CSLR at King's Cross

[Geoffram]

I know that when the City and South London Railway was extended to Euston, there was a fine station on Eversholt Street - now demolished - but what happened at King's Cross? The evidence of the bottom of the lifts coming down to platform level is still there, but where did the lifts surface? Did they go into the GN&BR Station - also demolished - and if so, why didn't they do a similar arrangement with with the CCHR to surface inside its station at Euston?

[Harsig]

This is what 'Rails Through The Clay' has to say:

'At Kings Cross there were two 239ft platforms in separate tunnels, with the lower lift landing in a cross passage between them, and a low-level subway to the Piccadilly Railway. The ticket hall was below street level, near the Great Northern Hotel, and there were no surface buildings.'

[railtechnician]

geoffram said:

I know that when the City and South London Railway was extended to Euston, there was a fine station on Eversholt Street - now demolished - but what happened at King's Cross? The evidence of the bottom of the lifts coming down to platform level is still there, but where did the lifts surface? Did they go into the GN&BR Station - also demolished - and if so, why didn't they do a similar arrangement with with the CCHR to surface inside its station at Euston?

I dunno what Kings Cross is looking like now with all the CTRL work as I haven't been there for more than two years. However, before they started knocking the station about the entrance to the old lifts and subway was situated on a triangle in the road at the entrance/exit to the cab rank. Staff and contractors used to use the entrance regularly at night as it was a convenient place to unload materials. the subway curved around to meet the passageway leading to St.Pancras station off the bullring. Between the subway and the passageway around the bullring leading to Kings Cross mainline, i.e. the back of the shafts, the remnants of the old ticket hall survived as a plant room in the area which had been converted to staff accommodation for the tube atation staff.

King's Cross is another of those very interesting stations which I had the opportunity to explore over many years working there. Not only the disused areas of the Picc and Northern but also the non-public areas of the Victoria and Met lines and also the original King's Cross Met station whose ticket hall was still extant across the road from the Midland/Thameslink accessed through what was once rented out as a shop unit.

Brian

[Deleted]

The entrance was a Yerkes/Leslie Green type building outside the main LNER [as it then was] station, roughly where the forecourt canopy is now...



Here, you can clearly see the mainline terminus behind.