Liverpool Street station

Liverpool Street station, also called London Liverpool Street, is a major railway station and connected London Underground station in the north eastern corner of the City of London in England.

It is one of the busiest stations in the United Kingdom, with 123 million visitors each year; and one of seventeen managed by Network Rail. The main line station serves as the terminus of suburban services from east London and longer distance services from the East of England. The station has exits to Bishopsgate, Liverpool Street and the Broadgate development. It is in Travelcard Zone 1.

National Rail

Destinations

Liverpool Street serves destinations in the East of England including Stansted Airport, Cambridge, Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth, Norwich, Ipswich, Chelmsford, Colchester, Braintree, Southend on Sea and the port of Harwich, as well as many suburban stations in north-eastern London, Essex and Hertfordshire. It is one of the busiest commuter stations in London. A daily express train to Harwich connects with the ferry from Harwich to Hoek van Holland, forming the Dutchflyer service. Trains from Liverpool Street do not go to Liverpool. For that city, Euston is the London terminus.

Almost all passenger services from Liverpool Street are operated by 'one'. one operate local and suburban services on the Great Eastern and West Anglia lines, express services to Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich as well as local services in the East Anglia region. These routes are collectively known as the Greater Anglia network.

Two weekday evening services (the 22:58 and 23:58 semi-fast to Shoeburyness) are operated by c2c. All other c2c services depart from Fenchurch Street station, the station is also used by c2c when Fenchurch Street is closed for engineering work. Both one and c2c are owned by National Express Group.

History

The station was first opened to traffic on 2 February 1874 by the Great Eastern Railway and was completely operational from 1 November 1875. From this date the original terminal: Bishopsgate railway station, was closed to passengers. It reopened as a goods station in 1881 but was destroyed by fire on 5 December 1964. The site is now being redeveloped as part of the extension of London Underground's East London line.

The new station was designed by the Great Eastern's chief engineer, Edward Wilson and was built on a site which had been occupied by Bethlem Royal Hospital from the 13th century to the 17th century. A Corporation of London plaque commemorating the station's construction hangs on the wall of the adjoining former Great Eastern Hotel, which was designed by Charles Barry (junior) (son of Sir Charles Barry) and his brother Edward Middleton Barry. The station was named after the street on which it stands, which in turn was named in honour of British Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, having been built as part of an extension of the City of London towards the end of his term in office.

The construction of the station was due to the desire of the company to gain a terminal closer to the city than the one opened by the predecessor Eastern Counties Railway, at Shoreditch, that had opened on 1 July 1840. This station was renamed "Bishopsgate" in 1846. The construction proved extremely expensive due to the cost of acquiring property and many people were displaced due to the large scale demolitions. The desire to physically link the GER lines to those of the sub-surface Metropolitan Railway, a link seldom used and relatively soon abandoned, also meant that the GER's lines had to drop down to below ground level from the existing viaducts east of Bishopsgate. This means that to this day there are considerable gradients leading out of the station. Lord Salisbury, who was chairman of the Great Eastern in 1870, said that the Liverpool Street extension was "one of the greatest mistakes ever committed in connection with a railway."

The station was the first place in London to be hit by German Gotha bomber aircraft during World War I. The May 1917 bombing, which saw the station take a direct hit from 1,000 pounds of bombs, killed 162 people. During World War II a bomb which landed in Bishopsgate completely shattered the glass roofing.

The station was extensively modified between 1985 and 1992, including bringing all the platforms in the main shed up to the same end point and constructing a new underground booking office, but its facade, Victorian cast-iron pillars and the memorial for Great Eastern Railway employees that died in the Great War were retained. The redevelopment coincided with the closure and demolition of neighbouring Broad Street station and the construction of the Broadgate development in its place. Liverpool Street was officially re-opened by HM The Queen in 1991. It was also at this time that the giant timetable board, which is suspended above the station concourse, was fitted at great expense. However due to technical difficulties there was a long delay after the official opening before it became operational. Today it is one of the last remaining mechanical "flapper board" display boards at a UK railway station, and certainly the biggest - though this too is due to be replaced by electronic boards in 2007.

The Great Eastern Hotel was extensively refurbished between 1997 and 1999 re-opening as a boutique hotel. The Hotel incorporates three restaurants "Aurora" and "Fishmarket" cater to the higher price expense account business lunch market while "Terminus" is a mid-range brasserie to service the City workers. The complex includes a Sushi Bar and two pubs.

The station has been twinned with Amsterdam Centraal Station since 1993, and there is a plaque marking this fact on the station concourse close to the main entrance to the Underground.

London Underground

The connected London Underground station has sub-surface platforms (opened by the Metropolitan Railway as "Bishopsgate" on 12 July 1875) on the Circle, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines. The Metropolitan had in fact served mainline platforms of the GER station from 1 February 1875, this through link having only a short operational life. It was this desire to link the two systems that had helped determine the sub-surface construction of GER's new terminal station at Liverpool Street. The station was renamed as Liverpool Street from 1 November 1909.

The deep-level Central Line platforms opened on July 28, 1912, at which time it was the eastern end of what was then known as the Central London Railway. The Central line was extended eastwards, as part of the war delayed London Passenger Transport Board's "New Works Programme 1935 - 1940", on 4 December 1946.

Notable events

In 1993 a huge IRA bomb in Bishopsgate wrecked the station and on the 7th of July, 2005, terrorists exploded a bomb on a London Underground train shortly after it left Liverpool Street towards Aldgate on the Circle Line. Seven people were killed in the incident. For details see 7 July 2005 London bombings.

Future developments

Current plans for the Crossrail service would see a new station at Liverpool Street with full mainline and underground connections.

In fiction

Liverpool Street Station is one of the 4 railway stations on the London version of the Monopoly game.

In the years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, fictional "docu-drama" portrayals of how a terrorist organisation might seek to attack London have frequently chosen Liverpool Street station as the specific target. London under attack, first shown by the BBC's Panorama programme in May 2004 [2], saw a lorry containing chlorine gas deliberately exploded at the junction of Shoreditch High Street and Commercial Street, just north of Liverpool Street station. In the programme the gas cloud hung over the station, and eventually killed 3000 people. In a second programme, Dirty War, also produced by the BBC and first shown in October 2004, a suicide terrorist detonates a "dirty bomb" just outside the station, killing 200 people and rendering the area uninhabitable for 30 years. The programmers said that their programmes were backed by research and intended to be realistic imaginings. They said they chose Liverpool Street because of its unique position, on the border between the City of London and the East End. The British Government denounced both programmes as "alarmist and irresponsible" [3]. The programmes turned out to have a degree of truth following the attacks of 7 July 2005 (see "London Underground" above).

Andy McNab's fictional novel Dark Winter also makes the station the target of a similar attack.

A CIA safehouse features above the entrance to Liverpool Street Underground station in the intentionally fictional movie version of Mission Impossible. A meeting was set in the mainline station in the same film.

It is also in the movie Stormbreaker based on the book by Anthony Horowitz when Alex Rider runs through the station to find a photo booth where he is then transported to MI6.

See also

• Broad Street railway station

Wikipedia information about Liverpool Street station This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Liverpool Street station". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.