Would a single London terminus be feasible?

[USRailFan]

Most other European countries' capitals have been able to concentrate the railway traffic in and out of the city on one single terminus - at least for long distance traffic. Would something similar (perhaps a merged St Pancras/Kings Cross?) be feasible in the UK? Was something like this ever contemplated in BR days?

 

[Mcr Warrior]

No. London's too big a capital city.

Next question/topic please!

 

[hexagon789]

Most other European countries' capitals have been able to concentrate the railway traffic in and out of the city on one single terminus - at least for long distance traffic. Would something similar (perhaps a merged St Pancras/Kings Cross?) be feasible in the UK? Was something like this ever contemplated in BR days?

The closest approximate I can think of is Glasgow having 4 termini merged into two new-build ones, what actually happened was services were simply concentrated on 2 of the existing stations.

For London, think of how big Edinburgh Waverley is and then think much bigger, surely the size of station required to handle such traffic would be utterly colossal - would the combined KGX/STP be large enough?

Even if you say perhaps took only the Paddington, King's Cross, St Pancras and Liverpool Street services and left the largely suburban operations of Waterloo etc to a separate southerly station - that still needs some serious platform capacity.

No. London's too big a capital city.

Next question/topic please!

I would tend to agree there!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I wouldn't say the city is too big - look at Berlin Hbf. It's just that you couldn't do it without a lot of knocking stuff down.

 

[Islineclear3_1]

London is too big and densely populated and the high concentration of traffic and complexities of routes would render a single terminus a disaster IMHO

 

[HSTEd]

In an engineering sense, yes.

But without the centre of London being reduced to rubble, there is no political will for the mass demolitions required to build such a thing.

 

[SargeNpton]

Most other European countries' capitals have been able to concentrate the railway traffic in and out of the city on one single terminus - at least for long distance traffic. Would something similar (perhaps a merged St Pancras/Kings Cross?) be feasible in the UK? Was something like this ever contemplated in BR days?

You've never been to Paris then.

 

[hexagon789]

I wouldn't say the city is too big - look at Berlin Hbf. It's just that you couldn't do it without a lot of knocking stuff down.

It would be interesting to see a figure comparing the number of trains Berlin Hbf receives in a 24 hr period compared to that received by all the major London termini combined.

You've never been to Paris then.

To be fair they did say "most"

 

[Watershed]

Anything is possible with enough money and political backing!

Whilst a single London Terminus might be the way things would be built if you started from a clean sheet, there are numerous issues with such an approach.

Firstly there's the question of space. Even if all the lines and platforms were bored deep under London (which would be a huge project in its own right), you would still need a massive station building at ground level to cater for the number of passengers. That would mean demolishing several blocks of prime real estate in central London.

Then there's the question of what you would do with the service patterns. By my calculations, there are 146 bay/terminus platforms across all the London Termini. The majority are close to their maximum utilisation. So to replicate the current situation, you would either need 146 platforms at this megastation - good luck finding space for that, even underground - or to join services up across the capital.

Now obviously the latter clearly isn't impossible - it is exactly what has happened with the likes of Thameslink and the East London Line, and what will soon happen on Crossrail.

But it does mean that you easily import disruption from one side of London to another, and that trains have to be suitable (both technically and in terms of their length and seating/door layout) for operation on both sides. There would be no opportunity for intercity services to have a longer turnaround to recover from possible delays. You would also have to have an unprecedented degree of grade separation.

Timetables would have to be completely rewritten and there may be some differences that are tricky to resolve (e.g. matching a 4tph service on one side of London to 6tph on the other side).

So there are lots of downsides and the question is - what real benefit is there? You can't possibly have a direct train from everywhere to everywhere. People would often still need to change trains if they were crossing London. The location of such a megastation could never suit all markets, so even for those heading to London, an onward connection might still be needed.

In short, it would be a gargantuan project which, given the Victorian railway legacy that exists today, simply doesn't make sense. In due course, there will probably be more links built across London - for example Crossrail 2. But they will likely all be of commuter-type services that can be segregated from other traffic.

 

[lachlan]

I feel it's worth noting that in China where they're building a new HSR network many cities already have multiple new stations. Often a central station and another less-central one on a mainline, or two stations on different lines that run in different directions. Obviously completely different circumstances to London but I think it's interesting that even when starting from scratch they're building multiple smaller (though still massive) stations instead of one huge one.

