Angel tube station

Angel tube station is a London Underground station in The Angel, Islington. It is on the Bank branch of the Northern Line, between Old Street and King's Cross St. Pancras stations. It is in Travelcard Zone 1.

Angel station was originally built by the City & South London Railway, and opened in 1901 as the northern terminus of a new extension from Moorgate. It is one of five stations on the London Underground named after a public house - in this case the once-famous Angel inn, which dates back to at least 1638. As with many other stations on the line, it was originally built with a single central island platform serving two tracks – an arrangement still seen at Clapham North and Clapham Common – and access from street level was via lifts. The most recent lifts were of the Otis "drum hoist" design used throughout the rest of the tube system, but were of about half the size. For years, the station regularly suffered from congestion and overcrowding which, especially with the island platform, constituted a major safety issue. Consequently, the station was comprehensively rebuilt, re-opening in 1992.

A new section of tunnel was excavated for a new northbound platform and the southbound platform was rebuilt to completely occupy the original 30-foot tunnel, explaining why it is larger than most deep-level platforms. The lifts and the ground level building originally on the corner of Torrens Street and City Road were closed and a new station entrance was opened around the corner in Islington High Street. Because of the distance of the new entrance from the platforms, and their depth, two flights of escalators were required aligned approximately at a right-angle. These include the longest escalators in Western Europe, with a vertical rise of 27.4 m (90 ft) and a length of 60 m (197 ft).

Between Angel and Old Street stations is the disused City Road tube station.

Future

Angel is a proposed station on the Chelsea-Hackney line project. It would be between King's Cross St Pancras and Essex Road. It was officially safeguarded as part of the route in 2007. [ [http://www.islington.gov.uk/Environment/Planning/MajorSchemes/Railway/457.asp Crossrail 2 ] ] [http://www.crossrail.co.uk/80256B090053AF4C/Files/chelsea-hackneyline/$FILE/chelsea+hackney+line+safeguarding+leaflet+february+2008.pdf] this would therefore provide an interchange between the two London Underground lines.

Trivia

* Angel station is the subject of "The Heart of the Angel", an award-winning 1989 BBC "40 minutes" documentary, by Molly Dineen. It shows the troubled life of the station a few years before the 1992 rebuilding, including the platform overcrowding and the lifts regularly breaking down.
* Angel station is one of the most popular stations in terms of merchandising. Fact|date=June 2007
* In March 2007, an unidentified man posted a video on YouTube of Peter Olenick skiing down the escalator (reportedly sometime in 2006), an action condemned by the Metropolitan Police and London Underground officials [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6501897.stm BBC News article on escalator skiiing incident] ] [ [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFqQOlYE4EE The YouTube Video] ] .
* The station contains the longest single escalator rise in western Europe [ [http://www.abandonedstations.org.uk/Angel_station.html Abandonedstations.org.uk] ] .

External links

* [http://photos.ltmcollection.org London's Transport Museum Photographic Archive]
**ltmcollection|04/9920104.jpg|Original Angel station building
**ltmcollection|68/995668.jpg|Station with new façade in 1924
**ltmcollection|ux/i00000ux.jpg|Station entrance, 1988
**ltmcollection|v0/i00000v0.jpg|The original island platform with tracks each side, 1988

Gallery

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References