Euston deep level ticket office

[Tomcakes]

I stumbled across photos of a deep level ticket office in the bowels of Euston station, in areas made redundant during the 1960s reconstruction :-

www.abandonedstations.org.uk/Euston_station_3.html

What was the function of this ticket office at platform level? Were there any others at other stations?

[Harsig]

I believe the deep level ticket office was for passengers interchanging between lines. Originally they were separate companies and, initially at least, it was not possible to purchase through tickets from one line to destinations on the other and so it was necessary for interchanging passengers to purchase a second ticket at Euston to complete their journey.

[theblackferret]

These 2 Euston surface buildings were for the CSLR(City & South London) & CCEHR(Charing Cross, Euston & Hampstead) respectively. Both built in 1907 & closed in 1914.

The CCEHR building is still standing:


When they were functional, these 2 lines were separate companies and entities that had yet to be linked together to form the Northern Line.

So, it's unlikely through ticketing between, say, Stockwell & Chalk Farm was available until after 1913, when the CSLR was swallowed by the United Electric Railways of London(UERL), which had already acquired the District, Piccadilly & Bakerloo lines.

Hence the need for an interchange ticket office from 1907-13/14, and why it was underground & not in the foyer/forecourt of Euston LNWR station.

[keerde]

There were 2 other examples that I know of where a booking office was at deep level, those being Tottenham Court Road and
Elephant and Castle.

[theblackferret]

Aug 18, 2014 22:10:55 GMT keerde said:

There were 2 other examples that I know of where a booking office was at deep level, those being Tottenham Court Road and
Elephant and Castle.

Both with Northern line connections. Elephant was part of the original CSLR, so up to 1913 was interchanging with the Bakerloo there, before CSLR became part of UERL.

Tottenham Court Road interchanged with the Central Line, which was not part of UERL at all.

So looks like through ticketing wasn't possible at those two, either. Wonder if Tottenham Court Road underground office stayed open longer?

[CSLR]

Aug 18, 2014 20:50:17 GMT theblackferret said:

When they were functional, these 2 lines were separate companies and entities that had yet to be linked together to form the Northern Line.

So, it's unlikely through ticketing between, say, Stockwell & Chalk Farm was available until after 1913, when the CSLR was swallowed by the United Electric Railways of London(UERL), which had already acquired the District, Piccadilly & Bakerloo lines.

There was a through booking system with the other lines before 1913. Amongst some of the more interesting examples of possible routes was Oval to Kings Cross (Metropolitan) change at Moorgate Street, and London Bridge to Alexander Palace (via GN&CR and GNR) - which I suppose is pretty much a journey from a Northern Line station to a Northern Heights station.

Stockwell to Chalk Farm was certainly bookable.

[CSLR]

Aug 18, 2014 22:19:06 GMT theblackferret said:

Elephant was part of the original CSLR, so up to 1913 was interchanging with the Bakerloo there, before CSLR became part of UERL.

Elephant & Castle was an official interchange with BS&WR before 1913 and tickets were bookable from C&SLR stations. Through tickets were colour/letter coded in the style of the company/station where the journey would terminate.

[theblackferret]

Through ticketing between the 3 Yerkes lines that formed UERL wasn't even available until 1910, when Parliamentary sanction was sought and granted to form UERL from the 3 separate companies that had been forced to operate so far.

Also, when did the other companies start accepting the CSLR tickets referred to? It may perhaps have been 1910/11/12, but I can't see it would have been there from the start of the interchanges noted above.

There would be no other reason to have an underground ticket office unless the street buildings were bare of them, and I don't believe that was the case at Euston, Tottenham Court Road, or Elephant. The one illustrated is clearly a ticket office & not a passimeter checking window.

[CSLR]

Aug 19, 2014 11:55:25 GMT theblackferret said:

Through ticketing between the 3 Yerkes lines that formed UERL wasn't even available until 1910, when Parliamentary sanction was sought and granted to form UERL from the 3 separate companies that had been forced to operate so far.

Through booking between the BS&WR and GNP&BR began as soon as both railways were open (December 1906) and through bookings between CCE&HR, District or any permutation of these companies followed soon afterwards. There were also agreements with other companies. For example, the BS&WR had through booking agreements with the Metropolitan and part of the L&SWR as early as 1906.
Further through bookings came about as a result of a series of meetings known as the London Passenger Transport Conference which began in 1907. This drew together the District, Metropolitan, BS&WR, GNP&B, CCE&HR, CLR, C&SLR, GN&CR and NLR plus tram and bus operators.

Aug 19, 2014 11:55:25 GMT theblackferret said:

Also, when did the other companies start accepting the CSLR tickets referred to? It may perhaps have been 1910/11/12, but I can't see it would have been there from the start of the interchanges noted above.

The C&SLR board of directors approved an agreement for through bookings with the BS&WR on 3 July 1906. It appears that this agreement took only a short time to implement (ticket printing and distribution, etc) as the first payment to the BS&WR of its share of the through booking revenues was made on 18 September 1906 and covered 'August'. It amounted to £27 3s 3d.

