanks for your videos! On this one, I do have some information... the largely red and cream building adjacent to the station was the main office of Smith Newcourt, stock brokers. I was once given a tour of their new trading facilities and technology. During this tour, our host explained that the entire building is encased in a military grade faraday cage to protect their trading systems from electrical interference where the trains were using a combination overhead lines and rails for power. Money no object for the traders in those days!
Poor folks. If the Faraday Cage is still there they'll need a whole repeater infrastructure inside to get a mobile phone signal! (They had the same problem in some buildings in the City...)
Another great vid Mr J...... So here's another quirky fact to go with it!.... Farringdon was one of the places where there was a connection between British rail and the London Underground. The single line connection was a trailing link from the inner Circle just beyond the Westbound Starter to the UP Mooorgate on the Widened Lines. The only regular traffic that i personally know that used it was the stock transfers to & from the Northern City Line at Drayton Park. Once the usual route via the Northern Heights was closed, they were hauled from Drayton Park onto the Great Northern lines and then through York Road/Hotel Curve to Farringdon and then back on to LT tracks for the run to Neasden, the Northern City being part of the Met rather than the Northern Line.......
Love it! Farringdon was the station I used when travelling to my first job and career. I works at 12 Farringdon Road/Cardinal House. My office was on the fourth floor overlooking Farringdon station. During the late 80’s, the old engineering building (20 Farringdon Road) was demolished, brick by brick. I was fascinated watching The old London bricks, crittal windows, and the worlds largest elevator being carefully removed, craned out, to be reused/re-cycled. I watched when the River Fleet flooded the building site (obviously nothing learned!) and the frantic call for remedial works to re-contain the underground river. Cowcross street at that time was ‘vehicularised’ and I would drive past the station to the car park entrance to Cardinal House. So much has changed in what is a blink of an eye in this station’s lifetime!
I go to St Jame's Church at Sekforde Street, Clerkenwell, every Sunday or whenever there's a church event. So naturally Farringdon station is where I get off. I love the station and Clerkenwell. The area has an amazing history. One thing I discovered is Lenin and Stalin used to frequent a pub called the Crown Tavern, which is several doors down from the church, no doubt to discuss communism, the revolution etc. Their favourite table was underneath an old clock, which eventually got given the nickname, the Conspirators Clock. It's incredible to think the birth of communism started in a pub in Clerkenwell!
I had forgotten how close this is to the river Fleet. I worked in Cardinal House from the 1970's to 1992, which was on the site of the Elizabeth line station. One day when there was very heavy rain not only were the streets flooding from the wash down from Mt Pleasant but our car park (which was at the same level as the trackbed of the Widened Lines flooded because the manhole covers were pushed up by the force of water from the sewer below (not clean water). As a telecoms building it had standby generators there so there was a rush to sandbag around their room. The widened lines flooded almost to the top of the tunnel where they dived under the underground tracks (We coul s see this clearly from our canteen which on a high floor)l the and were out of service for weeks if not months. I suspect fear of this happening again is why when it was made into Thameslink they used slabbed track along that route.
The Widened Lines have always been prone to floods. I recall seeing photographs from c.1899-1900 of inundations at the same point, with steam powered pumping apparatus in operation.
The etching at 03.09 of the Fleet shows the back of Saffron Hill, which once grew crocuses, and is where Charles Dickens' Fagin's den, from Oliver Twist, would have been if it had been real; but it was real enough. The Fleet was famous for many dead dogs and more than enough dead humans. I am travelling through London to Chilworth, very soon. I'm going to drink in The Betsey Trotwood, The Horseshoe, & The Jerusalem, all near this station. I've done shows in them all. I now wonder if I should travel to Guildford via the Cross-Liz-Purple Line to Reading: instead of Chilworth via Redhill?
Snow Hill Tunnel. I immediately thought of Birmingham. It'll also be a good one to remember in a round of Mornington Crescent. I once played Charing Cross and got stuck at Coatbridge Sunnyside for being a smart arse; served me right, too.
I remember GWR pannier tanks trundling through from Paddington onto the widened lines, and I expect many of my age remember LNER tanks trundling in the opposite direction from Moorgate to Kings Cross.
Farringdon is where Thameslink switches from ohle to third rail and back again. It was always fun on first gen Thameslink trains to watch the pantograph get popped out there, or retracted.
Very interesting, thanks. Topical footnote (for me anyway) I visited this area for the first time just a few weeks ago. I was puzzled when I couldn't find a Farringdon "Street" station. My late father (a Londonder whose parent's families both had roots in the immediate area) regularly referred to the station as such. Clearly the original name indelibly stuck with the "locals"!
And the next station on the line, Barbican, used to be called "Aldersgate Street". John Betjeman wrote a poem to its passing, entitled "Monody on the Death of Aldersgate Street Station".
We are wrapping up 9 days staying just around the corner from Barbican station, and most days we've taken the Elizabeth line. The "sneak" from Barbican into Farringdon has been quite useful. But this video has reminded me that we never managed to actually visit Farringdon station proper! Since we plan on being on the first Elizabeth line train over to Paddington in the morning, I'm afraid it's not going to happen this trip. Next time, for sure! Jago, thanks for all the great videos! We felt like we were up to speed with the underground so much quicker!
About 20 years ago I worked for a short time in a building right next to the station. Despite its very central location it felt like a no mans land between the City and West End. The area now seems to be in the very early stages of a resurgence like, for example, the Kings Cross area. The completion of the Museum of London (which they seem to have been working on since time immemorial) could even set the area buzzing.
Still does - on Saturdays and Sundays. A lot of the buildings are residential, and as a local, noise is big here during the week!! I think it being quiet and "a no-mans" land helps preserve its charm with the history rather than having endless tourists come through...
I live at Canons Park on the Jubilee Line and we're waiting for the fully linked up Bond Street to open and for the Elizabeth Line to link all the way through. This will mean we can get to Heathrow with one change at Bond Street and also Gatwick with an easy change at Bond Street and another easy change at Farringdon. All we'll need then will be a lift at Canons Park instead of the 48 steps to climb with luggage.
Imagine if he had pulled it off and London had gotten a Grand Central station where all mainline and underground lines meet. Travelling into London bridge to have to walk across the river to go to Fenchurch St or Cannon Street or Liverpool St can be such a pain. Equally travelling on a train and u can see another line across the river but they don't connect can be so frustrating.
I worked at Hohner’s Musical Instrument’s in 1970/1 and Farringdon was my station when working there. I used the Greenwich Railway getting off at Westcombe Park. Thanks good helpful railway information as usual
One of the things that's always intrigued me about Farringdon is that the Thameslink platforms have Underground roundels on them. I can't think of anywhere else where that's the case off the top of my head.
