Camden Town Junction

[jimini]

Morning all,

I seem to have mislaid the diagram of Camden Town Junction layout on my PC (probably deleted in it in error knowing me?!). If anyone could point me in the direction of a link to replace said file, it'd be much appreciated.

Many thanks in advance,

Jim.

[Deleted]

What sort of diagram do you need? Tubeprune has a very nicely drawn diagram of Camden Town (E) on his website.

[jimini]

Pardon my lack of technical knowledge (and therefore my inability to describe it properly!) but the one I'm after shows how each branch meets and separates either side of the junction without any conflict. Hope that makes vague sense?!

[Deleted]

www.trainweb.org/tubeprune/Camden%20Town-lct5-10.gif

[Phil]

Or there's this from 1927. Good diagram but one serious error which I'll leave the clever ones to spot...

[Chris M]

The Charing X and Moorgate labels are the wrong way round?

[Phil]

Yup!!

[amershamsi]

it does seem odd that they braided it so that you get to/from edgware and to/from high barnet/mill hill east, rather than having one half of the junction (the southbound half) to the north of Camden Town, so you could have: To Edgware, To Charing Cross, To High Barnet/Mill Hill East and To Bank platforms.

Simon

[compsci]

Is it the case that Mornington Crescent is actually to the East rather than the West of the Bank branch?

[Chris M]

Yes.

[Deleted]

aaah now THAT explains why I always thought the tunnels were suspiciously twisty round Camden.

[Deleted]

amershamsi said:

it does seem odd that they braided it so that you get to/from edgware and to/from high barnet/mill hill east, rather than having one half of the junction (the southbound half) to the north of Camden Town, so you could have: To Edgware, To Charing Cross, To High Barnet/Mill Hill East and To Bank platforms.

Simon

Indeed, I hope one day the station is rebuilt with the southbound platforms in the logical place.

[Harsig]

biolizard said:

amershamsi said:

it does seem odd that they braided it so that you get to/from edgware and to/from high barnet/mill hill east, rather than having one half of the junction (the southbound half) to the north of Camden Town, so you could have: To Edgware, To Charing Cross, To High Barnet/Mill Hill East and To Bank platforms.

Simon

Indeed, I hope one day the station is rebuilt with the southbound platforms in the logical place.

The Universe will end first. Quite simply the junction is where it is and there it will stay. Putting the southbound platforms south of the junction will mean they are too far away from the northbound platforms to be realistically considered as being the same station. Indeed they would be close to Mornington Crescent station.

[Deleted]

The Y shaped road layout at Camden Town probably had something to do with the platform layout there, and it wouldn't be realistically possible to rebuild the station with seperate platforms for Charing X and Bank branches. The station will hopefully recieve a major rebuild soon, with the present narrow passageways being replaced by a Canary Wharf style "hole in ground" concourse in between the two sets of platforms. This should make changing trains easier, and also provide more escalator access to the platforms. However, I think are a few planning issues getting in the way of the project at the moment.

[Deleted]

The platform layout at Camden Town goes back to the building of the Hampstead Tube (as it was orginally called). There were two southbound platforms so that, if trains arrived at the same time on both branches, the one timetabled to follow the other could wait at a platform rather than in tunnel. For the same reason, the pre-Jubilee Bakerloo Baker Street had two southbound platforms.

Before the building of the Camden Town junctions, the City & South London terminated at Euston with the tunnels facing west. To get this line to join the Hampstead line south of Camden Town with reasonable curvature, it had to be taken to the west of Mornington Crescent and then back east to the new junctions.

Early versions of the Beck Underground map showed this. The book "Mr Beck's Underground Map" shows a number of doodles that Beck made to try to show this section more clearly. An additional complication was that, for many years, Edgware branch trains did not stop at Mornington Cres and he wanted to try to show this too!

[Deleted]

The really strange thing about Camden Town is that not only did the CCE&HR build two southbound platforms, to allow trains converging at the junction to wait appropriately, they also built two northbound platforms as well.

I wonder why they thought that two northbound platforms would be desirable.

[q8]

theonekea said:

The really strange thing about Camden Town is that not only did the CCE&HR build two southbound platforms, to allow trains converging at the junction to wait appropriately, they also built two northbound platforms as well.

I wonder why they thought that two northbound platforms would be desirable.

