North London Line

Much of the course of this old line will now form part of the East london Line extension

The Future: E London Line extension

This northern extension of this project will join the current East London Line just south of the existing

Shoreditch Station. It will then head up onto a new viaduct on the northern part of the Bishopsgate Goods

 Yard, cross Shoreditch High Street and head north to Dalston Junction using the disused Kingsland viaduct.

The route that runs parallel to the A10 that formerly supported the North London Line to Broad Street will then

turn west using a western Curve at Dalston Junction to run parallel to the North London Line.

Bishopsgate Goodyard Station.

Eastern Counties Railways terminus built in 1840 but after Liverpool St opened the

station was rebuilt as a goods depot. Currently being demolished to make way for E

London line extension. English Heritage lost a court case to save demolishing the site.

Prince Charles described the arches as an "astonishing hidden treasure"   

The old Shoreditch Station in Old Street.

The "new one" was situated on Brick Lane but that closed too in late 2007

Kingsland Viaduct (Hoxton)

The gap here is where the bridge used to be crossing

above Middleton Rd, Haggerston. It was demolished

July 2004 as were several others in the area

looking from Haggerston towards Dalston

Course of N London Line - Haggerston

 

Dalston Junction Station closed 1981

This station was used in the 1959 film "Look Back in Anger" staring Richard Burton. A launch party for the

film was held in the station buffet.

Terry West writes to Derelict London:

"My grandad worked for 45 years as a ganger and gang-foreman for the North London Railway and he often

 took me with him on the line. Our nearest station was Dalston Junction (one of your pictures) every so often

he would bring home a railway sleeper for fire wood. He would get it to Dalston on the train, catch a 22 bus to

 the "Black house" Pub in Chatsworth Road, the end of the line, then carry it on his shoulder about three

 quarters of a mile to the bottom of Rushmore Road where we lived. He was not a big man but slim and wiry,

his face and arms were like old leather, but the rest of his body was white and smooth, I don't think he had

 taken his shirt off in public for the whole of his life. "

Robert Kingham writes:

" I too have walked the length of this, all the way down to Broadgate, where emerging in the City feels somewhat like stumbling

upon a mystical hidden portal.

The cheese factory where I lived, with a heavy metal drummer friend, from 1994-1995, is visible in the photo 'looking from

Haggerston towards Dalston' - the only pitched-roof building on the derelict left. From here we explored the line until the security

boarding was repaired.

I only walked the line once: gratefully sober, as the bridges across roads and the canal were even then little more than steelwork.

Paul, I think, did it three times. One night after a few terrible beers in the 'Nice Little Earner' on Kingsland Road - a terrible, terrible

pub - Paul and another friend, Simon, attempted the walk. I decided to go home; as I watched them from the cheese factory,

shinning up the wall, I distinctly got the impression that there were three people climbing over the wall and disappearing down the

line to Shoreditch. In the morning I was assured that there had only been the two of them.

It's likely that this was an effect of the malevolent atmosphere that surrounds the line; certainly, walking through some of the

disused stations, we got the impression that we had disturbed some sort of Balrog who was inevitably about to drag us

deep, deep under Dalston. It's nostalgically sad (though not from a health and safety point of view) that these bridges of

Khazad-dum have now come down, apart from the glumly majestic one diagonally spanning the south end of Kingsland Road.

I look forward to travelling on the new East London extension. I'll be the one with the two kids bored shitless by their father's

 endless reminiscences."