A New Camden Town Station

A much-needed rebuild, twenty-five years ago.

[theblah]

Would have been nice if the station’s architecture was more representative of the local area - Camden Town is a ex-industrial district filled with repurposed Victorian warehouses, factories and canal basins - the redeveloped station design looks like something you might see in Canary Wharf. A brickwork facade might have been better received than the giant glass curtain wall they proposed.

[phaasch]

"... An unfortunate tendency to catch fire, in a way which is absolutely not suspicious"
Oh boy you're on fire today, Jago😊

[aoxby]

I'm only 27, and yet when you said a plan from 2000 was 25 years old, I felt really old. I know it's obvious that 2000 was 25 years ago as we are in 2025, but hearing it out loud just hits differently.

[mcarp]

Hmm. Maybe a video about splitting the Northern line would be interesting. Maybe a two-parter, focusing on each separate 'strand' involved?

[robertyoung]

I recently went to Camden Town for the first time in about 30 years. I couldn't believe how untidy and tired the station looks, definitely due a rebuild combined with a separation of the Northern Line into 2 separate lines.

[himthatis]

My ears perked up at the mention of the Underground Electric Railways of London. For a brief moment I had excitement that our old friend the anti-hero and nefarious schemer Charles Yerkes was about to enter the fray with his usual brand of underhand and questionable business stylings. A quick rewind to check the year and the sad confirmation that this story takes place many years after his sad demise.
I hope you rest well Mr Yerkes, even though you are not always present in these stories, you are never forgotten.

[sherbetbizarre]

Having been to one of the best gigs I've seen at the Electric Ballroom last night, that's one part of Camden I don't want to lose.

[johnhaines]

I helped my company bid for the design work involved in creating a new entrance on Buck Street in 2017-18. We didn't win it, and the company that did, as far as I know, never got the go-ahead to start work. That decision not to go ahead would have been made pre-Covid. The old school that is on the site is currently the base for the promoters of the Camden Highline.
One of the things I gathered during the process was that Camden Town is one of the few stations that is busier at weekends than during the working week.

[michaelwhite]

I just love the plan of the very complicated station tunnels layout. Very clever engineering back in the day !

[scottc]

This old man who yells at clouds feels you. Almost everything was better when I was a teenager. And like you and Camden Town Station, I may be "life expired, " but I'm not dead yet!

[prodigalretrod]

It's amazing how you keep coming up with new subjects week after week. Just a knack I guess!

[kgbgb]

I'm so glad to see old traditions maintained. At 2:00 the labels "To Charing Cross" and "To the City" have been swopped over -- the two lines each curve around to go through Euston roughly east-west, in opposite directions, thus swopping sides.

Jago, never change. It is really worth it, using the part of your brain that other people use for maps to help create your wonderful prose.

[philipr]

Yet another concise and informed appraisal of a problem with no easy solution. Also, taking a step back from the knotty practicalities, it gives a nice idea that the Underground is not merely one of the greatest engineering feats of all time but also a sort of living entity in its own right...

[martinwtaylor]

As a boy I lived in Camden Town and used the tube very frequently. The design of the platforms and the routing meant that I and many others waited at the bottom of the escalators to catch the first train southbound in the right direction because trains could arrive at either platform. Not the best design for easing congestion.

[EugeneMurray-zb]

'The Northern Line is very popular...
At least in terms of
numbers using it!'

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[moneycash-]

I find it funny that every time someone who doesn't work at TfL suggests splitting the Northern Line, they suggest Edgware going down the Charring Cross Branch and High Barnet going down the Bank Branch. I don't work at TfL either, but I'd have thought it would actually more likely be the other way round, particularly given the morning peak time northbound service pattern meaning that all trains from the Charring Cross Branch go towards High Barnet, and all trains from the Bank Branch going towards Edgware. But whatever they do, they would need an easy, high capacity interchange at Camden. If TfL had infinite budget and no complaints for closing the entire Northern Line for a year, then maybe they could remodel it into a stacked double-island platform, with a cross-platform transfer for anyone wanting to continue in the same direction.

[DavidShepheard]

The two real problems with "splitting the Northern Line" is that Camden Town needs to have a cross platform interchange between the Charring Cross trains and the Bank trains and it also needs to have a cross platform interchange between the Edgware trains and the High Barnet (and Mill Hill East) trains. Without doing that, the existing platforms would become dangerously overcrowded and the cross-passages would block up.

And the problem at street level is that everyone wants more capacity at Camden Town, without knocking down any surface buildings.

The only way to solve both these problems is to give Camden Town both of those things, but do it in a way that will annoy everyone...and eventually solve the problems for everyone.

Because Camden Town station will become overcrowded you just close it during construction. And because the overcrowding problem would just transfer to Mornington Crescent you close that too. And, because nobody wants any buildings to be knocked down, you close the entire road between Camden Town and Mornington Cresent and dig a gigantic station box (similar to Paddington Crossrail station) where the road is.

Euston would become the interchange where everyone crosses over. And you build two new tunnels between Euston and the area north of Camden Town before starting on Camden Town.

Then you make Camden Town a living hell for five years, while digging out the entire street, stacking two Canada Water style cross platform interchanges on top of each other and you use the road junctions outside Camden Town station and Mornington Crescent station to build two Oxford Circus style station entrances. The two old station buildings get kept, but they just become the places to get the lift down to ticket hall level and a second lift down to the Northbound level and the Southbound level.

A lid could be put onto the station box, running down the road between Camden Town and Mornington Crescent, but, as there is so much shopping going on, the only logical thing to do is to pedestrianise the heck out of the entire area and make it so that the only vehicles allowed to enter are delivery vehicles. So I would put a street market on top of the new merged Camden Town/Mornington Crescent station.

[tantaf]

Happy Sunday everybody! Nothing starts the day more than watching a new Jago video!

[mahtin]

7:50 “it’s not dead yet”. I feel like this whole video was just a setup for that one liner! (I’m not complaining - it gets a 👍

[TheAltonEllis]

based on previous assessments on the crowded nature of Camden Town Station, I walked to the area instead of taking the tube while visiting last year. I got some cracking shots of the façade as I fought my way past and that was just fine by me. Another great video, thank you Jago!