Why are there abandoned Tube Stations?

[onedev]

Inspired by the BBC news article today (sorry can't link!) about the number of abandoned Tube Stations & was therefore wondering why there are so many abandoned in the first place? Anyone able to educate me? Also, is there a way to visit them? I'd love to take a tour if it were possible!

Can you still get that line called 'the Drain'? Probably not. It used to run between Bank and I think Waterloo.

I'd change from the Central Line and follow people into this forgotten bit of Bank station.

They were really old carriages - even older than the regular tube trains which badly needed an upgrade even then. It was only a couple of stops and you'd rattle along at quite alarming speed.

The Drain is the Waterloo & City Line and was previously part of British Rail, now taken over by TfL like the rest of the Tube. It's been refurbished so less claustrophobic. And new trains and a smooth ride.

Think it still doesn't run on Sundays nor after 8pm though.

This thread is really interesting... Even for a northerner such as me!

Fullfridge, especially interested in the necropolis line link. Different class tickets to travel even when dead!

That is interesting Mignonette!

Bloody Jon Welch- that was an old April Fools Joke and what a gullible sucker I am .

Will lamp him one if I see him

This thread is so interesting, started reading it this morning and now am itching to do some urbex.

I have a fascination with the tube and I I would love to explore the closed sections. I never realised that areas other than London would have had an underground network either.

Was it Mig I was fooled

Years ago DP did some filming at Craiglockhart asylum in Edinburgh - it must have been about 20 years ago. He says you could see the old equipment and even medications lying about. It was pretty creepy. It was used in WW1 -I think Siegfried Sassoon and other war poets were treated there.

I grew up in Greenwich and loved the old dockyards, wandering around the Pepys estate, the foot tunnel under the river and the old seaman's church abd graveyard where the playwright Marlowe was buried. There were these mad old naval buildings and houses before they built the dome and the area became gentrified.

Apparently it was an old April Fools Joke so not only am I gullible but i'm out of date too .

And the legend is that there are networks of tunnels from chisel hurst caves right through to underneath Blackheath. And there us a haunted underground lake beneath chisel hurst. That was the rumour anyway.

Also Edinburgh - there are hidden streets underneath the city. You can visit those.

What happened to the old Post Office tunnels that had the little electric trains to move sacks of mail around London between sorting offices?

Didn't they stop using them recently or was the plan abandoned?

I remember seeing pictures of an old tube station that was unearthed briefly last year with the old posters still on the walls. They closed the tunnels off again and left everything as it was.

This website containing photographs of abandoned buildings in Detroit are awesome. Huge structures, entire factories and hotels and railway stations abandoned. An entire massive city in complete decay.

I loved visiting the ghost town of Humberstone in the Atacama desert call that used to mine nitrates in the last century but abandoned in the 1960s. The town is well preserved it never rains there - ever. The nitrate processing plants are there too but extremely dangerous to visit as there are pits you can fall in and never be found.

I would like to explore the salt cave network underneath Winsford in Cheshire. It is huge and very protected as so many different companies use it to store data/files/stuff we are not allowed to know about.

We spent a half day exploring Argentea in NW Sardinia- an old abandoned silver mining camp near the sea. It was so beautiful with its faded grey, sienna and umber buildings built into the sides of the cliffs and mountains.

Fascinating thread

Mig I was fooled too!

Ubik, I've done the Edinburgh underground tour & it is great.

I found a book a while ago in the Library www.amazon.co.uk/London-Under-Subterranean-Guide/dp/0719552885 which really got my imagination going.

I hadn't actually realised Aldwych was now disused - and has been since 1994. Makes me realise how long it's been since I left!

Going back, information about visiting Imber on Salisbury Plain is here. Looks like there may be a MN meet up there sometime!

Someone sent me this link this morning to the 'most spectacular abandoned places in the world. There are some really good ones on there.

I was also reading an article in a magazine about Imber and the church there. Apparently it's been open over the Christmas holidays and they have a carol service which is so popular this year it was tickets booked in advance only.

That's a great link, thanks thanks

The old Eurostar platforms at Waterloo were used for a production of The Railway Children featuring a real train. It was huge fun - the audience sat on the platform, facing the railway track. Although personally I thought the effects they used to imply a train - the smoke and noise and the way the ground shook exactly the way it does if you are stood on a platform when a great big main line fast steam train thunders past - were more impressive than when they eventually brought on an actual train. We saw it with Mackenzie Crook as Perks the porter (the Bernard Cribbins character in the film).

It was always planned that the Eurostar platforms would be brought back into use for domestic rail, has just taken them a looong time to sort out.

I wanted to see that so much. But the tickets were nearly £50 for restricted view seats at the very end of the platform! £240 for the whole family

Yeah, this was back in the day before I was quite as skint as I am now!