King's Cross railway station
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- For the underground railway station in Sydney, Australia, see Kings Cross railway station, Sydney.
Location and environs
West of King's Cross are, in succession, St. Pancras, the new British Library building, and Euston station, all within a few minutes' walk. The present King's Cross Thameslink station is 5 minutes' walk to the east.
The new London terminus of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link will be within a re-constructed St Pancras. Eurostar trains (to France, not those on loan to GNER) are due to arrive there in 2007 with the completion of Stage Two of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link project.
Considerable regeneration effort has gone into the area in recent years, with the opening of new hotels and office space under construction.
Services
The station is served by routes from the north and east of the UK, including Cambridge, Peterborough, Hull, Doncaster, York, Leeds, Darlington, Durham, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness. King's Cross also incorporates the King's Cross St. Pancras Underground station, a major interchange station on the Underground network.Three train companies run services into the (overground) station:
| GNER | inter-city services on the East Coast Main Line |
| First Capital Connect | services to Cambridge and King's Lynn, local services to North London, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Peterborough and Cambridgeshire |
| Hull Trains | inter-city services to Hull via the East Coast Main Line |
A new company, Grand Central, plans to operate services on the ECML from King's Cross to Sunderland via Hartlepool from December 2006.
History
King's Cross was originally designed and built as the London hub of the Great Northern Railway and terminus of the East Coast Main Line. It was designed by Lewis Cubitt and constructed in two years from 1851 to 1852, on the site of a former fever and smallpox hospital. The main part of the station, which today includes platforms 1 to 8, was opened on 14 October, 1852. It replaced a temporary terminus at Maiden Lane that had opened on 8 August 1850.
The platforms have been reconfigured several times; originally there were only one arrival and one departure platform (today's platforms 1 and 8 respectively), with the space between used for carriage sidings. In later years as suburban traffic grew, space for additional platforms was added with considerably less grandeur; the secondary building now containing platforms 9-11 survives from that era. Since privatisation, express services into the station have been run by Great North Eastern Railway (GNER). The contract was renewed in 2005.
According to legend, King's Cross is built on the site of Boudica's final battle, or else her body is buried under one of the platforms there. Platforms 8, 9, and 10 have been suggested as possible sites.
The King's Cross fire of 1987, in which 31 people died, was at the adjacent King's Cross St. Pancras Underground station. A major redevelopment of this Underground station (partly influenced by the report issued after the fire) is currently in process. Phase One was completed in 2006; Phase Two is expected to be completed by 2011.
The original "King's Cross" was a monument to King George IV.
In 1972, a one-storey extension was constructed in front of the station. While the extension was intended to be temporary, more than thirty years later it still stands. Many consider the extension unattractive, not the least because it obscures the Grade I-listed facade of the original station. This extension is scheduled to be demolished, revealing once again the full glory of the Lewis Cubitt architecture, when a new ticket hall and concourse area is built on the station's western side.
On 26th June 2006 the station was evacuated and for two days mainline train services were diverted away from the station due to a major fire in an adjacent building [Guarian Unlimited: Fire disrupts King's Cross rail passengers].
Restoration
In 2005, a £400m restoration plan was announced by Network Rail, though it has yet to be approved by the London Borough of Camden. Planned is a thorough restoration of the arched roof of the station and the demolition of the 1972 addition, to be replaced by an open-air piazza. A semi-circular concourse (estimated completion date 2009) is planned for the space directly to the west of the station behind the Great Northern Hotel. It will complement the neighbouring St Pancras Station, and replace the current concourse, shopping area, and ECML ticket office. The land between the domestic main lines leading from the two stations will be redeveloped with nearly 2,000 new homes, 486,280 m² of offices, and new roads.
King's Cross in fiction
Harry Potter
King's Cross features in the Harry Potter books, by J. K. Rowling, as the starting point of the Hogwarts Express. The train uses a secret platform 9¾ located by passing through the barrier between platforms 9 and 10.
Unfortunately, platforms 9 and 10 are in a separate building from the main station; also, rather than being adjacent so that a barrier could be between them, they are separated by two intervening tracks. Rowling intended the location to be in the main part of the station, but misremembered the platform numbering. During an interview in 2001, she indicated that she had confused King's Cross with Euston. In fact platforms 9 and 10 at Euston are also separated by two intervening tracks, so either she had yet another station in mind or else she simply did not consider or did not remember the physical arrangement of consecutively numbered platforms there.
When the books were filmed, the station scenes took place within the main station, with platforms 4 and 5 renumbered 9 and 10. In the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets film, the exterior of the adjacent St. Pancras railway station was used, as its Gothic façade was considered more impressive than the real King's Cross. Within King's Cross, a cast-iron "Platform 9¾" sign has been erected on a wall of the station's suburban building containing the real platforms 9 and 10. Part of a luggage trolley has also been installed below the sign; whilst the near end is visible, the rest of the trolley seems to have disappeared into the wall.
Other fiction
- The Doctor Who novel Transit features King's Cross as one of the main hubs of an interplanetary transit system based on the London Underground.
- In children's television programmes featuring the puppet Roland Rat, Roland is said to live in the sewers beneath King's Cross. In Roland Rat: The Series this was realised as the high-tech "Ratcave", accessed from a hidden lift in a workman's shelter.
- The twelfth and final episode of the anime Victorian Romance Emma prominently features King's Cross Station in 1885 with great historical accuracy and detail.
- The Douglas Adams novel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul features the main character Dirk Gently going to the station in search of cigarettes; it turns out to be the location of a gateway to Valhalla.
- Some of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories have the great detective and Dr. Watson travelling by way of King's Cross. The following example is from The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter, Watson speaking first:
''"And what have you gained?"
''"A starting-point for our investigation." He hailed a cab. "King's Cross Station," said he.
''"We have a journey, then?"
"Yes; I think we must run down to Cambridge together. All the indications seem to me to point in that direction."
Spelling
King's Cross's name is seen spelt both with and without an apostrophe:
- King's Cross is the signage used in the Network Rail and London Underground stations and on the tube map.
- The official Network Rail webpage uses the "King's Cross" spelling [link].
- However, Kings Cross is used in the National Rail timetable database, as well as on other National Rail railway pages.
- Kings X or London KX are abbreviations seen in space-limited contexts.
External links
- [Station information] on King's Cross railway station from Network Rail.
- [Train times] and [station information] for King's Cross railway station from National Rail
- [Street map] and [aerial photo] of King's Cross railway station from Multimap.com.
- [King's Cross Central developer]
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| Blackfriars station>Blackfriars | Cannon Street | Charing Cross | City Thameslink | Clapham Junction | Euston Fenchurch Street | King's Cross | King's Cross Thameslink | Liverpool Street | London Bridge Marylebone | Moorgate | Paddington | St. Pancras | Victoria | Waterloo |
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