No Treats For fbb – Again!

… something of a tourist attraction in the late 1890s.

The bridge and its roads were known as Holborn Viaduct.

Soon a new station was built to allow Southern Railway trains to venture further north into the growing commercial and leisure (Museum’s init?) areas which grew on and round the new road. It had a very grand frontage …

… but not such a grand backage.

The frontage did get modernised …

… but the platform side was, ultimately less impressive.

Its usefulness and usage 

declined rapidly post WW2 and it ended up being a simple island platform with only nominal shelter …

…and a poor trains service.

And fbb completely forgot about this somewhat obscure and no longer extant terminus. But it gets worse!

So, on the western side of the super magnificent station …

… are two terminus platforms.

Complaints are common that Notwork Rail terminates trains there when the timetable starts to crumble and irate passengers are forced to (a) change and thus (b) wait.

Limited scheduled services use the platforms.

Moorgate

As built, Moorgate was the first City terminus of the Metropolitan Railway …

… but later the Underground lines (Met, Hammersmith & City, Circle) ran through. National Rail trains via the so-called “Widened Lines” from northern suburbs on St Pancras and Kings Cross routes continued to terminate there, especially at peak times.

fbb remembers seeing the odd blue DMU and even loco hauled trains lurking there.

With the he arrival of the first wave of Thameslink, these lines were electrified at 25Kv overheard and became a short branch of the through Thameslink route.

Then, when the full Thameslink happened, it was necessary to lengthen Farringdon’s platforms and the bit from there to Moorgate was closed. Thus Moorgate ceased to be a National Rail terminus at sub service level.

But descend a little deeper and you have the Northern City line, once Underground and the scene of the horrific disaster of 1973.

The line later joined the National Rail network and once again carries full sized trains. They once looked like this …

… and now look like this.

Just to complete the picture; at a deeper level Moorgate offers the City “branch” of the Underground’s Northern Line but with no terminating tube.

And just to confuse us all, Moorgate has a linking passage with the Elizabeth Line line station at Liverpool Street.

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