Embankment tube station
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Embankment tube station is a London Underground station in the City of Westminster.
The station is served by the Circle Line, District Line, Northern Line and Bakerloo Line. The station has two entrances, one on the Victoria Embankment and the other on Villiers Street, which leads up to The Strand. It is in Travelcard Zone 1. The station is below the southern end of Charing Cross rail station.
On the Northern and Bakerloo Lines, Embankment is between Waterloo and Charing Cross. On the Circle and District lines, it is between Westminster and Temple.
Embankment station was opened in 1870 on the Metropolitan District Railway (now the District and Circle lines) as Charing Cross. On March 10, 1906 the Baker Street & Waterloo Railway (now the Bakerloo Line) was opened with platforms at the station, however they used the name Embankment. In 1914 the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (now a part of the Northern Line) was extended south by one stop to this station to facilitate better interchange. To further confuse matters the BS&W and CCE&H parts of the station were renamed Charing Cross (Embankment) to distinguish them from Charing Cross (Strand) (now a part of the current Charing Cross tube station) whilst the District sections remained Charing Cross. In 1915 this was rectified by changing the name to Charing Cross throughout, with Charing Cross (Strand) being renamed Strand.
In 1974 the entire station was once again renamed to Charing Cross Embankment. Then on 12 September 1976 it became Embankment, so that the merged Strand and Trafalgar Square tube stations could be named Charing Cross.
Originally the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead railway had only a single platform on a loop that extended under the Thames and allowed trains to reverse while offering continuous service. In the 1920s the line was extended further south and the loop was abandoned (although the present northbound Northern Line platform follows its course) and a second platform added. To this day the southbound Northern Line platform is the only one of the four deep level platforms that is not connected to any of the others by deep level walkways.
The loop itself still exists, although it was penetrated by a bomb and flooded during the Blitz in the Second World War. Fortunately, the loop had been sealed off years before. In 1938, when war appeared imminent, the Bakerloo and Northern Line tunnels at Embankment were temporarily sealed with concrete to protect against flooding through bombing. A slightly less drastic solution was adopted in September 1939 when the concrete plugs were replaced by electrically powered emergency doors at the tunnel mouths. They are each 330 mm thick, weigh about 6 tons and can resist about 800 tons of pressure.
The station was featured in the 2001 film Sliding Doors, which was filmed on location; however, all the filming of platforms and underground passages was done at other stations.
Above the station is Hungerford Bridge which gives rail and pedestrian access to the South Bank and the Royal Festival Hall.
This station serves the Thames Embankment, Trafalgar Square, the Strand and Charing Cross.
External links
- The Charing Cross-Embankment-Strand conundrum (http://metadyne.tripod.com/CHX-EMBconundrum.html) explains the various names of the tube stations in this area.
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