There’s something oddly interesting about disused, abandoned, or dormant spaces on the London Underground. There are several stations which are completely closed and which survive in various states of repair, but Charing Cross is of course a working station still, home to the Northern and Bakerloo lines, and, until 1999, to the aborted final section of the original Jubilee line (formerly Fleet).
Where the line now goes from Green Park on towards Waterloo it once terminated here, and the station itself came about from a combination of the old Trafalgar Square (Bakerloo) and Strand (Northern) stations. (Strand, you may recall, was the original name of the station which became Aldwych, which was itself closed in 1994).
This tour takes in the former Jubilee platforms (with the fake adverts set up for filming, and the lighting and decorating experiments), including the escalator where Daniel Craig slid down for Skyfall. We also visit the ventilation tower (which you can see from the outside, on Craven Street), and the construction tunnel where the spoil from the creation of the Jubilee extension was taken away by narrow gauge rail under Trafalgar Square.
The guides are enthusiastic and knowledgeable, making even the wearing of hard hats or the passing through louvre doors interesting. The world behind closed doors, and above working platforms, is there to be explored. Highly recommended.
