History

The railway started as a steam service off the East Coast Main Line with suburban services for the Great Northern Railway. It was authorised in 1862, to Edgware and opened in 1867. The branch to Alexandra Palace followed in 1873 when the Peoples' Palace opened. A third branch was added to High Barnet leaving the original line to Edgware north of Finchley Central. The August 1945 picture to the left shows an LNER tank engine and carriages at Stroud Green.
In the late 1930s there was an ambitious plan to expand the Underground that then terminated at the station we now know as Archway (it was Highgate at the time and was renamed in 1940 to avoid confusion with the GNR Highgate - the present station). A long tunnel was built under the Archway Road and the old steam lines north of Highgate became part of the Underground system. The 1939 diagram above shows how complicated it would have been.
The dotted lines in the diagram are noted as 'under construction' and this was true for the Edgware to Bushey Heath section. The three dotted arms from Highgate were existing but needing significant re-engineering to make them part of the Underground.

The dual service to Edgware was deemed not necessary and the route of the M1 motorway cut across the line at the Hale. Thus, the line was cut back to Mill Hill East in the 1960s.

Much of the engineering work, started as the war broke out, was never fully commissioned. The present Youth Club at Crouch Hill was built as a transformer station (shown in the second picture above). The designation of the 'Green Belt' after the war killed the economic case for the alterations and the advent of better buses combined with suspensions due to a coal shortage in 1952 saw the end of passenger services on the southern parts in 1954. The tracks from Highgate depot to Finsbury Park were left in for shuttling stock to the Drayton Park to Moorgate section of Northern Line. Finsbury Park got a better service with the opening of the Victoria Line in 1968 and the Drayton Park to Moorgate section (built to main line loading gauge) ceased to be part of the Underground in 1975 and was transferred to the Welwyn Electric service opening in 1976. Stock movements ceased over the southern section of what is now the Parkland Walk on 29th September 1970 and the tracks were lifted the following year. The land was transferred to Haringey (with a small section to Islington) and re-opened as a linear park after some bridge replacements were carried out.

The Route was suggested, in the East London Assessment Study in 1988, as a diversion of the A1 trunk route and others proposed a Metro style tramway on it. The Friends were formed to fight these ideas and campaigned on pointing out several designations that saved the Parkland Walk. It is designated as Metropolitan Open Land, a Nature Reserve, Green Chain and is part of the London Walking Forum's 'Capital Ring' of paths.

For further reading see 'Northern Wastes' by Jim Blake and Jonathan James and 'Rails to the People's Palace' by Reg Davies from which these notes and images were compiled.
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