History
The station opened in 1860 as Kentish Town on the Hampstead Junction Railway from Camden Road to Old Oak Common Junction south of Willesden Junction. 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 Kentish Town West). 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 1926 to 1981, the station was not a passenger interchange: passenger trains left the Barking line at Tufnell Park and descended the gradient to Kentish Town 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 on the fourth-rail 660 volt DC system in 1916 by the LNWR: 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.
Read more about this topic: Gospel Oak Railway Station
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