The Greatest Station London Never Got: Farringdon Grand Central
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ส.ค. 2024
- What if the Underground had never been built? It's time for the story of the massive station in the heart of the City that we never had.
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"I love a never-built railway way project" - so does every subscriber to this channel! Cracking video, as always. Thank you!
The infrastructure of a single grand station would have been epic in scale. Imagine the turntables, carriage sidings, steam sheds, coaling facilities, goods, parcels, inward and outward passenger platforms for all London's satellite termini, in one place. However big it was it would have been inadequate by the 1880s, leading to expansion or duplication.
I’d imagine we would have gotten something like Châtelet-les-Halles in Paris. A massive underground complex for all the suburban services underneath the single 30+ platform mega central station.
@@iman2341 where 0-10-0 tank engines would rattle in and out on commuter lines? Sure I read something about that
I'm talking complete bollocks. Was thinking of the 2-8-2T hauled services into La Bastille. Now if Jago wants to look at lost Parisian stations...
@@bingbong7316 You may have thought of the Decopod built by the Great Eastern Railway.
Now that would have been on a truly gargantuan scale. The Great Eastern Railway's engine shed for Liverpool Street was the biggest in the world in its day. So just imagine that scaled up.
I often wonder what London would be like today if the railways had all been planned as a single project rather than a great many competing lines. I think Pearson had the right idea.
Far too tidy.
Can you imagine how crowded at 2019 rush hour levels, a central station would be though.
Certainly some state direction as on the continent, instead of competing lines serving the same place, would have helped.
If that would have happened perhaps we would not have had Jago here to help us sort out the confusion about how the Underground, Overground, DLR, Thames Link and more came to be!
Hi I'm thinking there would have been far less for TH-cam to show and Jago to make.
And us to enjoy.
The concept behind the Farringdon super-station actually happened - albeit on a much smaller scale - in my hometown of Merthyr Tydfil. In the scramble to reach this coal & iron boomtown during the industrial revolution, 7 companies shared 1 station at one point. It also had an adjacent fruit, veg & meat market. All that remains now is a single platform, but at least the Pacers have been retired.
Similar concept around the same time in Leeds. What was eventually built, as Leeds Central, was a compromise which was in fact never used by the two companies which first proposed it! it was flattened in the 1960s as it was then thought Leeds only needed a single station rather than three.....*slow clap*
Thankful I don't have to imagine what an excellent channel about the underground would be like.
Just to confirm: you have never made me angry. Calmed, included, pandered to with geeky knowledge about architecture and railways and generally educated; but never angry.
Just did some reading up on Charles Pearson. He was a involved in securing funds for the Metropolitan Railway, but sadly died four months before it opened. Thank you Jago for making me aware of this great man.
From Jago's description alone he deserves some more investigation - sounds like a pretty decent chap.
As you were highlighting the locations around central London I couldn't help admiring one office building with pastel panels which made it stand out from its neighbors . Thanks again for posting.
This is Kaleidoscope on Lindsey St, the London offices of TikTok.
Fascinating. You learn something new every day. Never heard of this proposal before. Love a never built or sadly closed line just to imagine what might have been...
So Charles Pearson was generally the opposite of the average person, who promoted railways in those days. Was this a vailed slant on our old friend Charles Tyson Yerkes?
Fascinating video, as ever - and what an interesting, far-sighted figure Pearson seems to have been!
Maybe someone in New York had heard about his ideas . . . ? They have a 'grand central' station!
In many ways, though on a much smaller scale, with Thameslink running north from Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire to Kent, Surrey and Sussex in the south, and the Elizabeth running west from Berkshire & Buckinghamshire to Essex & SE London in the east, along with the Metropolitan, Hammersmith & City and Circle lines, Farringdon is now technically the London central station
Great vid, Jago. Love Farringdon - aesthetically it floats my boat!
A lot of these shots are outside my flat or outside my office! Odd, I may well have walked past you haha
This is a brilliant piece of work.
thanks again Jago. Always good to watch your shows.
