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Forgotten Tube Stations

MrSnowman

Abominable Snowman
Joined
Aug 5, 2002
Messages
869
I've just seen on a website that there are more than 30 forgotten tube stations underneath London. If memory serves me correctly, there was a legend about the ghost tube train from Cockfosters, and I'm assuming that this is one of them maybe?

I suppose it's a bit like the old village train stations that one sees in the Ealing films from the pre-Beeching days, the ones that just got absorbed into the new lines, or disappeared altogether. But some villages still have old unused platforms that the trains just whistle past, and I wonder if there are old tube stations down there which are just sealed off/not easily accessible, full of cobwebs and dust?
 
There was the one that Churchill used as shelter/command post during the Blitz. I remember Billy Connolly visiting it in one of his TV shows, the trains normally go past it without stopping. It even had Churchill's bathtub!
 
Mr Snowman...

...with a subject something so obviously attuned to the more nerdy you didn't think that no-one wouldn't have come up with a website. :D

Here at:
http://www.starfury.demon.co.uk/uground/

And here:
http://www.pendar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Tube/

I think they're great stuff.

There was a 60s or 70s horror movie about a colony of cannibals who'd evolved from passengers trapped in a tube train in an abandoned tunnel............
 
It's fascinating stuff. It must be the 'treasure hunting' instinct that makes these places so curious! From some of the descriptions on those sites, it'd be like taking a step back in time, all the old maps and adverts on the walls and what not. I wonder if it's not completely inconceivable (re. the cannibal film.. yes, I remember that as well, but can't think for the life of me what it was called. Was Robert Powell in it perchance?) that there could be communities living in some of these places, sort of like tramp colonies, or latter day troglodytes if you will?
 
Not seen any of the other films or series but I really liked the way "Quatermass and the Pit " was set in an underground station - Hobb's End . Hobb being a nickname for the devil, as mentioned ominously in the film. Really evocative . So familiar yet so scary. A masterstroke in my opinion.
 
Toronto has a lost subway station, Lower Bay:

http://www.toronto.com/feature/336/
"Dismissed as myth by most, a phantom subway station actually does exist. Directly beneath the Bay (Yorkville) Station there is a second, abandoned platform. "Bay Lower" is from the early days of the subway and has been locked up for more than 30 years.

Built in 1966, for the opening of the Bloor-Danforth line, Bay Lower was designed so that passenger trains could switch between the northbound/southbound Yonge-University line and the eastbound/westbound Bloor-Danforth line in mid-stream. Passengers didn't have to get off one train and onto another.

Great plan. But after just six months the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) gave up on the idea and Bay Lower was shut down. Since then, the station is only used by maintenance workers and the occasional movie crew (Mimic, Johnny Mnemonic) because, as one TTC worker said, "It's so grimy down there, it looks like New York."

Water drips from the rotting ceiling while dim, fluorescent lights flicker and buzz erratically. Metal scraps, broken wood and escalator innards are strewn about the platform--the place looks a bit like an abandoned coal mine.

Out-of-service trains still pass through Bay Lower in order to switch lines. It's also used for employee training and equipment testing. But the station is strictly off-limits to the public. Exploring the subway tunnels, in an effort to find this place, is an easy way to get electrocuted, run over by a train and/or arrested for trespassing. Don't even think about it."

And, it's supposed to be haunted.
 
do the tma do tours down there naitka?
 
I remember an American TV series in the early eighties about a colony of freaks/deformed people who lived in part of the subway system who were discovered by a female journalist who may or may not have been her from Terminator - anyone remember it who can remind me of the details?
 
Papa Lazarou said:
I remember an American TV series in the early eighties about a colony of freaks/deformed people who lived in part of the subway system who were discovered by a female journalist who may or may not have been her from Terminator -

Beauty and the Beast - Linda Hamilton, Ron Perlman (as the leonine beast, ugly but noble) and Roy Dotrice as a sort of mentor/wise man character. One of the dafter series of the 1980s.




More at:
http://www.tvtome.com/BeautyandtheBeast/
 
I've always found lost underground (and other) tunnels fascinating. You don't even have to go underground to spot them ...

Take a look at the high frontage of Cash Converters at the bottom of Kentish Town Road. You'll see the wonderful terracotta tiled frontage of the old tube station that used to be between Camden Town and Kentish Town stations.

I might be "mis-remembering" things but I'm pretty certain there used to be a tube station at Trafalgar Square.
 
There is, or there was a couple of years ago... the entrance is at the edge of the square, opposite St Martin-in-the-Fields.
 
There's always that feeling associated with being inside an abandoned or forgotten place. Something like knowing you probably shouldn't be there for some unknown reason but wanting to explore in the hope of finding a lost treasure, maybe a dark secret.
It's the known becoming the unknown and what should be something familiar suddenly turning into something strange. Is that really the echo of your voice or someone calling back to you from sixty years ago?
And as the subway is underground there's that connection to the grave and tombs that we all know and love.
 
In Tombraider 3, you are able to explore the lost underground station of Aldwich in London which, bizarely has a Masonic room in it.