Don't know when ownership changed, but if you look at photos of Farringdon in the 1960s it is signalled as part of the Underground, and there was a connection between the current Underground lines and the Widened Lines to the west of Farringdon station; there was still a meat train from Birkenhead to Smithfield which used the connection in the mid-1960s (hauled by a condensing pannier tank over the Met east of Paddington). This may be the reason for the roundels
I worked not 3 minutes from Farringdon Station, just up Cowcross Street. If I times it well, I could be home in Kentish Town within 15 minutes of leaving the office. Lots of interesting things to see around Farringdon Station.
Brilliant video, I've passed through Farrington a number of times and it's a nice station I must admit, a bit difficult to film both Thameslink and tube at the same time though.
My late father started his signalling journey at North Kent Jnc which was incidentally where the very first policemen acted as signalman on a railway anywhere around the world, only remnant is the old concrete plinth and if you consider the night of the St Johns disaster and my old man, he ran from North Kent Jnc all the way down to St Johns, one of the first railwaymen to arrive aside the signalmen and platform staff from St Johns and Lewisham. When he was at London Bridge, he was part of the S&T fact finding crew that went under Snow Hill to work out the absolute blocks, MR to SR interfaces, passing of electronic tokens to London Bridge and Victoria power boxes and he was there when the exploratory excavators accidentally pulled the side out of one of Newgate Prison's charnel pits with worries about plague going round the team and they all had to go to St Barts to have their hands held and told no plaguey today matey whilst consultants barely hid their mirth hehe He was deemed essential as he was passed out still for the old Loughborough Junction box which he worked on occasion as E grade and he sat there over many evenings looking at the pre-closure workings of the Snow Hill link and how they fitted in with normal Holborn Viaduct traffic to and from.
Thanks for this. My g-grandfather was born nearby, and this station was one of the great infrastructure developments which improved his father's life - with the end of The Bloody Code of justice, the closure of Smithfield Cattle Market, the opening of Smithfield Meat Market, closure of Newgate Meat Market and the Warwick Lane Mutton Market, the rebuild of Newgate Prison and Old Bailey, the end of Transportation, building of Bazalgette's sewers, and street lighting. The pace of change in that area in Victorian times was incredible. Q. Can you do something on how country-killed meat was transported to the Metropolitan Meat Market? Apparently there were rails in Cheapside and Warwick Lane for horse-drawn wagons, but what was the extent of the network, how long did it last, who ran it, and how did it tie in with the cattle-drive along Giltspur Street?
It's amazing when seeing that end clip and when you travel on the railways and underground just how much land lies wasted. Only ever got off a Farringdon once and that was to go to Hatton Garden.
So another all night, can't sleep and then...Oh look! Jago's just posted! Yay. Trains sure beat the strange and unusual missing persons cases I was binging on. LOL
Claim to fame on a Jago video - at 4:00 the grey container (with Air con on the back) is an FTN Core Node (telecoms) - I tested that one, and have installed and tested extra equipment in it.
Those track noises on the end. So nice to hear those again. I know that welded track is better in every way, but it just doesn't sound the way my childhood memories say trains should, the way that platform at Farringdon did.
I love Farringdon Station. Very under-rated and so glad you gave it the recognition it derserves. Always a lot going on with the different lines in view from the top of the stairs looking down. Used to get off here almost every week in the mid-80s to go to a training college at Smithfield just round the corner. Happy days.
I always have a little smile to myself when I am on the Met/Circ/H&C en route somewhere (often Euston Square to go to Holyhead) as it means passing through Barbican and Farringdon. It reminds me of journeys I took from Turnpike Lane (and later Finsbury Park) with my father to get to The Valley to watch Charlton (change at Liv St, district to Bromley by Bow, 108 bus to Charlton). I found both stations most endearing and almost ‘cute’ for some reason. They certainly didn’t look to my 8 year old eyes like ‘normal’ underground stations. There were two ruddy great disused platforms at each for starters! It was a visit to the LTMuseum that brought on a whole new fascination and explained the significance of Farringdon and the other pioneering stations. Yet of course, this significant station (its 1977 remember!) looked a little forlorn and neglected 🤔 Then of course things changed but it is strange how the two little stations that I always associated together suddenly became became much more significant with the arrival of Thameslink, both stations verily bustling if one were to go through near rush hour. Strange then that now of course, the two have become very different. Barbican has almost reverted back to character, small almost sleepy and just another stop in the sub-surface loop, whereas Farringdon has gone one to become ever more significant! 😮 It still seems a bit surreal that the once rather sad and tatty looking ‘tick’ is now a major ‘blue access circle’ interchange on the map, with regular trains taking commuters north and south, east and west on their way home, allowing an interchange for any that need to pass through and change direction. And if you’re off on holiday, there’s easy interchange for airports or even a dirty weekend in Brighton. Plus of course, you can still get the sub-surface to Euston Square and onto Holyhead…I mean what’s not to like? 🤷🏻♂️ So it’s sad for Barbican but Farringdon has now become infinitely more important than 8 year old Timmy could have imagined it would. The only sad thing for me is that during construction, there was a small temporary museum space in one of the concessions of the old station building next to the entrance. It offered a potted history of the line, the station’s historical significance and a few interesting artefacts, along with a snazzy set of commemorative post cards. I know it’s a money thing, but I really rather think TFL missed a trick by closing it. The Metroplitan Museum would have a nice ring to it 🤔 Cheers old boy. Really love how you manage to continue to highlight some of my favourite stations 🤓 Cin-cin 🥂🍀👍
Actually, "Farringdon" is a village in Oxfordshire - there never was a London district named Farringdon, only a 'Farringdon Street', in the same way as London has an Oxford Street. However, there was a tendency for London districts to be named after main railway stations, eg, Victoria, Waterloo etc, so in an odd way, the railway took its name from a street and lent it to a whole neighbourhood.
What a challenge to build a model of Farringdon in Victorian times! I think you are correct that things may change again. The Museum of London will move to Smithfield in 2027, and the market will eventually close and probably become an area similar to Convent Garden or Spitalfields. So who knows? The tracks will also be on view inside the new museum.
Thanks for another great informative video. I hope you do a piece on the widened lines, which is very interesting ,latterly worked by class 31/4 locos with BR suburban coaches.
I was working for British Rail when Thameslink was being developed and implemented. Just at Red Star parcels, but there was lots of talk about a new Central London integrated station. Trains from Southampton to Newcastle, Dover to Liverpool… Never in the plans, but ideas sometimes don’t die easily. Does anyone actually catch a Thameslink train from Horsham to Peterborough?
I'd be surprised if many people took the whole journey, but I'd also argue it's more about the rapid interchange with trains to Bedford, Cambridge, Brighton etc within the core section - Horsham being more like a handy place for the trains to terminate rather than a hot-button destination for ECML commuters.
I used to have family in both Bedford and Brighton, so I've used that route on Thameslink a few times. They had a special cheep ticket which worked only on their trains.
Farringdon is not in the City of London; which was rather the point as the first lines stopped short of entering the City boundary only 100m further south..
