K

Kent & East Sussex Railway

A light railway authorised by a Light Railway Order in 1896, originally as the Rother Valley Railway, with the line between Tenterden and Robertsbridge opened in 1900. A further LRO allowed an extension from Tenterden and Headcorn in 1902, which opened in 1903, and the Kent & East Sussex title was adopted in 1904. The company passed to the Southern Railway on grouping, and was eventually nationalised. It closed to passengers in 1954, and to freight in 1961, but part of it reopened as a preserved line using the KESR title in 1974.

Kilmarnock & Troon Railway

Authorised in 1808, the first railway in Scotland to have Parliamentary sanction, and opened as a 4ft gauge double track in 1811, initially horse drawn and mainly handling coal, although there were two passenger carriages, Caledonia and The Boat. George Stephenson was invited to demonstrate a steam locomotive on the line in 1817, but this was too heavy for the track. The railway was consistently profitable, dividends averaging 14 per cent throughout the 1840s. After being leased to the Glasgow Paisley Kilmarnock & Ayr Railway in 1846, it was converted to standard gauge and steam locomotives were introduced. The Glasgow & South Western Railway acquired the line in 1899.

Kilsyth & Bonnybridge Railway

An extension of the Kelvin Valley Railway, which opened in 1879, the Kilsyth & Bonnybridge opened in 1888. While the KVR was operated by the North British Railway, the KBR was operated jointly by the NBR and the Caledonian Railway, and although it passed to the London & North Eastern Railway in 1923, joint working with the London, Midland & Scottish Railway continued until nationalisation.

King’s Cross

King’s Cross was built for the Great Northern Railway to replace its temporary station, used since 1850 and located next to Maiden Lane, now renamed York Way. To reach King’s Cross, the line had to be buried under the Regent’s Canal and then through the 528 yard Gas Works tunnel. The temporary facilities at Maiden Lane were named ‘King’s Cross’ in the timetable, and consisted of two timber platforms, which had to cope with the Great Exhibition traffic of 1851, and also were used by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert for their trip to Scotland that August.

The real King’s Cross was built on a ten-acre site which had been occupied by the smallpox and fever hospitals, while a number of houses were also demolished. It opened on 14 October 1852. Initially, the daily service consisted of twelve trains in each direction, with just three of them expresses, with departures starting at 7am and ending at 8pm, while the last arrival was at 10pm. Passengers were met by horse-buses which for 6d (2½p) would convey them to London Bridge, Waterloo or Paddington.

Lewis Cubitt designed a simple, yet practical, station, with two 800ft long, 105ft wide, train sheds which were joined at the southern end by a 216ft façade of London stock bricks with two arches, but with little ornament. The lack of pretension was spoiled somewhat by a central square clock tower, 112ft high, with an Italianate turret with a clock with three faces, as the north-facing one was blocked off as it could not be seen from the ground. The clock’s chimes were silenced at the outbreak of the First World War and not reinstated until 1924, then silenced again in 1927. The west side of the station had a departure platform, now No10, while on the east was an arrival platform, now No1, with fourteen carriage roads in between them. A carriage road ran alongside the arrival platform, while between the departure platform and an external carriage road were refreshment rooms and first and second-class waiting rooms and ladies’ rooms, as well as the station offices. As was the custom at the time, a hotel was also built, opening in 1854, but the Great Northern Hotel was set apart from the station to the south-west.

Around three-quarters of the roof was glazed, supported by arches and laminated wood girders, which had to be replaced on the east side during 1869-70, and on the west during 1886-87.

Once finished, King’s Cross was for the time the largest terminus in the British Isles, but the GNR was accused of extravagance, which was denied by the Board, who pointed out that they had obtained good value. In fact, the portico and Great Hall at Euston had cost as much.

At the start, King’s Cross was a mainline station, with just four stations between London and Hatfield, 17¾ miles away, but intermediate stations were opened over the next decade or so. In February 1858, the GNR trains were joined by those of the Midland Railway, although these were later removed when St Pancras was opened in September 1868. Shortly after the Metropolitan Railway opened in 1863, a station was opened at King’s Cross slightly to the east of the terminus, and in October of that year, all GNR suburban trains were diverted to Farringdon Street, with up suburban trains having to back into the terminus, using the departure platform: up trains had to stop at a platform outside the terminus named York Road, before descending to the Metropolitan.

The station was marred from the outset by the difficult approach. In 1860, an excursion train from Manchester mounted the buffers after the guard, who was drunk, had forgotten that he needed to provide addition assistance with his brake as the train descended into the station. No one was killed, but the damage was considerable. On 2 November 1865, a coal train running through one of the tunnels broke in two, leaving one portion to run away down into King’s Cross itself. The guard jumped clear, while the wagons hit the buffers and overturned, losing their loads. Frantically, rescue parties dug at the coal for fear of finding casualties, but no one was hurt.

