London King's Cross Railway Station - History

History

King's Cross was built as the London hub of the Great Northern Railway and terminus of the East Coast main line. It took its name from the King's Cross area of London, named after a monument to King George IV that was demolished in 1845.

Plans for the station were first made in December 1848 under the direction of George Turnbull, resident engineer for construction of the first 20 miles of the Great Northern Railway out of London. The detailed design was by Lewis Cubitt, and construction was in 1851–1852 on the site of a fever and smallpox hospital. The main part of the station, which today includes platforms 1 to 8, was opened on 14 October 1852. It replaced a temporary terminus at Maiden Lane that had opened on 7 August 1850.

The platforms have been reconfigured several times. Originally there was only one arrival and one departure platform (today's platforms 1 and 8 respectively), with the space between used for carriage sidings. As suburban traffic grew additional platforms were added with considerably less grandeur. The suburban station building now containing platforms 9–11 is from that era.

A new platform, numbered 0, was opened in 2010. To the east of platform 1, it created capacity for Network Rail to achieve a phased refurbishment of platforms 1-8 that includes new lifts to a new footbridge between the platforms. By 2013 the entire station will have been restored and transformed.

The station has changed ownership a number of times: firstly the Great Northern Railway (GNR) (1852-1923), then the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) (1923-1948), then following nationalisation British Railways (1948-1996), then upon privatisation Railtrack, then Network Rail.

A number of famous trains have been associated with King's Cross, such as the Flying Scotsman service to Edinburgh, and the Gresley A3 and later streamlined A4 Pacific steam locomotives, which handled express services from the 1930s until the early 1960s. The most famous of these was the Mallard, which holds the world speed record for steam locomotives.

When the railways were privatised in 1996, express services into the station were taken over by GNER. Though it successfully re-bid for the franchise in 2005, it was asked to surrender it in December 2006. National Express East Coast took over the franchise on 9 December 2007 after an interim period when GNER ran trains under a management contract. In July 2009, it was announced that National Express was no longer willing to finance the East Coast subsidiary and the franchise was taken back into public ownership, handing over to East Coast in November 2009.