Thameslink was a GLC inspired scheme. The pure engineering costs were in the low single digit millions - most of the costs were the shiny new Class 319 trains...
According to Joe Brown's London Railway Atlas, the original station was slightly west and slightly south of the present station, not slightly east. I don't know who's right.
I adore Farringdon. A hub that, if everything gets digitised through it, would see in its busiest periods (if it all goes right!) 32 trains per hour on the Underground in each direction, 24 Thameslink trains in each direction, and 24 Elizabeth line trains in each direction, up to a whopping 160 trains in a peak hour from just six platforms. It is beautiful, but like the shiny things from Hatton Garden, it is like fragile glass. Break Farringdon, you break London and the South East’s railways. And then it will smell like Smithfield’s.
Indeed, Farringdon is well worth a review of its own. From here. you can get collectively further north, south, east and west than from any other station in London. If you include one single same platform change in the peaceful, bucolic countryside, you have hundreds of potential destinations.
Very interesting point. Are you thinking of one particular station or several for the change? I can think of a few, but some don't exactly count as bucolic countryside - airports ((Gatwick) or towns (Peterborough, Cambridge, Stevenage, Bedford, Slough, East Croydon, Haywards Heath etc) and of course not all these changes are same-platform.
@@iankemp1131 I'm thinking of the smaller intermediate stations in the Green Belt where you can change onto the likes of GWR, Chiltern, East Midlands, Greater Anglia, SWR, etc.
There are 2 truncated lines still to use that used to be another LT spur but on Google Maps they just stop short of the Snow Hill link but there is a ton of trackbed just waiting for someone to build over something new :D
Hi Jago, The entrance opposite the old Metropolitan line was not constructed as part of the Elizabeth Line/Crossrail project as you implied in the video, but has been there for a few years now, and was built to funnel passengers down onto the Thameslink platforms when that was linked up. Obviously some more work had to be done on it as it was an access point to Crossrail, but that is not the reason for its existence!
Technically Farringdon isn’t in the City (except for the eastern exit from the Elizabeth line), as the City stops at Charterhouse Street and Farringdon is north of that.
One of the Elizabeth Line's best interchanges. That with the Thameslink. Back of up Thameslink also has good interchange up three steps with Met/ Ham City/Circle westbound. Was origanally Broad Gauge.
I love the ‘London Hauptbahnhof’ concept suggested recently by Gareth Dennis, which would see Farringdon become the centre of a through-running High Speed link across the city. He proposed a new station under Smithfield market as the only stop on a new section of line splitting off from HS2 just before Euston, running under central London to Farringdon, then on to join HS1 on the way into Stratford International. This would not only allow international services like Manchester to Paris to run direct, but also do so in a way that uses the domestic network far more efficiently than the current setup or the suggested HS2 to HS1 via Stratford services. If it ever materialises, it would be hard to look past Farringdon as the focal point of the whole London network. Here’s hoping
Certainly an intriguing idea. A couple of snags; passport checks for international trains (would need to be either on-train or at multiple destinations), and HS1 doesn't actually serve many sizeable locations, which is why the Southeastern routes were rather lacklustre until the Javelins came along.
@@iankemp1131 the political situation is a major obstacle, I agree, since a hypothetical Manchester-London-Paris service would need passport checks for some and not others. It wouldn’t be feasible to consider it for at least a generation or two until there’s a significant change in political will whereby the UK essentially joins Schengen (hardly imminent given the current climate). As you say, not worth it if it’s just to get direct services from Birmingham through to Margate.
Passport checks can be done easily. but the main problem is the security checks required for operation through the Channel Tunnel; if I remember correctly, the need for these is comprised within the Channel Tunnel Act (and perhaps even the Treaty of Canterbury), so there would certainly need to be legislative changes and perhaps even alterations to an international treaty for this "simple" idea to be taken forward
What is this strange blue LED light on the edge of the platform after the train is leaving (0:33)? Oh and I almost forgot: A great video - as always. 🙂
Having commuted to Farringdon many times, I believe they serve as an extra warning to "mind the gap". The platform is curved, and the gap between train and platform is a bit wider in some parts. Hopefully that's the right answer.
@@gvfc I use Farringdon regularly for work and wondered about these lights. Prompted by this question I asked a staff member just now and was informed they are indeed a gap warning.
I enjoyed this one, often use thameslink to get up and see shows. when city thameslink closes (eg a late finish at the theatre) I usually go there and with the Lizzy line connection its even better to get somewhere like Tottenham Court Road
"good trains..." It should be pointed out that trains in the 70s to the 90s in the UK were very different to the trains of today in customer experience, much like football stadia the idea was to have as many people in as possible, safety, comfort and interactions were well down the list. It was also pretty much a free for all for inter-city; compared with that the service now is very controlled and managed. British Rail would actually run "Saturday Soccer Specials" which were overcrowded cheap trains run between cities on match days. BR would put on their worst, most dilapidated trains expecting vandalism.
This use of (lowercase) a “grand central” station shared by competing railways is odd to me. The actual station that goes by that name in New York was conceived as the exclusive domain of the New York Central Railroad, who were simply engaging in typical rail-people bloviating when they labeled it as “grand.” The current (1913) one is coincidentally palatial because the Central’s ancestral monopoly on mainline stations in Manhattan had ended when the Pennsylvania RR’s North River and East River tunnels, along with Penn Station which connects them, opened in 1910. Until then the previous two Grand Centrals on the same site (1869 and 1897) were not all that centrally located until the city grew to surround them. But they had stood unchallenged because every other US railway had to approach from the south and west, finding themselves blocked by the Hudson (or North) River. The best they could do was throw ferries at the problem, until eventually the Hudson & Manhattan tubes (precursor to what we now call PATH) opened (after a 30-year saga) in a role similar to the early Metropolitan Railway: connecting those mainline termini in Hoboken and Jersey City to Manhattan (quite a different role than how PATH is used today). A number of US cities do have large stations whose names reflect an original purpose of bringing disparate lines together: “Union Station.”
The station is in Islington, not City of London. Pubs in the City had different opening hours, so was easy to know if you were in or out of the City! In the 80s in a different life, I lived/worked in Cowcross St (building visible at ca 4mins) so witnessed the Thameslink opening.
Watching this video has got me thinking: why did the Metropolitan NOT connect directly with Euston Station as it did with Paddington and Kings Cross-St Pancras? The LNWR was a damned important railway, so why bypass it?
Euston Square was considered near enough, or at least it was in LT days IIRC. The Beck-era Tube map used to it as 'for Euston', but you had to cross the road.