Brilliant film ! Always so informative , love the planned never built , northern heights started me off , thank you jago !
Just love the videos..as a lover of history Jago makes my day with these fantastic tales..keep it up
I got off at Farringdon for serious drinking today for the first time since first lockdown.
I have always loved Clerkenwell, and watching this little window into a unmade Farringdon world just adds a joyously soft filter to a good day.
The Horseshoe in Clerkenwell and the Betsy Trotwood, just a short walk through the Peabody flats away, are well worth getting off at Farringdon for. If you go downstairs in the Betsy you can hear and feel the Thameslink trains passing underneath. I think you have shown an Illustrated London News engraving of the site of the pub as the railway was being built?
The Jerusalem Tavern on Britton St is also worth a visit.
I have done shows in all 3 pubs; and did not lose serious amounts of money at any of them. Hence my love.
Early shifts at work help me watch these early videos 😁 very interesting video this one!
Thanks
It was the Belgians that put a main line right through the heart of a major city, Brussels. Started before WW2, the line, 6 tracks, was finally completed in the early 50s and connected Brussels Nord with Brussels Midi, with Brussels Central in the centre of Brussels. All tracks are underground and the station is extremely busy with train following train hour after hour after hour. Now the station is too small for the traffic, and the 6 lines not enough, but so far, there has been reluctance to start an expansion project.
Strangely enough Jago I suggested to Network Rail that they rename Farringdon to Farringdon Central since it will be the one station that you can take a train in any direction out of London. They rejected my idea as being too expensive! I bet it'll still happen though.
An absolutely fascinating way to end the week!
Always striked me that in London main stations are on the edges, same with Paris, but Berlin has the lines going through the layered hauptbahnhof, now we play catch up with crossrail to a degree.
yeah but the hauptbahnhof isnt a long standing thing. its only been there about ten years and replaced a terminus(on what is now the low level of the new station). berlin had a few termini originally. also wouldn't a london through central station have to be massive.
love the cartoon at 1.37 - "I come to dine, I come to sup, I come I come to eat you up" - "Oh my beef and Oh my babies" - "Oh The Monster". I imagine that the cartoon might be from "Punch". Kudos to Pearson - a far sighted man and the Grandfather of Thameslink - and he was absolutely right as building a set of termini in a ring around London has created problems ever since and means hardly any through trains from the South East where I live to the Midlands, The North and Scotland.
The guy dropping rubbish outside Euston is a real classic Euston moment.
Classic UK moment...people just don't give a sh1t
Another entertaining video from you, Jago!
Brilliant my man
Brilliant, as ever !London would not be the wonderful haphazard eclectic jumble that it is with central planning. Your work is absolutely superb sir, I salute you.
Thanks for this - another informative story of mass transit development in London.
I miss the old Holborn Viaduct stn. Something sleepily-cool having almost a secret little railway terminus tucked away in the shadow of St. Pauls. It would be like having a railway terminus in Mayfair called Half Moon Street. Just quaint.
Wonderful history as usual..hats off to your research and presentation...
7:41 can't believe you caught a litter-er in the act!
An interesting reformer and a great story Jago.
What an interesting tale, and not one I have heard of before. Very informative.
Another brilliant video. Cheers Jago. 👍🏼
Fascinating to hear about Pearson and his vision of Farringdon as a 'London Hauptbahnhof'. Very far seeing and now we have a hint of this with Thameslink and Crossrail. I've always been fascinated with our dear old Metropolitan. To think it once went to Aylesbury with steam locos. I actually did this once - that dates me. I love your video and your sense of humour
It reminds me of.my childhood as an Underground (not just Tube!) nerd.
How about one on the Ongar line. I went on it in the 1950s. It was an amazing two coach Steam push pull. I know it's a heritage line now.
They could have cracked it up as a Thomas the Tank Engine experience even then. LT missed an opportunity- they could have kept it open right till now!
The Met used to go even further than Aylesbury, it once ran to villages in Oxfordshire called Brill & Verney Junction, the Brill branch was almost extended to Oxford itself!