The Growing Station

In 1862, a further arrival platform was inserted, replacing some of the carriage roads, with one face, later No 2, of full length, while the other presented a short bay, but long enough for a short train. Meanwhile, a connection between the Metropolitan and the London Chatham & Dover Railway (see South Eastern & Chatham Railway) in 1866 meant that the approaches to King’s Cross carried a heavy goods traffic, mainly of coal trains, having run south on the GNR and then diverted onto the Metropolitan for Kent. Suburban services were introduced by the GNR with the opening of branches to Edgware and Finchley in 1867, which later became part of the Northern Line. Cross-London trains were introduced, initially by the GNR, running from Hatfield to Herne Hill in 1866, but diverted to Victoria in 1868. In 1878, an Enfield to Muswell Hill service was introduced, but this passed to the South Eastern Railway in 1880. In the meantime, the City Widened Lines had been constructed alongside the Metropolitan, new junctions had to be built outside King’s Cross, which were opened in 1868. Further suburban branches opened during the early 1870s, to Enfield, High Barnet and Alexandra Palace. These branches and the traffic they generated as well as the coal and other trains resulted in heavy congestion, so that it could take thirty minutes in the rush hour to cover the 1½ miles between Holloway and King’s Cross during the mid1870s. Temporary relief came when the North London Railway took over much of the traffic running over GNR tracks and diverted them to Broad Street. Nevertheless, it was essential to undertake substantial works to improve the approaches, with additional tunnels and a skew bridge to separate trains for the goods yard from passenger services, and much of this work was done between 1875 and 1877, but further works were needed and completed in mid-1886, while a third tunnel under the Regent’s Canal was finished in 1892, allowing separate tunnels for up and down trains. Nevertheless, the approaches were congested and confused, while the run down into the tunnels and then up again placed a strain on many a heavily loaded train, with runbacks a real danger, while the tunnels and the yard could flood in heavy rain: on 25 July 1901, traffic had to be suspended completely for 4½ hours after a flood.

The growing suburban traffic initially used the sole departure platform, which was also backed into by trains coming from the Metropolitan. In 1875, three short platforms and two tracks just outside the western wall were opened, with the clumsy title of ‘King’s Cross Main Line (Local) Station’, with three platform faces. This replaced a carriage repair shop, but was used only for departures. In 1878, the Metropolitan connecting trains no longer had to back into the terminus, but instead used the new King’s Cross (Suburban) platform, but it suffered from a steeply graded and curving platform that became an embarrassment for fully-loaded trains, while the tunnel from the Metropolitan, known as ‘Hotel Curve’, was also steeply graded and curving, and shrouded in smoke that required repeater signals and hand held lamps for safety. Double-heading was not an option as the pilot locomotive would smother the crew of that behind with smoke and fumes. In this dense and unwelcoming, not to say unhealthy, atmosphere, the GNR provided a man whose job it was to spread sand on the track after each train had passed. In July 1932, a train slipped so badly on the climb from the Metropolitan that it ran into the train running behind. The report on the accident noted that in the darkness, engine-men could only judge if the train was moving forward by reaching out and touching the tunnel walls, while breathing was difficult and drivers had ‘little or no chance of rectifying an error’. Lights were fitted in the tunnel to help them judge their speed.

Between 1867 and 1881, the number of season ticket holders using King’s Cross rose from 2,500 to 14,400. The passenger business was growing overall, but as with most of the London termini, trains were stopped and tickets checked before the station was reached. For King’s Cross, the checks were conducted at Holloway until this was abandoned in 1896. In the meantime, with no checks at King’s Cross, ‘The Cross’ in railway jargon, or at York Road, many a youngster enjoyed a free ride between the two.

The two train sheds were separated by a central wall, which incorporated arches, and in 1893, new platforms, which eventually became 5 and 6, were built on either side, with the westernmost becoming the long-awaited second departure platform. An iron girder footbridge came into use at the same time, located about half-way down the platforms and allowing easy access across the station. Next, in 1895, an additional track and a new island platform, 500-ft long, were added to the local station. This required the locomotive yard, coaling stage and turntable to be moved westwards, while the curve to the Metropolitan was flattened to some extent and the platform for the connection rebuilt, with a short bay also built. New milk and horse and carriage docks filled the remaining space between Cheney Street and the back of Culross Buildings. To avoid confusion with the main line station, the local platforms were designated A to E from west to east, with A and B designated as suburban platforms to distinguish them from C to E, the local platforms. The arrival and departure platforms in the main station were confusingly numbered 1 and 2 departures and 1 to 5 arrivals, until a more logical station-wide system was introduced in 1921. In addition, there was separate access from the terminus to the Metropolitan, and from 1906 this also gave access to the Piccadilly tube platforms, and access was provided to a separate booking hall for the City & South London tube, which reached King’s Cross in 1907. The arrival of the underground trains and electric trams caused many of the suburban through workings across London to be reduced, and they were withdrawn finally in 1907.