6:40 Parcels: that’s the 2nd time I think you’ve mentioned the parcel delivery services. It resonates with me because my Dad’s 1st job was with the “express” (parcel) service of the CPR (1941!). Just imagine if parcel delivery (“TfL-Parcels”? or PfL?) still existed… Efficient ecological deliveries with property paid workers… Not enriching a US megalomaniacal anti-union space cadet… Just my 2 Canadian cents… 😉 (We don’t have pennies here anymore anyway…)
The 80s were when BR finally got real. And oh, what could have been, had their future plans (or indeed the APT) worked out. Even today, you have a decent chance an 80s BREL train will be better built and more comfortable than an 00s or 10s train (with notable exceptions for each).
Was in London a few months back, and I thought the thameslink platform looked decidedly grim and boring. (I guess I was roughly at where you were around 09:00 in the video.) But then after walking past a column the whole surrounding suddenly opened up and it looked more like the rest of the video. I thought it was somewhat magical.
I'm not sure why the Elizabeth Line platforms are called "very long". Many Thameslink trains have 12 carriages, so those platforms at Farringdon must also be as long. Unless the Elizabeth Line was built for more than 12 carriages?
P. S. @ 9:30 :- There seems to be 2 tracks which suddenly stop!!! Might be an old tunnel they used to go through - next to that fence on the right - seem to be spare bit of land with another tunnel - where does that go to??? 🤔🚂🚂🚂
Once again really interesting, I used to hate commuting through Farringdon in the ‘70’s, it was scruffy and cold with smoky DMUs stopping there. The transformation is dramatic. I did note that, after it’s mention, you didn’t return to the Snow Hill tunnel but I presume it’s now once again used by Crossrail ?
Having recently had a holiday in London and staying nearby, we used Farringdon many times. I was intrigued by the abandoned tunnels there and after googling it, I learned about the Smithfield Market siding and the old Snow Hill line. Apparently the station under the markets has been turned into an underground car park. Do you have a video about them? Or will you do one in the future?
No. The snow hill tunnel was re-opened for the re-routed through Thameslink service and is now underground. What you see at 9:25 is part of the old Thameslink alignment.
In a way, that "Grand Central" concept eventually came to fruition, just not in the way it was first imagined. With the opening of the Elizabeth line, Farringdon now is certainly the most pivotal interchange station in London, and will continue to be so.
Including, shortly, trains to 3 London airports - Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton.
@@grahamwhitworth9454 As well as easy transfers for trains to the other three - one more train from Liv Street to Stansted, from Shenfield to Southend and you could theoretically walk from the Liz to London City if you were committed enough
Not sure being an interchange between three routes qualifies it as “the grand central” station even in modern terms. By that logic, Oxford Circus and Green Park have been “grand central” for decades.
@@KasabianFan44 the two you mention are not the meeting point of the two principal cross-London rail routes. It's that which gives it it's strategic importance.
I used to commute each week from Reading to Huntingdon and back. It was great to get off the Thameslink train from Huntingdon at Farringdon and cross straight across to the Metropolitan line to reach Paddington. With the coming of the Elizabeth Line, I would now be able to change from Thameslink to the Elizabeth Line and soon will be able to travel straight through to Reading without a change at Paddington. So as a major interchange between north/south to east/west it’s going to become even more important!
I also tested the secret lift a little while ago to test Geoff Marshall’s infinite loop. It was satisfying to get a train back to where you started without leaving a station.
@@JP_TaVeryMuch or you go from Kennington to Kennington, even though most trains go to Battersea Power Station now, also you technically aren't allowed to take that train.
I got the secret lift from the Elizabeth Line at Farringdon recently for a video. I find it so crazy that everything is so intergrated there!
My wife and I just had a holiday in London during July to visit our girls. They live in the Barbican estate area and so we wound up using both the Barbican and Farringdon stations almost daily. We were shown and used the lift by the staff at the new Farringdon entrance just down the street from Barbican. Although we only wound up using it once. FYI. We’re Australian.
Farringdon changed my entire commute and saved me 30 mins each way. I used to go thr Northern Line from High Barnet Waterloo, then across the Jubilee to Canary Wharf. Now the journey is New Barnet to Farringdon and then on the Elizabeth Line to Canary Wharf. Complete game-changer.
You were quite correct about the building of the first Farringdon Station, I was at the meeting in 1862 that planned it all [told you I was old] and it was built out of timber as it was known that it would have to be moved, due mainly to the fact that Charles Pearson owned the land that the second, more substantial station would be built on. In fact the first station was built from the cheapest timber available, some of which is still propping my shed up.
You are not 160 years old 😂
@@feeshymanwhy would he lie?
@@theexcaliburone5933 i don't know. maybe people do that these days 🤣
Farringdon is now more important than it has ever been before. It has grown slowly become a key interchange.
When I first used Farringdon in the 1980s, it was to have lunch with a friend who was working at the offices of The Guardian, which at that time were on Farringdon Road. Otherwise, there was little reason for me to ever use this lesser stopping place on the Circle Line, although it was clear that the station shed had been built to accommodate more lines and traffic. I was reminded of the revival and enhancement of its status only a fortnight ago when I changed there from the Elizabeth Line to Thameslink, traveling from Woolwich to Herne Hill, on what would, only recently, have been a much lengthier and more convoluted journey. Moving from the vast, purlescent cavities of the new subterranean railway, to the old narrow platforms above, with tracks winding off into the weathered brick tunnel entrances, I wondered about the station's history Now I know a lot more than I did then! London's tangled railway network is like a palimpsest - scratch away at the modern diagram, and a quite different one is revealed underneath. How can one man have gained mastery over so many of its mysteries, and hold down a day-job? Are you a wizzard, Mr Hazzard?
I don't think that I had ever used Farringdon station until this year. My first Elizabeth line journey terminated there and it was the nicest London Underground journey of my life.
I was trying to remember why I ended up at Farringdon, and I think that was why - Elizabeth Line from near Ilford - but I could be wrong. I'd have to check my Google Maps history. It's quite a lovely station, less confusing than London Bridge and less vast than Waterloo, or so I recall.
I like those green mosaic walls! 😍🥰
Who doesn't love old architecture!?
I can't help but feeling that modern architecture (most of the time anyway), have less life, soul in it, than you find in a morgue....
Keep them videos coming uncle Jago! 🤜🏻🤛🏻🍻
Not true, especially here. Both perfectly complement each other
Wow! Love the high speed cooks tour of the history of Farringdon. Only got confused when Snow Hill appeared on the map and I thought momentarily that I’d caught HS2 to Birmingham. Luckily the high speed commentary clarified all that.
Hello Jago, and thanks for your videos! On this one, I do have some information... the largely red and cream building adjacent to the station was the main office of Smith Newcourt, stock brokers. I was once given a tour of their new trading facilities and technology. During this tour, our host explained that the entire building is encased in a military grade faraday cage to protect their trading systems from electrical interference where the trains were using a combination overhead lines and rails for power. Money no object for the traders in those days!
Poor folks. If the Faraday Cage is still there they'll need a whole repeater infrastructure inside to get a mobile phone signal! (They had the same problem in some buildings in the City...)
