The famous Tube station that commuters cannot use
While every Londoner will reserve the right to complain about Transport for London’s services, it’s hard to deny the capital’s transport network is a remarkable feat of engineering and logistics. The world’s oldest underground railway network, London Underground incorporates 11 lines, 402 kilometres of track and 270 stations, and handles up to 5 million passengers per day. Across its buses, trams Overground services and more, TfL as a whole facilitates more than 31 million journeys daily.
As the network has evolved, lines have been extended and new stations constructed, but a few have fallen out of favour too. Right in the centre of the city, Charing Cross station today accommodates Northern and Bakerloo line services but it also functioned as the terminus for the fledgling Jubilee line when it opened in 1979.
As part of its extension the Jubilee line was rerouted and its Charing Cross terminus made redundant - it was last used by passengers in 1999.
Customers of tour guides Hidden London who explore the platforms some two decades after their closure will find the site has a curious Mary Celeste feel. The escalators are inoperational - prepare for a mini workout as you clamber up and down the steps - and the station completely devoid of life, but the setting feels deceptively modern.
That’s primarily because it is lined with present-day posters hawking holidays, books and the likes, but something looks a bit off. Nobody on our group had heard of of the film Satan Lives Downstairs and the actor’s name Hugh Jass was a bit suspect; I was also unfamiliar with the USTime airline, which advertised bargain flights to New York.
Those graphics are in fact props because today the setting is routinely used in film and TV productions, providing a realistic setting for London Underground scenes without disrupting regular services. TfL, we learned, has a dedicated filming production department which can earn TfL somewhere in the region of £450,000 a year - money that’s reinvested in the network.
It turned out we were touring a location that had featured in films such as Skyfall and Paddington Bear, and in TV shows like Sherlock and 24.
A screening of scenes filmed in situ was a highlight of our visit, but there’s much more to experience besides. Enthusiastic and impressively abreast of all things TfL, our guides Alex and Paul explained how this empty facility has served as a handy testing ground for potential Tube-platform enhancements and as an audition setting for the buskers who populate the network’s interlinking tunnels.
They provided us with an opportunity to delve deep within the innards of Charing Cross station too. A detour led our high-vis vest-clad battalion momentarily back into the throng of frazzled commuters (many clearly bewildered by our uniform safety attire and leisurely gait), before we stepped through some inconspicuous doors, the likes of which I must have rushed past hundreds of times before without a moment’s consideration.
They took us to immense ventilation chambers and above the Tube tracks, where we peered through air vents at a succession of trains underfoot, and then along a dark tunnel that extended to the foundations of Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth.
Like almost everybody, I ordinarily aim to transit through Tube stations as quickly as possible, but here was an opportunity to properly consider this marvel of construction - the Underground network opened in 1863 - and its immense contribution to the evolution of the city. The Hidden London portfolio of tours does a good job of bringing this overlooked heritage into the spotlight.
The Hidden London programme changes seasonally. The current Charing Cross tour will next run from November 24 to December 16. Children under 14 are not permitted; tickets cost £41.50; concessions £36.50. There is a £1.50 booking fee per transaction. The full range of Hidden London tours can be seen at ltmuseum.co.uk.