Through bookings between the C&SLR and other companies started as follows:
CCE&HR - June 1907
GNP&BR - July 1907
District - August 1907
Metropolitan - December 1907
CLR (via Bank) - February 1908
CLR (via Elephant & Castle and BS&WR) - April 1908
There were other agreements some of which involved multiple railways and others which allowed companies to sell tickets that included the C&SLR within a journey that did not start or finish on it.

Aug 19, 2014 11:55:25 GMT theblackferret said:

There would be no other reason to have an underground ticket office unless the street buildings were bare of them, and I don't believe that was the case at Euston, Tottenham Court Road, or Elephant. The one illustrated is clearly a ticket office & not a passimeter checking window.

The underground ticket offices were built at points where passengers would exit from the property of one railway company and enter the property of another. Before through bookings became available, they were offered to passengers as a place to re-book for the next section of the journey.

All of the companies had their conventional booking offices on the surface and there was nothing to stop passengers going up to street level in order transfer between railways. Having arrived on the surface, they would have had to exit the station of the company by which they had arrived and re-enter the station of the company with which they were continuing their journey before buying a new ticket and descending again to platform level. The underground ticket offices were purely re-booking points to avoid forcing passengers to do this.

For the record, the C&SLR had underground ticket offices at Euston, Kings Cross and Elephant & Castle. If you look at the list of dates above, you will see that these offices only served their initial purpose for a very short period.

[theblackferret]

Yes, but the ticket offices were built for one purpose only, surely?

Whether they were even necessary, given your dates, is open to question, but allowing through ticketing is clearly the sole purpose for which they were opened:

link-Subterrania Brittanica

So the question now becomes, when they did they fall out of use at these 3 venues? Do the CSLR records tell us this?

[CSLR]

Aug 19, 2014 18:00:14 GMT theblackferret said:

Yes, but the ticket offices were built for one purpose only, surely?
Whether they were even necessary, given your dates, is open to question, but allowing through ticketing is clearly the sole purpose for which they were opened:

I can see exactly where you are coming from, and when you look at it from that viewpoint it does not make immediate sense, but there is actually some logic to it.

The original plan was to provide the subways as a convenient means of transfer for interchange passengers between two railways. This was a lengthy process involving negotiations between the companies, agreement on how the joint subway would be funded and maintained, approval of plans, appointment of contractors and construction of the works.

Because there were no through booking arrangements at the time that the subways were planned, it was considered expedient to include an ticket office within the design otherwise passengers passing into the subway would have no authority to enter the railway at the other end - rendering the subway unusable!

It is easy for us to ask why through bookings were not considered earlier, but who do we ask? I can understand that a new company may find it difficult to negotiate a definitive financial agreement with another company before it begins trading, and that may have been part of the reason. Certainly through bookings were not the norm on local services in central London, before the London Passenger Transport Conference that I have already mentioned.

Even reaching an agreement was not as easy as it seems. Several of the railway lines opened with flat fares and there was some juggling (upwards) with fares and other matters to ensure that through bookings were remunerative for all parties. Today, we might consider that to be price fixing and restrictive practice, in those days they just did it.

Aug 19, 2014 18:00:14 GMT theblackferret said:

...but allowing through ticketing is clearly the sole purpose for which they were opened:

I think I am probably misreading what you are saying here.

To clarify: Through tickets were sold at the street level ticket offices at the start of a journey and were valid for the entire journey over two or more railways. The sole purpose of the subway ticket offices was to provide a new ticket for passengers who were transferring to another railway and who did not have a ticket for the next part of the journey.

The introduction of through ticketing meant that passengers were able to obtain a ticket for the entire journey at the start and would therefore have no reason to re-book, thus rendering the intermediate subway offices obsolete.

Something like being overtaken by a change in technology.

Aug 19, 2014 18:00:14 GMT theblackferret said:

So the question now becomes, when they did they fall out of use at these 3 venues? Do the CSLR records tell us this?

There is not much information available that is any use. There is nothing that I have found in the records to confirm that the C&SLR subway offices opened, so it is hardly surprising that the facts surrounding their closure are vague.

The only notes that even suggest that Elephant & Castle was operational are two revenue payment to the BS&WR dated 9 Oct 1906, one of which is referenced 'local takings' suggesting that the subway office may have been in use before that date. Subsequently, all payments to BS&WR are recorded as a single figure.

Similarly, I cannot give a date for the closure of the Euston or Kings Cross offices.

There are references to the Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road subway ticket offices on the CLR closing after through ticketing was introduced. I can see nothing different about the C&SLR offices that would warrant their retention or what purpose would be served by keeping them open after through tickets were generally available for the routes that the subways served.

Maybe someone who knows more about that CLR can confirm what happened there as it may give a clue to when the C&SLR offices operated?

[theblackferret]

Thanks, CSLR, this now makes sense.

It's a little like the way the original CSLR was engineered in & out of its' original City Terminus at King William Street.

Built for the expedient of cable traction, which it was meant to be, and then they actually opened as an electric railway and moved on to Bank etc within a decade.

[CSLR]

Aug 19, 2014 22:20:22 GMT theblackferret said:

Thanks, CSLR, this now makes sense.

It's a little like the way the original CSLR was engineered in & out of its' original City Terminus at King William Street.

Built for the expedient of cable traction, which it was meant to be, and then they actually opened as an electric railway and moved on to Bank etc within a decade.

They were pioneers and they made some mistakes, but they also led the way for others