Another great vid Mr J...... So here's another quirky fact to go with it!.... Farringdon was one of the places where there was a connection between British rail and the London Underground. The single line connection was a trailing link from the inner Circle just beyond the Westbound Starter to the UP Mooorgate on the Widened Lines. The only regular traffic that i personally know that used it was the stock transfers to & from the Northern City Line at Drayton Park. Once the usual route via the Northern Heights was closed, they were hauled from Drayton Park onto the Great Northern lines and then through York Road/Hotel Curve to Farringdon and then back on to LT tracks for the run to Neasden, the Northern City being part of the Met rather than the Northern Line.......
I love Farringdon; the deep sense of history and nostalgia I get standing in front of it never passes me by.
My favourite station.
Thanks Jago.
Love it! Farringdon was the station I used when travelling to my first job and career. I works at 12 Farringdon Road/Cardinal House. My office was on the fourth floor overlooking Farringdon station. During the late 80’s, the old engineering building (20 Farringdon Road) was demolished, brick by brick. I was fascinated watching The old London bricks, crittal windows, and the worlds largest elevator being carefully removed, craned out, to be reused/re-cycled. I watched when the River Fleet flooded the building site (obviously nothing learned!) and the frantic call for remedial works to re-contain the underground river. Cowcross street at that time was ‘vehicularised’ and I would drive past the station to the car park entrance to Cardinal House. So much has changed in what is a blink of an eye in this station’s lifetime!
I go to St Jame's Church at Sekforde Street, Clerkenwell, every Sunday or whenever there's a church event. So naturally Farringdon station is where I get off. I love the station and Clerkenwell. The area has an amazing history. One thing I discovered is Lenin and Stalin used to frequent a pub called the Crown Tavern, which is several doors down from the church, no doubt to discuss communism, the revolution etc. Their favourite table was underneath an old clock, which eventually got given the nickname, the Conspirators Clock. It's incredible to think the birth of communism started in a pub in Clerkenwell!
I had forgotten how close this is to the river Fleet. I worked in Cardinal House from the 1970's to 1992, which was on the site of the Elizabeth line station. One day when there was very heavy rain not only were the streets flooding from the wash down from Mt Pleasant but our car park (which was at the same level as the trackbed of the Widened Lines flooded because the manhole covers were pushed up by the force of water from the sewer below (not clean water). As a telecoms building it had standby generators there so there was a rush to sandbag around their room.
The widened lines flooded almost to the top of the tunnel where they dived under the underground tracks (We coul
s see this clearly from our canteen which on a high floor)l the and were out of service for weeks if not months. I suspect fear of this happening again is why when it was made into Thameslink they used slabbed track along that route.
The Widened Lines have always been prone to floods. I recall seeing photographs from c.1899-1900 of inundations at the same point, with steam powered pumping apparatus in operation.
Farringdon station is built over a ghost river, so when there’s heavy rain the water finds its old course and floods the track in the platform area
Also the reason why the two bridges at Holborn Viaduct and Rosebery Ave/Warner Street exist..
The etching at 03.09 of the Fleet shows the back of Saffron Hill, which once grew crocuses, and is where Charles Dickens' Fagin's den, from Oliver Twist, would have been if it had been real; but it was real enough. The Fleet was famous for many dead dogs and more than enough dead humans.
I am travelling through London to Chilworth, very soon. I'm going to drink in The Betsey Trotwood, The Horseshoe, & The Jerusalem, all near this station. I've done shows in them all. I now wonder if I should travel to Guildford via the Cross-Liz-Purple Line to Reading: instead of Chilworth via Redhill?
Snow Hill Tunnel. I immediately thought of Birmingham.
It'll also be a good one to remember in a round of Mornington Crescent. I once played Charing Cross and got stuck at Coatbridge Sunnyside for being a smart arse; served me right, too.
I remember GWR pannier tanks trundling through from Paddington onto the widened lines, and I expect many of my age remember LNER tanks trundling in the opposite direction from Moorgate to Kings Cross.
"Snow falls in the buffet of Aldersgate station, Toiling and doomed from Moorgate Street puffs the train". Soot and snow. So redolent of '62-63.
Would those pannier tanks be the London Transport Met ones used mainly for rubbish ?
@@highpath4776 most likely heading for the former GWR goods depot at Smithfield
@@highpath4776 No, they were Goodies going across London.
@@phaasch The words of the poem are on a wall in Barbican station booking hall...
Farringdon is where Thameslink switches from ohle to third rail and back again. It was always fun on first gen Thameslink trains to watch the pantograph get popped out there, or retracted.
I think going northbound, the change is now done at City Thameslink?
Very interesting, thanks.
Topical footnote (for me anyway) I visited this area for the first time just a few weeks ago. I was puzzled when I couldn't find a Farringdon "Street" station. My late father (a Londonder whose parent's families both had roots in the immediate area) regularly referred to the station as such. Clearly the original name indelibly stuck with the "locals"!
And the next station on the line, Barbican, used to be called "Aldersgate Street". John Betjeman wrote a poem to its passing, entitled "Monody on the Death of Aldersgate Street Station".
I live nearby and I do sometimes call it Farringdon Street... even though I'm quite young haha, but maybe that's my local knowledge coming through.
I love those clever little architectural details in the new station entrances!
Morning Jago. Let's all settle down to another fascinating video.
We are wrapping up 9 days staying just around the corner from Barbican station, and most days we've taken the Elizabeth line. The "sneak" from Barbican into Farringdon has been quite useful. But this video has reminded me that we never managed to actually visit Farringdon station proper!
Since we plan on being on the first Elizabeth line train over to Paddington in the morning, I'm afraid it's not going to happen this trip.
Next time, for sure!
Jago, thanks for all the great videos! We felt like we were up to speed with the underground so much quicker!
About 20 years ago I worked for a short time in a building right next to the station. Despite its very central location it felt like a no mans land between the City and West End. The area now seems to be in the very early stages of a resurgence like, for example, the Kings Cross area. The completion of the Museum of London (which they seem to have been working on since time immemorial) could even set the area buzzing.
Still does - on Saturdays and Sundays. A lot of the buildings are residential, and as a local, noise is big here during the week!! I think it being quiet and "a no-mans" land helps preserve its charm with the history rather than having endless tourists come through...
@@hx0d Totally agree, a calm oasis right up to Clerkenwell presently during weekends. Unfortunately Covent Garden mark2 beckons.
@@hx0d Totally agree, a calm oasis right up to Clerkenwell presently during weekends. Unfortunately Covent Garden mark2 beckons.
I live at Canons Park on the Jubilee Line and we're waiting for the fully linked up Bond Street to open and for the Elizabeth Line to link all the way through. This will mean we can get to Heathrow with one change at Bond Street and also Gatwick with an easy change at Bond Street and another easy change at Farringdon. All we'll need then will be a lift at Canons Park instead of the 48 steps to climb with luggage.