 

[JonathanH]

The dispersion of passengers from a single station to their ultimate destination would be an issue as well.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think if you were going to do it, a super-Thameslink with perhaps 6 tracks would be the way rather than a single Hauptbahnhof as a terminus - this is a bit more like what Berlin/Hamburg have albeit on a smaller scale.

Difficult, though, as it isn't balanced north-south, with the stations south of London generally dealing in high frequency commuter services, and those north of it dealing in less frequent (other than the WCML) InterCity services with totally incompatible types of stock.

 

[quantinghome]

In theory there might be advantages as you could make do with many fewer platforms as through platforms could have more trains per hour through them.

In practice it would be nightmare. The first proposals for CTRL (HS1) at Kings Cross could be viewed as a mini version of this, and they were thrown out because of the expense and disruption.

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

is a Tokyo style system feasible in an ideal world if we were starting again?? I.e have track sharing agreements and through running

 

[JonathanH]

is a Tokyo style system feasible in an ideal world if we were starting again?? I.e have track sharing agreements and through running

What is a Tokyo style system?

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

What is a Tokyo style system?

watch this video and it explains really well

 

[NoRoute]

Would something similar (perhaps a merged St Pancras/Kings Cross?) be feasible in the UK? Was something like this ever contemplated in BR days?

Before British Rail, when LMS owned Euston and St Pancras there was a proposal in the 1930s to demolish them and merge them into a joint terminus, there was a painting produced of the proposed modernist design by Percy Thomas. See half-way down the article below:

Lost Beauty #9: Hardwick’s Hall (the old Euston station, London, UK)

Write about transport architecture for any length of time, and you become aware of the long shadow cast by the Euston Arch, which is ironic considering it doesn’t even exist any more. It has become…

thebeautyoftransport.com

 

[JonathanH]

watch this video and it explains really well

Thanks - that is akin to the aspiration of lines like Crossrail - while it incorporates suburban / outer suburban traffic, it doesn't put all the long distance services in one place.

Crossrail 2 and any other line extensions or changes in London will have to wait until HS2 (and the TransPennine upgrades) is declared complete.

There is no merit in any changes in the near term.

 

[30907]

Most other European countries' capitals have been able to concentrate the railway traffic in and out of the city on one single terminus - at least for long distance traffic.

Brussels did in the 1950s (ISTR it was planned pre-WW2, and the city centre is small), Berlin in the 1990s, and Warsaw added a central station.
There's also Stockholm and Oslo, but they have much smaller city centres.
That's not a lot.

Was something like this ever contemplated in BR days?

Yes, and published by BR themselves in 1980 when BR was coming under much negative political pressure.
https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docsummary.php?docID=4244
It was essentially a north-south double track connection (Southern to East Coast/Midland/West Coast with the GW line included via connections at Willesden).
It was never intended to replace the London termini and could not have done so.

 

[Gloster]

Copenhagen also has a central station that dates from the beginning of the last century. However, as the capital is at one side of the country, main line trains mostly terminated there.

 

[tbtc]

1. I don't know why people fixate on Berlin's one station - Berlin is significantly smaller than London. If you take "central London" to be the distance from the buffers at Paddington to the buffers at Liverpool Street (which doesn't even include Kensington Palace or the Tower Of London) then that's over four miles - whereas four miles from Berlin Hbf and you're pretty much in countryside - it's a strange comparison that seems to say more about the fixation some have with everything Germanic than it does about any practical options for the biggest city in western Europe

2. If you accept that London has a a city centre around four miles "wide" and around three miles "deep" then one advantage of having so many termini scattered around is that they permit passengers for actual city centre destinations to be dispersed across several different routes. For example, if you take Soho then people from further afield will approach it from lots of different directions (Paddington, Waterloo, Liverpool Street, Euston etc), spreading the loads. But if all of these "out of town" people were coming from one "Hbf" then imagine how busy that single line would be? Whereas a lot of smaller city centres have most things within walking distance, so it's less essential for public transport to cater to all of these different markets.

3. Where exactly would be best? It'd still mean a journey from the "Hbf" to the final destination for most passengers (given the way that the financial district is in one area, the political district another, the shopping and entertainment places too)

4. The mood on this Forum seems to be that London should be reduced to one station for it's entire city centre but we urgently need multiple city centre stations in Leicester/ Nottingham/ Sheffield etc (and separate additional stations in the centres of places like Buxton too)... there's a contrary nature!