Possibly because ]I beleive] there were reversing facilities at Camden Town prior to the rebuilding

[Phil]

Wasn't one N/B platfrom (ant the corresponding S/B) there already? If so, they would have had to put the N/B junction in a different place from the S/B to avoid conficting mov'ts, and this would have then prevented reversing movements. Or have I missed summat?




Pah - Q8 beat me to it!!

[q8]

BTW. Which signal is it at Camden Town on the northbound is it that you can stop at it and be on a down gradient but you roll BACKWARDS if you release the brakes.?

[mowat]

I think that the Nothern shuld split into two services ;D 1 Edgware to Morden (via Bank) 2 High Barnet to Kennington (via Charing Cross) 3 Finchley Central to Mill Hill East, this woud get rid of the 12? different services (e.g Morden to Mill Hill East via Bank) that run at the moment.

[Phil]

But isn't the idea to run trains to where people want to go?

If split in this way (and it's been tried before) the amount of passenger movement at Camden/ Euston as people change branches is ridiculous. Your solution is 'management led' not customer passenger- led

[Deleted]

q8 said:

theonekea said:

The really strange thing about Camden Town is that not only did the CCE&HR build two southbound platforms, to allow trains converging at the junction to wait appropriately, they also built two northbound platforms as well.

I wonder why they thought that two northbound platforms would be desirable.

Possibly because ]I beleive] there were reversing facilities at Camden Town prior to the rebuilding

If there were, then I've never heard of any!

The layout of Camden Town CCE&HR before the expansion of the junction can be seen in various places, and shows a standard flying junction south of the station, with the Edgware and Archway branches each having separate pairs of platforms.

[mowat]

rbruce1314 said:

But isn't the idea to run trains to where people want to go?

If split in this way (and it's been tried before) the amount of passenger movement at Camden/ Euston as people change branches is ridiculous. Your solution is 'management led' not customer passenger- led

;D ;D ;D ;D

[frankoids]

q8 said:

BTW. Which signal is it at Camden Town on the northbound is it that you can stop at it and be on a down gradient but you roll BACKWARDS if you release the brakes.?

E11a Bank Branch Northbound but as long as you remember to place TBC in full motoring before releasing brakes you're OK

[q8]

frankoids said:

q8 said:

BTW. Which signal is it at Camden Town on the northbound is it that you can stop at it and be on a down gradient but you roll BACKWARDS if you release the brakes.?

E11a Bank Branch Northbound but as long as you remember to place TBC in full motoring before releasing brakes you're OK

Thank you very much indeed. I knew there was one but forgot exactly which.

[Deleted]

mowat said:

I think that the Nothern shuld split into two services ;D 1 Edgware to Morden (via Bank) 2 High Barnet to Kennington (via Charing Cross) 3 Finchley Central to Mill Hill East, this woud get rid of the 12? different services (e.g Morden to Mill Hill East via Bank) that run at the moment.

Plus (as was said once when I brought this up before), it's obvious that the congestion through passengers changing for the different branches at Camden Town will be insane! Thus, until the station is rebuilt nothing will happen.

As for when it is rebuilt? Well, we shall see.

[Deleted]

I think that once Camden Town is rebuilt, then the line will be split. But in the mean time, its extremely unlikely to be split due to passenger flow limitations at Camden Town.

[Deleted]

theonekea said:

The really strange thing about Camden Town is that not only did the CCE&HR build two southbound platforms, to allow trains converging at the junction to wait appropriately, they also built two northbound platforms as well.

I wonder why they thought that two northbound platforms would be desirable.

Presumably it was to have a reasonably compact station. At the time when the lines were built, the tunnels had to follow roads to avoid making payments to property owners. A single northbound platform would therefore have had to be placed south of the junction, some distance from the two southbound platforms.

[Deleted]

stephenk said:

I think that once Camden Town is rebuilt, then the line will be split. But in the mean time, its extremely unlikely to be split due to passenger flow limitations at Camden Town.

How about the Northern and Southern lines? ;D

[Deleted]

theonekea said:

q8 said:

Possibly because ]I beleive] there were reversing facilities at Camden Town prior to the rebuilding

If there were, then I've never heard of any!

The layout of Camden Town CCE&HR before the expansion of the junction can be seen in various places, and shows a standard flying junction south of the station, with the Edgware and Archway branches each having separate pairs of platforms.

Is it just me, or is anyone else struggling with the idea of a "flying junction" underground?