History
In 1866 the Whetstone Park Company, promoters of the Whetstone Park Estate, reached an agreement with the Great Northern Railway (GNR) to construct a new station to serve the development. The station - to be known as Whetstone - would open once 25 houses were complete, although the GNR built the two station platforms immediately (they were completed by June 1866).
Contact between the developer and the GNR took place in January 1869, then again in summer 1871 by which time the development had been renamed to the Oakleigh Park Estate, but it wasn't until January 1873 that the developer was able to inform the GNR that the 25th house was complete. Accordingly, the GNR authorised the station to be completed, now to be known as Oakleigh Park. It opened to passenger traffic on 1 December 1873. The estate office was situated in Chandos Avenue; a contemporaneous sign advertising "Oakleigh Park on main line. Detached residences - gravel soil - open country - large plots - moderate prices" is displayed in the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden.
As part of works to increase the number of tracks from two to four, the station was completely rebuilt in 1891/2 with two island platforms, a new footbridge and booking office. The 1873 station footbridge at the extreme north end of the station was retained as a public footpath, but with the stairs to the station removed.
The station remained largely unchanged until around 1975, when alterations were made in readiness for electrification. By the 1930s the station had gained the suffix For East Barnet, which remained until at least the 1970s. The first holes were bored near the station for the overhead powerline in order to electrify the East Coast Mainline.
Read more about this topic: Oakleigh Park Railway Station
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)