Euston Station

Euston railway station (/ˈjuːstən/; also known as London Euston) is a central London railway terminus on Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden, managed by Network Rail. It is the southern terminus of the West Coast Main Line to Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Piccadilly, Edinburgh Waverley and Glasgow Central. It is also the mainline station for services to and through Birmingham New Street, and to Holyhead for connecting ferries to Dublin. Local suburban services from Euston are run by London Overground via the Watford DC Line which runs parallel to the WCML as far as Watford Junction. There is an escalator link from the concourse down to Euston tube station; Euston Square tube station is nearby. King's Cross and St Pancras railway stations are further down Euston Road.

Euston was the first intercity railway terminal in London, planned by George and Robert Stephenson. The original station was designed by Philip Hardwick and built by William Cubitt, having a distinctive arch over the station entrance. The station opened as the terminus of the London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) on 20 July 1837. Euston was expanded after the L&BR was amalgamated with other companies to form the London and North Western Railway, leading to the original sheds being replaced by the Great Hall in 1849. Capacity was increased throughout the 19th century from two platforms to fifteen. The station was controversially rebuilt in the mid-1960s, including the demolition of the Arch and the Great Hall, to accommodate the electrified West Coast Main Line, and the revamped station still attracts criticism over its architecture. Euston remains a significant station into the 21st century, and is proposed to be the London terminus of the future High Speed 2 project.

The station is the fifth-busiest station in Britain and the country's busiest inter-city passenger terminal, providing a gateway from London to the West Midlands, North West England, North Wales and Scotland. High-speed intercity services are run by Avanti West Coast and overnight services to Scotland are provided by the Caledonian Sleeper, while regional and commuter services are operated by London Northwestern Railway.

Name and location

The station is named after Euston Hall in Suffolk, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Grafton, the main landowners in the area during the mid-19th century.

Euston station is set back from Euston Square and Euston Road on the London Inner Ring Road, between Cardington Street and Eversholt Street in the London Borough of Camden. It is one of 19 stations in the country that are managed by Network Rail. As of 2016, it is the fifth-busiest station in Britain[b] and the busiest inter-city passenger terminal in the country. It is the sixth-busiest terminus in London by entries and exits. Euston bus station is directly in front of the main entrance.

History

Euston was the first inter-city railway station in London. It opened on 20 July 1837 as the terminus of the London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR). The old station building was demolished in the 1960s and replaced with the present building in the international modern style.

The site was chosen in 1831 by George and Robert Stephenson, engineers of the L&BR. The area was mostly farmland at the edge of the expanding city, and adjacent to the New Road (now Euston Road), which had caused urban development.

The station and railway have been owned by the L&BR (1837–1846), the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) (1846–1923), the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) (1923–1948), British Railways (1948–1994), Railtrack (1994–2002) and Network Rail (2002–present).

Old station

The original station was built by William Cubitt. The first plan was to construct a building near the Regent''s Canal in Islington that would provide a useful connection for London dock traffic before Robert Stephenson proposed an alternative site at Marble Arch. This was rejected by a provisional committee, and a proposal to end the line at Maiden Lane was rejected by the House of Lords in 1832. A terminus at Camden Town was announced by Stephenson the following year, receiving Royal Assent on 6 May, before an extension was approved in 1834, allowing the line to reach Euston Grove.

Initial services were three outward and inwards trains each, reaching Boxmoor in just over an hour. On 9 April 1838, these were extended to a temporary halt at Denbigh Hall, near Bletchley, providing a coach service to Rugby. The permanent link to Curzon Street station in Birmingham, opened on 17 September 1838, covering the 112 miles (180 km) in around ​5 1⁄4 hours.

The final gradient from Camden Town to Euston involved a crossing over the Regent''s Canal that required a gradient of over 1 in 68. Because steam trains at the time could not climb such an ascent, they were cable-hauled on the down line towards Camden until 1844, after which they used a pilot engine. The L&BR''s Act of Parliament prohibited the use of locomotives in the Euston area, following concerns of local residents about noise and smoke from locomotives toiling up the incline.