Great Sunday evening entertainment, thanks.
9:24 Wonderfully composed shot - not unlike a promo for the Metropolitan Line made by Theo Angelopoulos!
An amazing vision! 🧐
Theo Angelopoulos - was that one of Lenny Henry's characters?
@@whyyoulidl Yep, that's the guy - bet you didn't know he had a side career in arthouse cinema
Such a satisfying train sound at the end!
Imagine if he had pulled it off and London had gotten a Grand Central station where all mainline and underground lines meet. Travelling into London bridge to have to walk across the river to go to Fenchurch St or Cannon Street or Liverpool St can be such a pain. Equally travelling on a train and u can see another line across the river but they don't connect can be so frustrating.
I worked at Hohner’s Musical Instrument’s in 1970/1 and Farringdon was my station when working there. I used the Greenwich Railway getting off at Westcombe Park. Thanks good helpful railway information as usual
Yay, a video about my nearest and favourite station in London!! A great area too ;) Top job, especially on this video. Cheers to more.
Farringdon never gets the recognition it deserves. Thank you for this video.
One of the things that's always intrigued me about Farringdon is that the Thameslink platforms have Underground roundels on them. I can't think of anywhere else where that's the case off the top of my head.
Don't know when ownership changed, but if you look at photos of Farringdon in the 1960s it is signalled as part of the Underground, and there was a connection between the current Underground lines and the Widened Lines to the west of Farringdon station; there was still a meat train from Birkenhead to Smithfield which used the connection in the mid-1960s (hauled by a condensing pannier tank over the Met east of Paddington). This may be the reason for the roundels
I worked not 3 minutes from Farringdon Station, just up Cowcross Street. If I times it well, I could be home in Kentish Town within 15 minutes of leaving the office. Lots of interesting things to see around Farringdon Station.
Brilliant video, I've passed through Farrington a number of times and it's a nice station I must admit, a bit difficult to film both Thameslink and tube at the same time though.
Always a pleasure watching your videos, Jago!!
Worth watching to the very end just for the alliteration Jago 👍
My late father started his signalling journey at North Kent Jnc which was incidentally where the very first policemen acted as signalman on a railway anywhere around the world, only remnant is the old concrete plinth and if you consider the night of the St Johns disaster and my old man, he ran from North Kent Jnc all the way down to St Johns, one of the first railwaymen to arrive aside the signalmen and platform staff from St Johns and Lewisham. When he was at London Bridge, he was part of the S&T fact finding crew that went under Snow Hill to work out the absolute blocks, MR to SR interfaces, passing of electronic tokens to London Bridge and Victoria power boxes and he was there when the exploratory excavators accidentally pulled the side out of one of Newgate Prison's charnel pits with worries about plague going round the team and they all had to go to St Barts to have their hands held and told no plaguey today matey whilst consultants barely hid their mirth hehe He was deemed essential as he was passed out still for the old Loughborough Junction box which he worked on occasion as E grade and he sat there over many evenings looking at the pre-closure workings of the Snow Hill link and how they fitted in with normal Holborn Viaduct traffic to and from.
Wonderful as ever.
Thanks Mr H
Blimey! a lot more to Farringdon than I realised! Thanks Jago!
Thanks for this. My g-grandfather was born nearby, and this station was one of the great infrastructure developments which improved his father's life - with the end of The Bloody Code of justice, the closure of Smithfield Cattle Market, the opening of Smithfield Meat Market, closure of Newgate Meat Market and the Warwick Lane Mutton Market, the rebuild of Newgate Prison and Old Bailey, the end of Transportation, building of Bazalgette's sewers, and street lighting. The pace of change in that area in Victorian times was incredible.
Q. Can you do something on how country-killed meat was transported to the Metropolitan Meat Market? Apparently there were rails in Cheapside and Warwick Lane for horse-drawn wagons, but what was the extent of the network, how long did it last, who ran it, and how did it tie in with the cattle-drive along Giltspur Street?
In the Farringdon episode you mentioned you will be covering more about Snow Hill tunnel. Am looking forward to that!
Thanks for another very informative video. I have gone through Farringdon a lot but haven't stopped there much!
It's amazing when seeing that end clip and when you travel on the railways and underground just how much land lies wasted.
Only ever got off a Farringdon once and that was to go to Hatton Garden.
So another all night, can't sleep and then...Oh look! Jago's just posted! Yay. Trains sure beat the strange and unusual missing persons cases I was binging on. LOL
Claim to fame on a Jago video - at 4:00 the grey container (with Air con on the back) is an FTN Core Node (telecoms) - I tested that one, and have installed and tested extra equipment in it.
Farringdon used to be so simple. Off Thameslink two steps up onto the Circle Line. Seems to be getting rather more complicated nowadays.
Those track noises on the end. So nice to hear those again. I know that welded track is better in every way, but it just doesn't sound the way my childhood memories say trains should, the way that platform at Farringdon did.
Great work mr hazard fascinating as always and very well presented
I love Farringdon Station. Very under-rated and so glad you gave it the recognition it derserves. Always a lot going on with the different lines in view from the top of the stairs looking down. Used to get off here almost every week in the mid-80s to go to a training college at Smithfield just round the corner. Happy days.
I always have a little smile to myself when I am on the Met/Circ/H&C en route somewhere (often Euston Square to go to Holyhead) as it means passing through Barbican and Farringdon. It reminds me of journeys I took from Turnpike Lane (and later Finsbury Park) with my father to get to The Valley to watch Charlton (change at Liv St, district to Bromley by Bow, 108 bus to Charlton). I found both stations most endearing and almost ‘cute’ for some reason. They certainly didn’t look to my 8 year old eyes like ‘normal’ underground stations. There were two ruddy great disused platforms at each for starters!
It was a visit to the LTMuseum that brought on a whole new fascination and explained the significance of Farringdon and the other pioneering stations. Yet of course, this significant station (its 1977 remember!) looked a little forlorn and neglected 🤔
Then of course things changed but it is strange how the two little stations that I always associated together suddenly became became much more significant with the arrival of Thameslink, both stations verily bustling if one were to go through near rush hour. Strange then that now of course, the two have become very different. Barbican has almost reverted back to character, small almost sleepy and just another stop in the sub-surface loop, whereas Farringdon has gone one to become ever more significant! 😮
It still seems a bit surreal that the once rather sad and tatty looking ‘tick’ is now a major ‘blue access circle’ interchange on the map, with regular trains taking commuters north and south, east and west on their way home, allowing an interchange for any that need to pass through and change direction. And if you’re off on holiday, there’s easy interchange for airports or even a dirty weekend in Brighton. Plus of course, you can still get the sub-surface to Euston Square and onto Holyhead…I mean what’s not to like? 🤷🏻♂️
So it’s sad for Barbican but Farringdon has now become infinitely more important than 8 year old Timmy could have imagined it would. The only sad thing for me is that during construction, there was a small temporary museum space in one of the concessions of the old station building next to the entrance. It offered a potted history of the line, the station’s historical significance and a few interesting artefacts, along with a snazzy set of commemorative post cards. I know it’s a money thing, but I really rather think TFL missed a trick by closing it. The Metroplitan Museum would have a nice ring to it 🤔
Cheers old boy. Really love how you manage to continue to highlight some of my favourite stations 🤓 Cin-cin 🥂🍀👍
Brilliant video sir!!!!