"Reliquary" by Lincoln Preston has the half-Mbwun type creatures living in New Yorks abandoned underground system. Spooky
 
Ah! Brings back memories...
About ten years ago me and some other idiot art school chums would go on midnight excursions down subway tunnels in New York. This was before the days where we would be arrested immediately by federal security forces and reamed by Homeland Security!

Anyway, there is an abondoned City Hall station, near the very southern tip of Manhattan. One of the lines uses it to turn around, the West Side IRT, I think. It's beautiful- the whole thing is curved, and the walls are tiled barrel vaults with terra-cotta art depicting ships from the early days of New York City harbor. There are some cool globe light fixtures. Of course, it's all grimy and littered with refuse, but the impression is of faded civic elegance. Those were the days! We were sure asking for trouble running around down there.
 
I often look out for Down Street when going between Hyde Park Corner and Green Park on the Piccadilly Line. The platform has been bricked up apart from a few feet at one end, where there's a light that illuminates it briefly as you pass.
 
Timble said:
Beauty and the Beast - Linda Hamilton, Ron Perlman (as the leonine beast, ugly but noble) [/B]

That was Ron Perlman? Good Lord, I never realised until now. He's a top actor.
 
Stormkhan said:
I've always found lost underground (and other) tunnels fascinating. You don't even have to go underground to spot them ...

Take a look at the high frontage of Cash Converters at the bottom of Kentish Town Road. You'll see the wonderful terracotta tiled frontage of the old tube station that used to be between Camden Town and Kentish Town stations.

That's South Kentish Town station:
http://www.pendar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Tube/SouthKentishTown.html

Stormkhan said:
I might be "mis-remembering" things but I'm pretty certain there used to be a tube station at Trafalgar Square.

There were entrances there to the Charing Cross Station complex. There are abandoned platforms down there at the old terminus of the Jubilee line, prior to its extension. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point they replace some of Aldwych's use as a film set, when a more modern looking location is needed.
 
Recently opened after "extensive refurbishment". A great improvement I admit, at least they've kept the tiled ground level frontage.
I still think they gave plenty of time for the Ministry of Serendipity time to clear their desks ...
 
On the Central line between TCR and Holborn keep an eye out for the old deserted British Museum platform.
It is there you just have to look hard through the darkness.
Also next to the Coffee Shop at the end of New Oxford Street, just round the back of the Dominion Theatre is the entrance to Bainbridge Street station. I beleive there is also one on The Mall that is quite clearly visible.
 
Re: Mr Snowman...

Timble said:
There was a 60s or 70s horror movie about a colony of cannibals who'd evolved from passengers trapped in a tube train in an abandoned tunnel............
This film was called Deathline (I have the feeling it's been mentioned on the forum somewhere before). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068458/
I have it on video and it's very cool - proper 70s horror :)
 
TTC Diversion Gives Riders Chance To See Station Hidden For 40 Years

The weekend detours being conducted by the TTC [Toronto Transit Commission] until April may be a pain, but for history buffs or those curious about the hidden places in Toronto, it's a rare opportunity.

The diversion will take passengers through Lower Bay, a subway station that was briefly used by the TTC in 1966.

It was originally part of a third route that joined the Bloor-Danforth and Yonge-University lines together, making it possible for passengers to reach their destination downtown without having to transfer to another platform.

But it only lasted six months. What happened? The project was deemed a failure by the Red Rocket, partly because of passenger confusion about which train to take and partly because any breakdown would bring the entire system to a halt.

As a result, the station was boarded over and passengers haven't been able to access it in more than 40 years.

You still won't be able to get off there - the trains will run straight through without stopping - but you will be able to get a glimpse of a place that's long been featured in movies and TV shows.

Because it's a fully equipped subway station, Lower Bay has frequently been used for cinema scenes that would be too expensive or logistically impossible to recreate elsewhere. Production companies love it because it's the real thing, already built and is always empty.

And the TTC gets added revenue from renting it out. There's even said to be a pre-built set that makes it look like a New York City subway station.

http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_8140.aspx
 
In 1982 I visited Berlin.

At that time, of course, the Wall (or "Anti-Fascist Protective Rampart") was still up to prevent all of us envious right-wingers from storming East Berlin's fleshpots. ;)

It was possible to take the U-Bahn from West Berlin to East Berlin. This was fascinating to a Fortean as:

1. It was and is AFAIK the only tube line that crossed an international border, and;

2. The line passed through at least one U-Bahn station that had been closed since the Wall went up in November 1961.

It was eerie to see a dirty, decaying platform decorated with antiquated posters, inhabited only by sullen-looking Ossi border police.

maximus otter
 
I had no idea about these old tube stations! You mean there's a whole complex of tunnels and offices down there, all unused and abandoned? *shudder*
 
There used to be a station in Kemp Town, Brighton, that was closed a good few years ago (there is an industrial estate there now :( ).

The viaduct that ran part of the way there from Brighton station is long gone (check the arches on Lewes Road Sainsburys) but the tunnel that ran through the hill is still there...I can see the bricked-up end of it just behind a high security fence round the back of one of the industrial units.

Why oh why do you need that much security? Let me in! I wanna see the tunnel!

http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/stations/k/kemp_town/index.shtml

Still in Brighton, during the summer months you can take a fascinating tour of our lovely sewers! http://www.sussexhistory.com/sewers.htm
 
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