London - Liverpool Street Station modernisation - postcard

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  Liverpool Street Station, London - modernisation - as built
• Publisher:  London Transport Museum, c.1990s
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

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I will give a full refund if you are not fully satisfied with the postcard.

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Liverpool Street station, also known as London Liverpool Street,^[4][5] is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in the north-eastern corner of the City of London. It is the terminus for the West Anglia Main Line to Cambridge; the busier Great Eastern Main Line to Norwich; many local commuter services to parts of east London, Essex, and Hertfordshire; and the Stansted Express, a fast link to London Stansted Airport.

It was opened in 1874 as a replacement for Bishopsgate station, which was subsequently converted into a goods station. (Bishopsgate (Low Level) opened in 1872 as an additional station to Liverpool Street; it closed in 1916.) In 1917, Liverpool Street was the first site in London to be hit by enemy bomber aircraft in the First World War and in the build-up to the Second World War it served as the terminus for thousands of child refugees arriving in London as part of the Kindertransport rescue mission.

After falling into a state of disrepair, the station underwent extensive improvements and modernisation between 1985 and 1992; Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the modified station in December 1991. In the Bishopsgate bombing of 1993 it sustained minor damage and during the 7 July 2005 terrorist attacks seven passengers were killed when a bomb exploded aboard an Underground train after it had departed Liverpool Street.

With over 57 million passenger entries and exits in 2011-12, Liverpool Street is one of the busiest railway stations in the United Kingdom and is the third busiest in London after Waterloo and Victoria.^[6] It is one of 17 stations in the UK directly managed by Network Rail.^[7]

It has three main exits: to Liverpool Street, after which the station is named; to Bishopsgate; and to the Broadgate development to the west of the station, on the site of Broad Street station. The Underground station connects the Central, Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines, and is in fare zone 1.

Liverpool Street station was opened on 2 February 1874 by the Great Eastern Railway (GER) on the site of the original Bethlem Royal Hospital, the world's oldest psychiatric hospital, widely known as 'Bedlam'. Ten platforms were fully operational by 1 November 1875; from this date the original City terminal at Bishopsgate station closed to passengers. Bishopsgate reopened as a goods station in 1881 and was destroyed by a spectacular fire on 5 December 1964. The London Fire Brigade mobilised 40 fire engines, 12 turntable ladder platforms and over 200 firefighters to the incident but was unable to save the depot; two customs officials were killed in the blaze, which caused millions of pounds of damage and destroyed hundreds of rail wagons. The Bishopsgate site remained derelict for nearly 40 years until part of it was redeveloped as Shoreditch High Street, part of the extension and rebuilding of London Underground's East London line as part of the London Overground network.

The station was designed by the GER's chief engineer Edward Wilson and was built by John Mowlem & Co^[8] on a site that was occupied by Bethlem Royal Hospital from the 13th to 17th centuries. A City of London Corporation plaque commemorating the station's construction hangs on the wall of the adjoining former Great Eastern Hotel, rebranded Andaz Liverpool Street in 2008,^[9] which was designed by Charles Barry, Jr. (son of Sir Charles Barry) and his brother Edward Middleton Barry, and also built by Mowlem. The station was named after the street on which it stands, which was named in honour of Lord Liverpool, prime minister from 1812 to 1827, having been built as part of an extension of the City towards the end of his term in office.

The construction of the station was driven by the desire of the company to have a terminal closer to the City than the one opened by its predecessor Eastern Counties Railway at Shoreditch on 1 July 1840, renamed Bishopsgate in 1846. Construction proved extremely expensive due to the cost of acquiring property and many people were displaced due to the large scale demolition. The desire to link the GER lines with the sub-surface Metropolitan Railway, a link seldom used and soon abandoned, meant that the GER had to drop below ground level from the viaduct east of Bishopsgate. This means that there are considerable gradients leaving the station. Lord Salisbury, who was chairman of Great Eastern in 1870, described the Liverpool Street extension as ""one of the greatest mistakes ever committed in connection with a railway."" By 1894, an additional eight platforms had been constructed beneath a new roof of simpler design than the original.

By the 1970s the station had become dark, dilapidated and dank, whilst evocative of another age. It was extensively modified between 1985 and 1992, including bringing all the platforms in the main shed up to the same end point and constructing a new underground booking office, but its façade, Victorian cast-iron pillars, and the GER memorial were retained. The refurbishment coincided with the closure and demolition of the neighbouring Broad Street station and the construction of the Broadgate development in its place. The redeveloped Liverpool Street was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 5 December 1991. At this time a giant departures board, suspended above the station concourse, was installed at great expense, but due to technical difficulties there was a long delay before it became operational. It was one of the last remaining mechanical 'flapper' display boards at a British railway station and the largest, but was removed from service in September 2007 and replaced by electronic boards. In 1992, an additional entrance was constructed from the east side of Bishopsgate with a subway under the thoroughfare.

The new station roof was built largely in the style of the western part of the station, which survived the War. The original roofing was painted brown at this time, with smoked plexiglass, while the new roofing was painted blue with clear glass so that people could differentiate between new and old. All the platforms now end in a uniform line, and can accommodate 12-carriage trains, except platforms 16 to 18, which can only accommodate eight carriages).

The station was twinned with Amsterdam Centraal railway station in 1993, with a plaque marking this close to the entrance to the Underground station. Also in 1993, a truck bomb in Bishopsgate, planted by the Provisional IRA, exploded and caused some damage to the station despite it being over 200 metres away.

type=printed postcards

theme=topographical: british

sub-theme=england

county/ country=london

number of items=single

period=1945 - present

postage condition=unposted