Embankment (London Underground)

Entrance to Embankment Station

Embankment is an underground station on the London Underground in the Charing Cross district of the City of Westminster , which has had several different names throughout its history. It is located at the southern end of Charing Cross station , in Travelcard tariff zone 1. It is served by the Circle Line , the District Line , the Northern Line and the Bakerloo Line . It has two entrances, one on Villiers Street and one on Victoria Embankment . The latter is under the Hungerford Bridge , which is a walk to the south bank of the Thames . There are two sections of the station, an upper one for paving stones and a lower one for tube tracks . In 2014, 19.66 million passengers used the station.

history

Upper part (lower pavement)

Cross-section of the Victoria Embankment at Charing Cross station with paving stones

The station opened on May 30, 1870, when the Metropolitan District Railway (MDR, predecessor of the District Line) extended its route from Westminster to Blackfriars . The construction of the new section of the MDR was done using the open construction method , together with the construction of the Victoria Embankment. Due to its proximity to Charing Cross station on the South Eastern Railway , the subway station was initially called Charing Cross .

In South Kensington the MDR had a connection to the route of the Metropolitan Railway (MR, later Metropolitan Line ). Although both companies competed, their trains ran on the other company's tracks. This Inner Circle was a kind of forerunner of the Circle Line . From 1872, MDR and MR offered further ring route services ( Middle Circle and Outer Circle ). In 1900 the Middle Circle was abandoned, eight years later the Outer Circle as well . Electrical operation began on July 1, 1905. In 1949, the Inner Circle operated by the Metropolitan Line was given its own designation as the Circle Line.

Lower part (tube railway)

Northern Line platform

In 1897, the MDR received parliamentary approval for the construction of a tube railway between Gloucester Road and Mansion House . The new route should be a fast connection and relieve the existing route. The only stopover was planned at Charing Cross, 19 meters lower than the paved railway. Corresponding construction work was not carried out. The subsequent takeover of the MDR by the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) and the re-signaling and electrification of the MDR routes between 1903 and 1905 meant that the congestion could be remedied without the construction of a tube railway. The UERL finally dropped the project in 1908.

The Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (BS&WR, today's Bakerloo Line ) opened a tube railway between Baker Street and Waterloo on March 10, 1906 . Their platforms were below those of the MDR, arranged at right angles to them. Although the BS & WR station was connected to the MDR station by a pedestrian tunnel, it was given the different name Embankment .

On April 6, 1914, the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (CCE & HR, now part of the Northern Line ) opened a short extension south of their previous terminus at Charing Cross . The extension was created to enable a better link between BS&WR and CCE & HR. Both lines were owned by the UERL, which operated two separate and unconnected stations north of the station - Trafalgar Square on the BS&WR and Charing Cross on the CCE & HR (now both part of a common Charing Cross station). The extension of the CCE & HR was carried out as a single-track tunnel, with a turning loop under the Thames ; a platform was built on the east side of the Wendeschleife. Escalators were installed between the two tube railway stations and the Unterpflaster station. This reduced the transfer time from three minutes and 15 seconds to one minute and 45 seconds.

Sir John Betjeman described the newly constructed station building as "the most delightful of all Edwardian and Georgian neo-Renaissance stations". To make the confusion perfect, the low-lying portion of the station was named Charing Cross (Embankment) while the sub-paving railway station kept the Charing Cross name. On May 9, 1915, the situation was rectified by renaming all parts of the station to Charing Cross . The CCE & HR station further north was renamed Strand on the same day (which in turn resulted in the renaming of a nearby station on the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway from Strand to Aldwych ).

In the 1920s, the CCE & HR was extended south via Waterloo to Kennington , where it was connected to the City and South London Railway . The turning loop under the river could be omitted (although today's northbound platform of the Northern Line follows its course), instead two new tunnels were built. To this day, the northern line's southbound platform is the only one that is not connected to the rest of the city via pedestrian tunnels. The new extension was opened on September 13, 1926. The turning loop still exists today, but was separated with a wall in 1926.

During the Sudeten Crisis in September 1938, when war seemed imminent, the Bakerloo Line and Northern Line tunnels at Embankment were temporarily sealed with a concrete wall to protect them from possible flood damage from aerial bombs. Only a little over a week after the end of the crisis, the wall was removed again. When the Second World War broke out in September 1939 , walls again blocked the tunnels until electrically operated flood gates could be installed in December 1939 .

On August 4, 1974 it was renamed again, this time in Charing Cross Embankment . Since September 12, 1976, the station has been called Embankment again . The reason was the merger of the stations Trafalgar Square and Strand to Charing Cross .

Web links

Commons : Embankment (London Underground) - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ COUNTS - 2014 - annual entries & exits. (PDF, 44 kB) (No longer available online.) Transport for London, 2015, archived from the original on February 21, 2016 ; accessed on December 29, 2017 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Cyril M. Harris: What's in a name? Capital Transport, London 2006, ISBN 1-85414-241-0 , pp. 25 .
^ Mike Horne: The District Line . Capital Transport, London 2006, ISBN 1-85414-292-5 , pp. 15 .
^ Anthony Badsey-Ellis: London's Lost Tube Schemes . Capital Transport, London 2005, ISBN 1-85414-293-3 , pp. 70-71 .
^ Badsey-Ellis: London's Lost Tube Schemes . P. 220.
^ Badsey-Ellis: London's Lost Tube Schemes . P. 271.
^ Christian Wolmar : The Subterranean Railway: How the London Underground Was Built and How It Changed the City Forever . Atlantic Books, London 2005, ISBN 1-84354-023-1 , pp. 206 .
↑ Wolmar: The Subterranean Railway . Pp. 206-207.
^ ^A ^b Harris: What's in a name? , P. 17.
^ John R. Day, John Reed: The Story of London's Underground . Capital Transport, London 2008, ISBN 1-85414-316-6 , pp. 97 .
^ District Line. Clive's Underground Line Guides, accessed July 28, 2014 .
↑ Mike Horne: The Bakerloo Line . Capital Transport, London 2001, ISBN 1-85414-248-8 , pp. 52 .
^ Bakerloo Line. Clive's Underground Line Guides, accessed July 28, 2014 .