Despite these changes, the station itself continued to develop piecemeal, and nowhere was this more evident than outside where the empty space, left after the diversion of the St Pancras Old Road in the 1870s to run alongside St Pancras station, was occupied by sellers of garden furniture and sheds, hoping to interest the homeward bound commuter. Later shops appeared at the front of the station, with the hard-pressed LNER doubtless anxious for some rental income.

Major changes were made during 1922 24 to impose a more consistent approach to the station, while the off-peak through workings to the Metropolitan had been ended in 1915 and were never reinstated. Changes were made to the approaches, including turning the up carriage road in the centre of the three Gas Works tunnels into an up relief running line. Other changes saw arrivals able to use all platforms other than 16 and 17, while up suburban trains used 11 and 13. The new Gresley Pacific locomotives were catered for by a 70ft turntable at King’s Cross which reduced light engine working in the approaches and eased congestion.

The difficulty of operating the complicated track layout on the approaches, and the fact that not all of it was visible from either the East or West boxes, meant that a primitive form of track circuiting was in use on some of the lines in the tunnels from 1894. Full track circuiting was completed by 1923, while power-operated upper quadrant signals had started to appear the previous year. On 3 October 1932, colour light signalling replaced all of the semaphore signals at King’s Cross, and a new box replaced the separate East and West, centrally situated at the ends of platforms 5 and 6.

Wartime and Beyond

For safety’s sake, during the First World War, mainline trains were drawn into the tunnels whenever enemy airships or bombers were overhead, but King’s Cross remained unscathed. This was fortunate, as not only did the terminus and its immediate surrounding lines carry much coal and many passenger trains, explosives also passed through the station, often on passenger trains.

Post-war, by the time the railways were freed from state control, it was almost time for grouping, with the GNR becoming part of the London & North Eastern Railway. While the GNR’s management had encouraged people to buy houses in ‘Bracing Barnet’ and on the ‘Northern Heights’ before the war to stimulate suburban traffic, post-war relief came when the Northern Line took over the High Barnet and Mill Hill branches in 1939, while before this the northern extension of the Piccadilly Line also reduced suburban traffic into King’s Cross. While the LNER imposed logic on platform numbering, it was not adverse to creating fresh mysteries of its own, as when platform 4 was extended to full length, and in so doing platform 3 disappeared.

The Second World War once again saw King’s Cross extremely busy. Many trains carried as much as 2,000 passengers, and to cope with the demands of wartime, were often as long as twenty or more carriages. Locomotives would pull one portion out of the platform, and then reverse on to the second portion. This imposed risks of its own. On 4 February 1945, the 6pm to Leeds stalled in the tunnel and then ran backwards into the front of the 7pm ‘Aberdonian’ standing in platform 10. Despite the low speed, the moving carriages rose into the air and demolished the signal gantry, while two passengers were killed. It took two weeks before a new gantry could be installed, causing the termination of all up suburban services at Finsbury Park.

King’s Cross did not escape the impact of enemy action. Two 1,000-lb bombs, chained together, fell on the west side during the Blitz early on Sunday 11 May 1941, destroying much of the general offices, the grill room and bar, and wrecking the booking hall, killing twelve men. Fortunately, the station was quiet at the time. Temporary booking and refreshment facilities were organised quickly, and no trains were cancelled. Elsewhere, bombing on the Metropolitan lines meant that services to Moorgate were suspended from 30 December 1940, and not reinstated until after the war.

Plans to combine King’s Cross with St Pancras as a terminus for Channel Tunnel trains were abandoned and instead these now use St Pancras. Much of the clutter outside the station has now been removed, but complete rebuilding of King’s Cross is as far away as ever.

Kirtley, Matthew, 1813-1873

Trained by Timothy Hackworth on the Stockton & Darlington Railway, he became an engine driver on the Liverpool & Manchester, Hull & Selby (predecessor of the Leeds & Selby) and London & Birmingham Railways, driving the first train into Euston for the last-mentioned. He joined the Birmingham & Derby Junction Railway in 1839 and in 1841 became its locomotive superintendent. When the Midland Railway was formed in 1844, he became its locomotive and carriage superintendent, a post he held until his death. He developed the works at Derby, which produced its first new locomotives in 1851. His 0-6-0 goods and 2-4-0 passenger locomotives were simple, yet effective and elegant, but Kirtley’s contribution to locomotive design was the introduction of brick arches and deflector plates to fireboxes so that coal could be burned instead of coke.