Please do Marylebone station and the London extension.
Seems you've managed to find a London terminus that's even more forgotten than Broad Street! Hard to believe that what was once London's busiest terminus is now virtually erased from public knowledge.
So Charles Pearson was an all-round good egg and gave us the Underground. He should be way better known and appreciated.
0:43, we almost see what this Jags chap looks like. Such a tease. I think a video reviewing station pubs is needed.
God Damn son you've done it again
Best one yet
A great video. I'd imagine Farringdon Central would've been like or ended up like Birmingham New Street.
These and your architecture videos are awesome! Well presented with great photography and interesting facts that I never knew about!
Thanks!
I travel around London every day and keep hoping to spot myself in one of these videos!
Thanks Jago Keep Safe and Well
Keep up the good work fella and stay safe
Always interesting and informative 🚂
Beautiful colors on that contemporary building you kept featuring. And great photos.
Way to go Mr. J - another gem to savour. Oh, congrats on reaching the 120K subs! Roll on 150K...
"I like never built rail."
Will Crossrail be in that club?
No that will be in the most expensive ever catagory, and they are still asking HMG for more.
It's always been an annoyance of mine that London serves as a major interchange for through trains coming in from the north, south, east and west, for example Brighton to Bristol, Dover to Birmingham, Norwich to Southampton etc, yet each of those journeys requires an arduous trip on the Underground, often going up and down steps and negotiating crowded trains and corridors with your luggage. It would be so fantastic to have one gigantic terminus in the centre, on which all of the lines converged.
Maybe the railway equivalent of the M25 is what is needed.
Thanks great lesson.😊
Honestly if this was just a boring history video I would not watch but you provide free entertainment through your humour that keeps me wanting to watch and stay subscribed for more good job buddy
Great video , people can't see the wood for the trees ( selfishness, greed) so good ideas are squashed, killing good ideas is what they do best.
Very interesting, thanks.
Careful! 0:45 is dangerously close to a full reflection :)
Greetings from Slovenia XJ6. Another very interesting video. Not sure if you realise it but some anagrams of Charles Pearson MP are:- Acme Porn Splasher, Coppers Alarm Hens, Apes Chompsnarler, Camel Nosh Rappers, Herpes Canal Romps, Lemons Rasperchamp, Laser Mans Chopper and Posh Prams Cleaner. Fascinating stuff (along with many others no doubt). Do keep up the good work in the community. Kind regards as always
That make two of us, I asked you for a mothballed line video many moons ago now and can I just say you’ve far exceeded my expectations 😎🤓😎✌🏾
Interesting that neatly every modern project can trace it's history back to some previous idea back in the day.
Hello from Kansas 🇺🇸
I'm sure Fenchurch Grand Central Station was built in a parallel universe and in that same universe, Bank station does not exist. There is however, a channel (on whatever the equivalent to TH-cam they have there) called Jago Hazzard. Of that I have no doubt. His recent video was all about a plan for a station which would have been called Monument...
Nobody really talks about the Chessington South extension to Leatherhead it was similar to the Northern Heights project guess it might be a good video as it's an extension that we never got
Brilliant !!!
Interesting. In NY of course the railroad goes to Center of town, underground, such as Grand Central
Very informative and interesting
This got a like in the first 45 seconds, hilarious 🤣 great video, interesting as always.
OMG, it was the similar experience to watching the BBC´s The Dark Charisma of Hitler´s series and Adolf shouting VERNICHTEN! - to sir Jago shouting UNSUBSCRIBE! Sort of old radio speaker manier going into right register of a micro(phone). It definitely gives a very fine and refine retro feeling thrill :)
Another interesting Jago video. 🇬🇧👍🏻....
This seems kinda similar to the Berlin Stadtbahn with the difference that in Berlin the companies cooperated and the kingdom of prussia was in on it. That Berlin is much less dense than London might have helped as well.
And your last sentence can be taken more than one way and I prefer the second.