5. Ideally a "cross rail" could work on a number of corridors if you were stating from scratch, but we don't have a blank sheet of paper, we are lumbered with the problem that we built railways first, we have messy city centres that evolved unplanned just like we have a messy language that doesn't follow coherent rules - things are very different in some other countries but London never had someone like Albert Speer - we need to deal with the messy reality rather than trying to impose some utilitarian solution on every problem

 

[JonathanH]

things are very different in some other countries but London never had someone like Albert Speer

I appreciate the ideas aren't quite as radical, but there were plenty of utopian plans for London in the time when such things were popular. The rebuilding of Oxford Street, for example, would have somewhat changed its character.

https://www.londonreconnections.com/2018/transforming-oxford-street-part-2-real-regeneration/

Deck the street
The problem of mixing traffic and people in Oxford Street has been recognised for a long time. In 1963, Colin Buchanan produced a report entitled ‘Traffic in Towns’, which proposed a pedestrian deck above Oxford Street with access to shops via the first floor. This was very much in keeping with the thought at the time that there should be elevated pedestrian ways (‘pedways’) enabling segregation of pedestrians and road traffic.

 

[GRALISTAIR]

London is too big and densely populated and the high concentration of traffic and complexities of routes would render a single terminus a disaster IMHO

I totally agree - even if the city were destroyed by war and we were to start again. Just not feasible imho.

 

[Bald Rick]

I wouldn't say the city is too big - look at Berlin Hbf. It's just that you couldn't do it without a lot of knocking stuff down.

Berlin is much smaller than London, at least the built up area, and has less than half the population in the city and in its hinterland.

to answer the OP - no it is absolutely not desirable. Some other reasons not yet mentioned:

1) it would be hopeless for onwards distribution to end destinations. London’s multiple terminii work because in the long run most people choose to live on the line that takes them to a station near their place of work.

2) it would encourage more cross country journeys to come via London due to the (nominally) easier interchange. Although how you would find a way through a station something like 10 times the size of London Bridge would be challenging even for the most experienced rail users.

3) Rail companies would be inundated with complaints along the lines of “my train from Dartford arrived at platform 7, yet my connecting train to Sawbridgeworth departed from platform 139, it took me 20 minutes to walk, please can you put them on adjacent platforms in future”

 

[Falcon1200]

Rail companies would be inundated with complaints along the lines of “my train from Dartford arrived at platform 7, yet my connecting train to Sawbridgeworth departed from platform 139, it took me 20 minutes to walk, please can you put them on adjacent platforms in future”

Good point; If intended to replace all, or even just most, of the current London termini, how big would 'London Central' have to be ? I would hazard a guess at, roughly, Absolutely Gigantic !

We do have a kind of 'super terminal' at Kings X/St Pancras, with our one international route, two main line routes, a cross-London national rail route, and multiple Underground lines, and Euston (with, one day, HS2) is not far away either. Although, perhaps, should Crossrail not have run via Euston/Kings X too ? IMHO it is a pity that the GWR went for Paddington instead of running alongside the LNWR from Old Oak and terminating adjacent to Euston. But we are where we are.

 

[Bald Rick]

Good point; If intended to replace all, or even just most, of the current London termini, how big would 'London Central' have to be ? I would hazard a guess at, roughly, Absolutely Gigantic !

Well, KX has 11 platforms, St P 15, Euston will have 25 in the not too distant future. That’s 51 for three termini which are by no means the busiest.

Although, perhaps, should Crossrail not have run via Euston/Kings X too ?

That would have overloaded Crossrail.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That would have overloaded Crossrail.

There was a plan to put south WCML local services (MKC and Tring stoppers I believe) onto Crossrail, but that seems to have been binned. It had upsides and downsides, I don't think most south WCML users wanted the awkward split.

I'd not rule out it coming up again, though, as won't there be quite a few Paddington terminators from the east?

 

[JonathanH]

I'd not rule out it coming up again, though, as won't there be quite a few Paddington terminators from the east?

In the short term there will be a lot of Paddington terminators on Crossrail but it has been speculated that they will ultimately be extended to Old Oak Common (and no further) for HS2 connections in due course. The capacity needed from there would prevent further extensions to anywhere on the Chiltern line or WCML.

 

[Bald Rick]

I'd not rule out it coming up again,

I would, as passive provision for it was not included in the Crossrail Act.
That’s not to say ‘never’, but providing for it would be rather disruptive, both to the GWML and WCML. For not much benefit, not least that there aren’t many of the right type of services on the WCML that could use it.

 

[Lucan]

perhaps a merged St Pancras/Kings Cross?

St Pancras and Kings Cross are pretty much merged already, being next door to each other. How much closer do you need them to be?