Camden Highline - planning permission granted by Camden Council

[ijmad]

IanVisits reports:

Plans to convert a disused railway in North London into an elevated walkway for pedestrians have been given the go-ahead after Camden Council granted planning permission for the first section of the highline walkway.

Section one, from Camden Gardens, will be reached via a lift or stairs that take you through a tree canopy onto a gantry, offering unique views over the park and of the Victorian railway viaduct. The second phase, to come later will link the Highline to the eastern edge of Agar Estates, and the third phase will take it to Maiden Lane Estates.

Now planning permission is one thing, Network Rail presumably still own the viaduct and would still need to approve this project and negotiate lease terms.

But I wonder, if they were going to object, would they not have done so by now?

If NR do allow this, I think that not retaining the potential to quad track to Camden Road seems incredibly shortsighted. Not only is the NLL a busy freight route and could do with extra tracks, it could preclude other future developments like restoring services via Primrose Hill or extending the ELL further westwards. I know there's no plans to do these things now, but who knows where we'll be in 20-30 years? No-one foresaw how much more popular the Overground would become before it was launched in 2007.

Crazy to give this up isn't it?

There are other abandoned viaducts in London that are unlikely to ever see service again that would surely be better candidates.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

IanVisits reports:



Now planning permission is one thing, Network Rail presumably still own the viaduct and would still need to approve this project and negotiate lease terms.

But I wonder, if they were going to object, would they not have done so by now?

If NR do allow this, I think that not retaining the potential to quad track to Camden Road seems incredibly shortsighted. Not only is the NLL a busy freight route and could do with extra tracks, it could preclude other future developments like restoring services via Primrose Hill or extending the ELL further westwards. I know there's no plans to do these things now, but who knows where we'll be in 20-30 years? No-one foresaw how much more popular the Overground would become before it was launched in 2007.

Crazy to give this up isn't it?

There are other abandoned viaducts in London that are unlikely to ever see service again that would surely be better candidates.

NR would have objected if it needed protecting for the future. Given the four track commences a few hundred yards from Camden Rd not sure it would liberate that much extra capacity that really needs Gospel Oak and Primrose Hill lines to be separated and that wont happen as it was never configured this way.

 

[theking]

I read some where before that the proposers understood it would be "temporary" albeit a long time before network rail wanted it back but once it gets in I can never imagine network rail getting it back


Can you imagine the the uproar from the green brigade about taking an ecological gem away from the common folk.


Has many objections from residents and even the police think it will become a crime hotspot but the council know best.

 

[Railwaysceptic]

The disused part of the formation comes to a dead end a few yards west of Camden Road Station. There is a building in the way of any extension and the curve from the station towards Kentish Town West is such that only the southern part of the formation could be used. If there was any scheme to send the East London Line trains forward from Highbury & Islington to Camden Road, allowing them to terminate in platforms within the disused part of the formation would involve a new track layout and signalling in the Caledonian Road area which presumably would cost a fortune.

 

[Mikey C]

And there's no funding for this either.

Personally it seems a pointless scheme anyway, as unlike the New York highline which is a genuinely useful pedestrian high level walkway to get down the lower west of Manhattan, this goes nowhere particularly useful.

 

[mr_jrt]

It's a crazy stupid scheme, frankly. There are so many parks about in that bit of London already. It's only about 1km from Regent's Park!

People say there's a building in the way and all that jazz, but frankly a few buildings wouldn't stop a project from happening if it needed to. Widening the pinch point at Camden Road West Junction is the only real major bit of non-renewal/replacement engineering needed, and a few tens of metres of viaduct widening is small fish in the grand scheme of things. Then it's essentially just a pair of adjacent plain line double tracks with maybe a crossover or two.

The bigger issue is what you do about the freight to enable more passenger paths, as coming from Dalston freight would be on the wrong side for Primrose Hill. That said, the Hampstead tunnel has already been gauge-enhanced, and the freight clearly already has paths to get from Stratford to H&I, so staying in those paths along the NNL doesn't sound too big an ask. You still have access to the WCML yards via the city lines, and if anything, it's easier to reach Acton yard by staying on the NLL.

You then extend the East London line from H&I along to Willesden Junction via Primrose Hill (and perhaps all the way to Watford) over the existing DC infrastructure.

 

[cle]

I'm not sure if those ELL services will ever happen - even to Camden Road with four platforms there (let alone to QP/WJ) but I would have thought rehabilitating and keeping a third line and platform would be useful - for Stratford shuttles perhaps, or contingency/pathing/passing.

Does this scheme preclude that? Will there be access from the 'high line' to the platforms?