I guess after WW2 Berlin had the chance to update it's city infrastructure
@@skylarius3757 The Berlin Stadtbahn was built in the 1870s (approximately at the same time when the discussion in London took place) and opened in 1882 so this was sixty years before ww2.
And yet the New York Central built Grand Central Depot & the two level classic Grand Central Terminal, which is about to get a two platform four track addition below & to the immediate west for the Long Island Rail Road in 2022.
At 7:46 Litter being dumped by the SU stood in-shot outside King’s Cross!!!😀Welcome to London!!🤣🤣👍🏻
Some interesting architecture, new & old
I actually subscribed after watching this video
Always like it when you suddenly throw up (this sentence would have such different meaning if it stopped there 🤔) new information about schemes I feel I should have at least heard about at some point in the last 40 odd years 😜
Truly fascinating stuff! This chap was clearly a visionary on many levels and ought to perhaps be better remembered, so kudos for at least doing a little to put that right 👍
Also shows some things never change. Government having a great idea before them, then scuppering it because of their chums, then deciding "oh actually, we suddenly think it is a god idea and we'll claim we thought of it..." 🙄
Excellent way to start a long weekend! 🍻🍀😎
Excellent video. This Pearson fellow sounds like a decent fellow - the reason why he had this rare superpower in the Victorian railway mania age? No moustache!
Such (as usual)an excellent and informative video but why oh why do three people (so far) hit the dislike button.
Please Jago,can you make a video on the consequences of closing down the psychiatric hospitals in London.
One of the psychiatric disorders is obsessive compulsion disorder which manifests itself with the patient unable to refrain from hitting the dislike button although they desperately don't want to.
There is alas,no known cure for this affliction but one hospital did try a therapy which goes by the Latin name of Vicpipiumarshalldinium but unfortunately it just made matters worse!!
It strikes me as so peculiar that in this golden age of railways that no-one thought of consulting with the various companies and building a unified central station that they could all use, and passengers could easily transfer from one line to another.
Even now, with our whizzbang Underground, it's still a bit of a nightmare if you're not 100% fit and mobile or, god forbid, you have *a suitcase*.
The GWR was originally to have gone from Euston, but they had a falling-out with the LNWR and there was also the issue of the difference in gauge.
TH-cam is a great resource and obviously has a wealth of information.
It's a shame you can't see Farringdon before it's renovation. It was always like going to Victorian London.
The same is true of Liverpool Street where you would enter from Broadgate and have an overview of a dark, dank post war British railway station.
Not better days... just lost days.
0:35 - 0:49 Hilarious. You have a great narrator voice. Your videos are always really interesting too!
I was a fireman/second man @Hornsey Locomotive depot in the early 60's. we had a diagram known as Snow Hill banker, it involved pushing south bound freight trains from Farringdon up the hill onto Blackfriars Bridge so spent a lot of time at the station,night shift after 2am till end of shift was a real was graveyard turn! hated by all !
Fine work sir.
Anyone who can shoe horn disestablishmentarianism into a TH-cam video, let alone prefixing it with pro, deserves all the plaudits.
I take my hat off to you
I believe Canon Street is built on the site of the Bridewell prison. An occasional mention of the builders would be nice. (Lucas Brothers). Keep up the good work!
Loti (Lucas)
Bridewell was opposite Blackfriars station I think. I seem to recall a plaque marking the site in Farringdon Street.
I believe the Bridewell Palace was quite a large site but you could easily be right. Also Charinng Cross hotal and station and bridge were built ( all Lucas Brothers) on the ite of the Hungerford market, hence the bridge’ name! They had to knock down a lot of houses to gt the railways in to the centre (or near enough)
Grand Central Terminal NYC? Chicago? No, Farringdon! Great proposal & a story so well told, sir.
1:35 "oh my beef! and also my children i guess"
Like a bedtime mint leading to sweet dreams!:-) 👍🖖
On a pedantic point of order, in your commentary you used the word 'predecessor' when, IMHO, 'precursor' would have been a better choice.