Absolutely fascinating, thank you. Love your work.
The last shot of the Thames link train at Farringdon demonstrates perfectly a broken rail repair with a fish plate and not welded. IMO
A very interesting video as per!
Thank you 👍
River Fleet pops up again. Perhaps it deserves its own video...
John Rodgers done a few
Another Fantastic tail. Well done @jago hazzard 👏🏿
Actually, "Farringdon" is a village in Oxfordshire - there never was a London district named Farringdon, only a 'Farringdon Street', in the same way as London has an Oxford Street.
However, there was a tendency for London districts to be named after main railway stations, eg, Victoria, Waterloo etc, so in an odd way, the railway took its name from a street and lent it to a whole neighbourhood.
You're thinking of Faringdon.
Yes, there was a campaign some years back to get the station renamed 'Clerkenwell'. It was unsuccessful...
Faringdon is an historic market town in west Oxfordshire. No known connection to its misspelled “cousin”.
Excellent.
What a challenge to build a model of Farringdon in Victorian times! I think you are correct that things may change again. The Museum of London will move to Smithfield in 2027, and the market will eventually close and probably become an area similar to Convent Garden or Spitalfields. So who knows? The tracks will also be on view inside the new museum.
Thanks for another great informative video. I hope you do a piece on the widened lines, which is very interesting ,latterly worked by class 31/4 locos with BR suburban coaches.
I was working for British Rail when Thameslink was being developed and implemented. Just at Red Star parcels, but there was lots of talk about a new Central London integrated station. Trains from Southampton to Newcastle, Dover to Liverpool… Never in the plans, but ideas sometimes don’t die easily. Does anyone actually catch a Thameslink train from Horsham to Peterborough?
I'd be surprised if many people took the whole journey, but I'd also argue it's more about the rapid interchange with trains to Bedford, Cambridge, Brighton etc within the core section - Horsham being more like a handy place for the trains to terminate rather than a hot-button destination for ECML commuters.
I used to have family in both Bedford and Brighton, so I've used that route on Thameslink a few times. They had a special cheep ticket which worked only on their trains.
Horsham to Peterborough? That's the one always getting cancelled isn't it?
@@ReubenAshwell - It didn’t make it to Horsham last time I was on it, breaking down at Three Bridges.
@@tomwatts703 - It’s certainly a hot button destination for me, as my flat overlooks Horsham station!
I bet the members of the “royal commission on railway termini” were a great laugh! 😜
Another very interesting video jago as I live in south wales i find the history gteat thanks
great video as always......
Farringdon is not in the City of London; which was rather the point as the first lines stopped short of entering the City boundary only 100m further south..
Thameslink was a GLC inspired scheme. The pure engineering costs were in the low single digit millions - most of the costs were the shiny new Class 319 trains...
'… despite its age, its story still has a long way to go.' I wonder how many of us hearing that (incl Mr JH) will be around then.
Love that drum beat at 9:11
According to Joe Brown's London Railway Atlas, the original station was slightly west and slightly south of the present station, not slightly east. I don't know who's right.
I adore Farringdon. A hub that, if everything gets digitised through it, would see in its busiest periods (if it all goes right!) 32 trains per hour on the Underground in each direction, 24 Thameslink trains in each direction, and 24 Elizabeth line trains in each direction, up to a whopping 160 trains in a peak hour from just six platforms.
It is beautiful, but like the shiny things from Hatton Garden, it is like fragile glass. Break Farringdon, you break London and the South East’s railways. And then it will smell like Smithfield’s.
An interesting video on 1 of the system's more interesting stations IMO, at least at platform level...
Indeed, Farringdon is well worth a review of its own. From here. you can get collectively further north, south, east and west than from any other station in London. If you include one single same platform change in the peaceful, bucolic countryside, you have hundreds of potential destinations.
Very interesting point. Are you thinking of one particular station or several for the change? I can think of a few, but some don't exactly count as bucolic countryside - airports ((Gatwick) or towns (Peterborough, Cambridge, Stevenage, Bedford, Slough, East Croydon, Haywards Heath etc) and of course not all these changes are same-platform.
@@iankemp1131 I'm thinking of the smaller intermediate stations in the Green Belt where you can change onto the likes of GWR, Chiltern, East Midlands, Greater Anglia, SWR, etc.
Such a big gap between Kings X and Farringdon. I advocate for a station at Mt Pleasant.
There are 2 truncated lines still to use that used to be another LT spur but on Google Maps they just stop short of the Snow Hill link but there is a ton of trackbed just waiting for someone to build over something new :D
Hi Jago, The entrance opposite the old Metropolitan line was not constructed as part of the Elizabeth Line/Crossrail project as you implied in the video, but has been there for a few years now, and was built to funnel passengers down onto the Thameslink platforms when that was linked up. Obviously some more work had to be done on it as it was an access point to Crossrail, but that is not the reason for its existence!
Technically Farringdon isn’t in the City (except for the eastern exit from the Elizabeth line), as the City stops at Charterhouse Street and Farringdon is north of that.
One of the Elizabeth Line's best interchanges. That with the Thameslink. Back of up Thameslink also has good interchange up three steps with Met/ Ham City/Circle westbound. Was origanally Broad Gauge.
I love the ‘London Hauptbahnhof’ concept suggested recently by Gareth Dennis, which would see Farringdon become the centre of a through-running High Speed link across the city. He proposed a new station under Smithfield market as the only stop on a new section of line splitting off from HS2 just before Euston, running under central London to Farringdon, then on to join HS1 on the way into Stratford International. This would not only allow international services like Manchester to Paris to run direct, but also do so in a way that uses the domestic network far more efficiently than the current setup or the suggested HS2 to HS1 via Stratford services. If it ever materialises, it would be hard to look past Farringdon as the focal point of the whole London network. Here’s hoping
Certainly an intriguing idea. A couple of snags; passport checks for international trains (would need to be either on-train or at multiple destinations), and HS1 doesn't actually serve many sizeable locations, which is why the Southeastern routes were rather lacklustre until the Javelins came along.
@@iankemp1131 the political situation is a major obstacle, I agree, since a hypothetical Manchester-London-Paris service would need passport checks for some and not others. It wouldn’t be feasible to consider it for at least a generation or two until there’s a significant change in political will whereby the UK essentially joins Schengen (hardly imminent given the current climate). As you say, not worth it if it’s just to get direct services from Birmingham through to Margate.