The station building was designed by the classically trained architect Philip Hardwick with a 200-foot-long (61 m) trainshed by structural engineer Charles Fox. It had two 420-foot-long (130 m) platforms, one each for departures and arrival. The main entrance portico, known as the Euston Arch was also designed by Hardwick, and was designed to symbolize the arrival of a major new transport system as well as being seen as "the gateway to the north". It was 72 feet (22 m) high and supported four 44 ft 2 in (13.46 m) by 8 ft 6 in (2.59 m) hollow Doric propylaeum columns made from Bramley Fall stone, the largest ever built. It was completed in May 1838 and cost £35,000 (now £3,175,000).

The first railway hotels in London were built in Euston. Two hotels designed by Hardwick opened in 1839, located either side of the Arch; the Victoria on the west had basic facilities while the Euston on the east was designed for first-class passengers.

The station grew rapidly as traffic increased. Its workload increased from handling 2,700 parcels a month in 1838 to 52,000 a month in 1841. By 1845, 140 people were working there and trains began to run late because of a lack of capacity. The following year, two new platforms (later 9 and 10) were constructed on vacant land to the west of the station that had been reserved for Great Western Railway services. The L&BR amalgamated with the Manchester & Birmingham Railway and the Grand Junction Railway in 1846 to form the LNWR, with the company headquarters at Euston. This required a new block of offices to be built between the Arch and the platforms.

The station's facilities were greatly expanded with the opening of the Great Hall on 27 May 1849, which replaced the original sheds. It was designed by Hardwick''s son Philip Charles Hardwick in classical style and was 125 ft (38 m) long, 61 ft (19 m) wide and 62 ft (19 m) high, with a coffered ceiling and a sweeping double flight of stairs leading to offices at its northern end. Architectural sculptor John Thomas contributed eight allegorical statues representing the cities served by the line. The station stood on Drummond Street, further back from Euston Road than the front of the modern complex; Drummond Street now terminates at the side of the station but then ran across its front. A short road called Euston Grove ran from Euston Square towards the arch.

An additional bay platform (later platform 7) opened in 1863 and was used for local services to Kensington (Addison Road). The station gained two new platforms (1 and 2) in 1873 along with a separate entrance for cabs from Seymour Street. At the same time, the station roof was raised by 6 feet (1.8 m) to accommodate smoke from the engines more easily.

The continued growth of long-distance railway traffic led to a major expansion along the station's west side starting in 1887. The work involved rerouting Cardington Street over part of the burial ground (later St James''s Gardens) of St James''s Church, Piccadilly, which was located some way from the church. To avoid public outcry, the remains were reinterred at St Pancras Cemetery. Two extra platforms (4 and 5) opened in 1891, and four further departure platforms (now platforms 12–15) opened on 1 July 1892, bringing the total to fifteen, along with a separate booking office on Drummond Street.

The line between Euston and Camden was doubled between 1901 and 1906. A new booking hall opened in 1914, constructed on part of the cab yard. The Great Hall was fully redecorated and refurbished between 1915 and 1916, and again in 1927. The station's ownership was transferred to the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) in the 1923 grouping.

Apart from the lodges on Euston Road and statues now on the forecourt, few relics of the old station survive. The National Railway Museum''s collection at York includes Edward Hodges Baily''s statue of George Stephenson, both from the Great Hall; the entrance gates; and an 1846 turntable discovered during demolition.

London, Midland and Scottish Railway redevelopment

By the 1930s Euston had become congested, and the LMS considered rebuilding it. In 1931 it was reported that a site for a new station was being sought, with the most likely option being behind the existing station in the direction of Camden Town. The LMS announced in 1935 that the station (including the hotel and offices) would be rebuilt using a government loan guarantee.

In 1937 it appointed the architect Percy Thomas to produce designs. He proposed a new American-inspired station that would involve removing or resiting the arch and included office frontages along Euston Road and a helicopter pad on the roof. The redevelopment work began on 12 July 1938, when 100,000 long tons (100,000 tonnes) of limestone was extracted for the new building and some new flats constructed to rehouse people displaced by the works. The project was then shelved indefinitely because of World War II.

The station was damaged several times during the Blitz in 1940. Part of the Great Hall''s roof was destroyed, and a bomb landed between platforms 2 and 3, destroying offices and part of the hotel.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Euston railway station" and modified on 20 April 2020 under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license.