Worry not Bernard, I too get voices in my head. They usually instruct me to buy an expensive car without mentioning it to the wife first.....it's a reoccurring issue too....
@@BibtheBoulder I am barred from all second hand shops due to past unapproved purchasing, that may be extended to all shops if my behaviour does not improve. However reckless use of 'predecessor', especially when no one has died, is just one thing to niggle me, use of 'fertility' when what is meant is 'fecundity' is another.
Que Sera Sera. There's no doubt then that Pearson proposed naming his radical solution "City Thameslink" then? I thought not. It' just as well we have visionaries like Horace Cutler ready to pounce with catchy monikers like "Prince Leopold of Schleswig-Holstein Top Level Interchange". This is how our history is accreted....
Hello Jago, love your video and the wonderful delivery and dulcet tones, gush, gush. BUT, the old drawing of the proposal overlaid on a current map would have helped a bit, especiallyy for the non-Londoners. Even as a Londoner it would have been a good thing.
My thought exactly, and I know the area very well.
Still, it is certainly a shame this never got built. I would’ve loved to have seen that concourse. Of course the name Grand Central conjures images of the one in New York City… one could easily imagine an Underground line (or five) running through here afterwards as well - any of those upstart underground railway companies would’ve loved to lease a couple of platforms and pay for track access here! It could even have sped-up integration of the Tube network through being the central hub, come to think of it.
If I'm not mistaken, this "Grand Central" station would've replaced the Underground, since the whole point of it was to connect all the rail companies together. The purpose of the Met when first built was also to connect all the rail companies together, a purpose which would've been redundant before it was even proposed had Great Central been built...
I think it's probably a good thing that London ended up with so many termini. Depending on how you define a London 'terminus' they have around 161 platforms combined! Could you imagine how difficult it would be if they were all in one location! I wonder just how big the Farringdon Grand Central would have become?
With through services, you can limit the number of platforms, though. Having to reverse costs quite a bit of time and thus capacity. With through-running, you occupy a platform for only 1-3 minutes, and the next train can come in right away. That's why Brussels-Central only has 6 platforms, with Brussels-North having 11, and Brussels-South having 22. To be fair, an extra pair of platforms would be handy, nowadays.
Thameslink have plans to take over the world - started with East Anglia. Interesting to see their mega-tubes in Germany before being shoved through the tunnel. Another great video Jago :)
That's our cunning plan 🤫
Luton to Faversham soon followed by Gatwick to Corby.
@@paulbarber1960 Could be confusing Luton To Luton
I suspect Farringdon Grand Central would also have led to the early adoption of electric trains in a far more widespread fashion than actually occurred in the UK - electrification of the approach tunnels a la Paris or Penn Central in New York would have obvious benefits, even by 1900.
As I'm sure we all know, there _was_ a London Central station. It's now Beckton Park on the DLR.
Just brilliant as usual Jago, but this leaves me thinking 'if only' and that we would have an even better railway network/system than we do now? I love this type of subject, just don't mention the Great Central and HS2 in the same breath/sentence!
Transport Minister in the making 👍👍👍
As an ex-colonial, I have a question. Why is the terminus for High Speed 2, placed several blocks away from the terminus of High Speed 1? Someone coming from say Brussels going North to whatever destination must now schlep their luggage, pets and small children several blocks to continue north. Was there no room at St Pancras? Do London dwellers take delight in watching the struggles of travelers? (Oh, wait; refer to Ankh-Morpork)
Inquiring minds want to know.
In the original proposal for HS2 there was to be a link to allow HS1 trains to directly access HS2. This was dropped due to the cost (£750 million at the time). A short sighted decision, in my opinion.
Because if you give politicians sensible ideas that are not theirs, they reject them. And Pritti P probably didnt want immigrants finding out there is life north of London.
Ahh time for a sneaky break
Watching this video has me realising how many ghastly new developments have appeared in central London.
the place is a ugly tip these days, but what can one do.
“Let me explain!?” The viewer scoffs. Oh how you treat us.