Passport checks can be done easily. but the main problem is the security checks required for operation through the Channel Tunnel; if I remember correctly, the need for these is comprised within the Channel Tunnel Act (and perhaps even the Treaty of Canterbury), so there would certainly need to be legislative changes and perhaps even alterations to an international treaty for this "simple" idea to be taken forward
What is this strange blue LED light on the edge of the platform after the train is leaving (0:33)?
Oh and I almost forgot: A great video - as always. 🙂
Having commuted to Farringdon many times, I believe they serve as an extra warning to "mind the gap". The platform is curved, and the gap between train and platform is a bit wider in some parts. Hopefully that's the right answer.
@@gvfc I use Farringdon regularly for work and wondered about these lights. Prompted by this question I asked a staff member just now and was informed they are indeed a gap warning.
@@worstuserever thank you!
I enjoyed this one, often use thameslink to get up and see shows. when city thameslink closes (eg a late finish at the theatre) I usually go there and with the Lizzy line connection its even better to get somewhere like Tottenham Court Road
You never did get back to the closed tunnel ... great video all the same.
"good trains..." It should be pointed out that trains in the 70s to the 90s in the UK were very different to the trains of today in customer experience, much like football stadia the idea was to have as many people in as possible, safety, comfort and interactions were well down the list. It was also pretty much a free for all for inter-city; compared with that the service now is very controlled and managed. British Rail would actually run "Saturday Soccer Specials" which were overcrowded cheap trains run between cities on match days. BR would put on their worst, most dilapidated trains expecting vandalism.
My regular stop for nookie with a trainee nurse at Barts Hospital in the late 1980's. Happy Days. I eventually married her
This use of (lowercase) a “grand central” station shared by competing railways is odd to me. The actual station that goes by that name in New York was conceived as the exclusive domain of the New York Central Railroad, who were simply engaging in typical rail-people bloviating when they labeled it as “grand.” The current (1913) one is coincidentally palatial because the Central’s ancestral monopoly on mainline stations in Manhattan had ended when the Pennsylvania RR’s North River and East River tunnels, along with Penn Station which connects them, opened in 1910. Until then the previous two Grand Centrals on the same site (1869 and 1897) were not all that centrally located until the city grew to surround them. But they had stood unchallenged because every other US railway had to approach from the south and west, finding themselves blocked by the Hudson (or North) River. The best they could do was throw ferries at the problem, until eventually the Hudson & Manhattan tubes (precursor to what we now call PATH) opened (after a 30-year saga) in a role similar to the early Metropolitan Railway: connecting those mainline termini in Hoboken and Jersey City to Manhattan (quite a different role than how PATH is used today).
A number of US cities do have large stations whose names reflect an original purpose of bringing disparate lines together: “Union Station.”
the early plans of Victoria Street did come to fruition as most operators running into London went there pre-nationalisation
@@uingaeoc3905 the comment highlighted by Jago is what I meant
Near the end of the video, I think LU are gonna use the old thameslink line to Moorgate for the stabilisation of trains.
That's reassuring - we wouldn't want them to be unstable!
@@uingaeoc3905 It was part of Bedpan , and so think so until the Thameslink Trains got longer
The station is in Islington, not City of London. Pubs in the City had different opening hours, so was easy to know if you were in or out of the City!
In the 80s in a different life, I lived/worked in Cowcross St (building visible at ca 4mins) so witnessed the Thameslink opening.
The smithfield pubs had even more differing hours, is the other side of Farringdon Road in Camden now ?
Some of it is in Camden too
@@highpath4776 Yes
@@hx0d much bigger than when I knew it. Thanks for the info
Watching this video has got me thinking: why did the Metropolitan NOT connect directly with Euston Station as it did with Paddington and Kings Cross-St Pancras? The LNWR was a damned important railway, so why bypass it?
Euston Square was considered near enough, or at least it was in LT days IIRC. The Beck-era Tube map used to it as 'for Euston', but you had to cross the road.
6:40 Parcels: that’s the 2nd time I think you’ve mentioned the parcel delivery services. It resonates with me because my Dad’s 1st job was with the “express” (parcel) service of the CPR (1941!). Just imagine if parcel delivery (“TfL-Parcels”? or PfL?) still existed… Efficient ecological deliveries with property paid workers… Not enriching a US megalomaniacal anti-union space cadet… Just my 2 Canadian cents… 😉 (We don’t have pennies here anymore anyway…)
The 80s were when BR finally got real. And oh, what could have been, had their future plans (or indeed the APT) worked out. Even today, you have a decent chance an 80s BREL train will be better built and more comfortable than an 00s or 10s train (with notable exceptions for each).
Was in London a few months back, and I thought the thameslink platform looked decidedly grim and boring. (I guess I was roughly at where you were around 09:00 in the video.) But then after walking past a column the whole surrounding suddenly opened up and it looked more like the rest of the video. I thought it was somewhat magical.
As always, absolutely fascinating!
Although I am left with the image of your terracotta tiled "frontage"... Thanks.... ;)
I'm not sure why the Elizabeth Line platforms are called "very long". Many Thameslink trains have 12 carriages, so those platforms at Farringdon must also be as long. Unless the Elizabeth Line was built for more than 12 carriages?
I think they were.
@@AtheistOrphan I think some of the current Eliz trains into Liverpool St have 9 carriages, and some old stations can't cope with them!
Very good 🙂🚂🚂🚂
P. S. @ 9:30 :- There seems to be 2 tracks which suddenly stop!!! Might be an old tunnel they used to go through - next to that fence on the right - seem to be spare bit of land with another tunnel - where does that go to??? 🤔🚂🚂🚂
@@JP_TaVeryMuch Oh ok - Thanks 🙂🚂🚂🚂
Once again really interesting, I used to hate commuting through Farringdon in the ‘70’s, it was scruffy and cold with smoky DMUs stopping there. The transformation is dramatic. I did note that, after it’s mention, you didn’t return to the Snow Hill tunnel but I presume it’s now once again used by Crossrail ?
Having recently had a holiday in London and staying nearby, we used Farringdon many times. I was intrigued by the abandoned tunnels there and after googling it, I learned about the Smithfield Market siding and the old Snow Hill line. Apparently the station under the markets has been turned into an underground car park. Do you have a video about them? Or will you do one in the future?
I covered them in a previous video on Smithfield.
No, it will be a new area for the museum of London once it opens in 26'
@@JagoHazzard ok thanks. I’ll have to search through your previous videos and have a look at it.
In the last shot what are the abandoned lines that go off to the right? Or have I missed a video in this? Thanks for a brilliant series
Is that the Snow Hill tunnels @9.25? Great video at usual. Got to Farringdon earlier this year when I was over.
No. The snow hill tunnel was re-opened for the re-routed through Thameslink service and is now underground. What you see at 9:25 is part of the old Thameslink alignment.
@@eattherich9215 Cheers BBS, great name by the way 👍