The refurbishment of the tunnels and platforms on the Northern City Line to Moorgate has been completed.
As a result, Great Northern’s late evening and weekend services through the tunnels, which had been diverted to King’s Cross while the work was undertaken, are now running again.
The work programme completed last weekend had started a year ago when Moorgate station itself was spruced up with new tiling and better lighting. From last December the programme swept on through the tunnels and the three other stations on their route – Old Street, Essex Road and Highbury & Islington.
Over the past year, Network Rail has cleaned almost 17 kilometres of tunnels, renewed over 3.4 kilometres of 40-year-old track and replaced more than 1 km of the ballast, the stones which support the track.
Cleaning the tunnels (c) GTR
Essex Road’s platform walls have been treated to the same comprehensive retiling as Moorgate. GTR’s contractors stripped away about 40 tonnes of old tiles – over 4,000 sacks of rubble with the new white and blue ceramics. At Old Street and Highbury & Islington, damaged tiling has been removed or repaired, with walls resurfaced in readiness for future decoration.
At all four stations, Network Rail has replaced the old light fittings with new LED lighting, and GTR have given the stations an extensive deep-clean over the past three weekends.
Network Rail also plan to upgrade the signalling system in the tunnels over the next few years.
New lighting at Moorgate (c) GTR
How have they managed to redecorate but yet keep the same dingy atmosphere they always had?!
I was going to say much the same. Was frankly expecting something a bit more 20 th century, even if 21st century were out of the question. Guess they’ll blame the pandemic.
About time too. The Northern City platforms were a disgrace. I wonder if they can now do something about the passageways, particularly at Old Street.
I think it was the last location with Network South East branding.