Gospel Oak railway station
Encyclopedia
Gospel Oak railway station is in the borough of Camden
London Borough of Camden
In 1801, the civil parishes that form the modern borough were already developed and had a total population of 96,795. This continued to rise swiftly throughout the 19th century, as the district became built up; reaching 270,197 in the middle of the century...

 in north London. It is on the North London Line
North London Line
The North London Line is a railway line which passes through the inner suburbs of north London, England. Its route is a rough semicircle from the south west to the north east, avoiding central London. The line is owned and maintained by Network Rail...

 (NLL) and is also the western passenger terminus of the Gospel Oak to Barking Line
Gospel Oak to Barking line
The Gospel Oak – Barking Line is a railway line in north and east London which connects Gospel Oak in North London and Barking in East London as part of the London Overground network. It is sometimes known as the Goblin , although this is a nickname rather than an official title...

. The station is in Travelcard Zone 2
Travelcard Zone 2
Fare zone 2 is an inner zone of Transport for London's zonal fare system used for calculating the price of tickets for travel on the London Underground, London Overground, Docklands Light Railway and, since 2007, on National Rail services.-Background:...

, and is managed by London Overground
London Overground
London Overground is a suburban rail network in London and Hertfordshire. It has been operated by London Overground Rail Operations since 2007 as part of the National Rail network, under the franchise control and branding of Transport for London...

 which runs all passenger trains at the station.

History

The station opened in 1860 as Kentish Town on the Hampstead Junction Railway from to Old Oak Common Junction south of . It was renamed Gospel Oak in 1867 when a new station more appropriately named Kentish Town was opened about a kilometre south on the same line (that station is now ). Due to financial constraints the planned connection from the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway to Gospel Oak station was added on 4 June 1888, some twenty years after that railway opened, and then without a link to the North London Line due to other companies' opposition. The 1914 map below shows the line still a stub.

From the mid-1920s to 1981, the station was not a passenger interchange: passenger trains left the Barking line at and descended the gradient to station. In 1981 that passenger service from Barking was diverted from Kentish Town to Gospel Oak with the terminal platform rebuilt on the north side of the existing station.

The North London Line through Gospel Oak was electrified
Railway electrification in Great Britain
Railway electrification in Great Britain started towards of the 19th century. A great range of voltages have been used in the intervening period using both overhead lines and third rails, however the most common standard for mainline services is now 25 kV AC using overhead lines and the...

 on the fourth-rail 660 volt DC system in 1916 by the LNWR
London and North Western Railway
The London and North Western Railway was a British railway company between 1846 and 1922. It was created by the merger of three companies – the Grand Junction Railway, the London and Birmingham Railway and the Manchester and Birmingham Railway...

: in the 1970s that was changed to 750 volt DC third rail. In 1996, the line from Willesden through Gospel Oak to Camden was closed during conversion to 25kv AC overhead.

In Arts & Music

The two brick skew arch
Skew arch
A skew arch is a method of construction that enables an arch bridge to span an obstacle at some angle other than a right angle. This results in the faces of the arch not being perpendicular to its abutments and its plan view being a parallelogram, rather than the rectangle that is the plan view of...

 bridges by which the trains cross Gordon House Road are shown on the cover photograph of the 1997 music album Gospel Oak
Gospel Oak EP
Gospel Oak is an EP by Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor. The album sold 250,000 worldwide.The cover photograph of the album shows the two brick skew arch bridges adjacent to Gospel Oak railway station in north London, UK.-Track listing:...

 by Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor
Sinéad O'Connor
Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor is an Irish singer-songwriter. She rose to fame in the late 1980s with her debut album The Lion and the Cobra and achieved worldwide success in 1990 with a cover of the song "Nothing Compares 2 U"....

.

Design

The platforms are high above street level with only stairs giving access. The North London Line has two platforms and the Barking line has a short terminal platform north of which are two separate through freight tracks which join the NLL just west of the station. Any through services between and would require new platforms at Gospel Oak.

Services

To allow four-car trains to run on the London Overground network, the North London Line between this station and closed from February 2010 to 1 June 2010, for installing a new signalling system and for extending 30 platforms. Until May 2011, there was a reduced service with no services on Sundays while the upgrade work continued.

The typical off-peak service at the station in trains per hour is:
  • 4 eastbound to
  • 6 eastbound to
  • 2 westbound to Clapham Junction
    Clapham Junction railway station
    Clapham Junction railway station is near St John's Hill in the south-west of Battersea in the London Borough of Wandsworth. Although it is in Battersea, the area around the station is commonly identified as Clapham Junction....

  • 4 westbound to


London bus route C11 serves the site of the station.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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