Mystery Train

April 22, 2015 1:18 PM

Southwark Park Tube Station has been rediscovered after 100 years. Workers uncovered the 'ghost station' during construction of the new Thameslink line. Although Network Rail knew the location of the site, which closed in 1915 due to the war, it was still a surprise that so much of the original 1902 structure remained intact. Southwark Park was only open for 13 years but had already made it into transport history as the home of Corbett's Lane signal box, said to be the first regular signal box in the world.

More pictures at Ian Mansfield's blog.

posted by Gin and Broadband (25 comments total)

Did they check for wards? Sigils? It was closed and forgotten for a REASON people.

Sigh.

Occult groups have such poor organizational memory, always tripping over each others' previous incarnations. You get the holy water, I'll get the flamethrower.
posted by The Whelk at 1:21 PM on April 22, 2015 [23 favorites]

I can't turn up the sound on my work computer loud enough to hear the video so I would like an explanation for the actual buried skeletons in this hidden station please, are they the tardiest commuters in the history of mass transit?
posted by poffin boffin at 1:40 PM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

I don't think this was a tube station, was it?
posted by Segundus at 1:51 PM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

poffin boffin, they didn't mind the gap, so the gap minded them.

(There's currently loads of rail works going on in London, and skeletons clip is to point out, 'So we're digging around London and found lots of stuff, yep everywhere's built on piles of bones but more excitingly - an old train station!')
posted by Gin and Broadband at 1:52 PM on April 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

yeah, at first i thought i'd clicked on the related article by accident, which is about the exhumation of a zillion plague victims by bedlam.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:53 PM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

london: dead people are under you at all times
posted by poffin boffin at 1:53 PM on April 22, 2015 [6 favorites]

Long dead people ....FULL OF POSSIBLE PLAGUE
posted by The Whelk at 1:55 PM on April 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Beware the Shepherds of Shepherd's Bush. Pray that you never meet them. And should you find yourself in the house of Serpentine, run, and never look back (hat tip to neil gaiman's Neverwhere )
posted by BigCalm at 1:56 PM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

Segundus - dang it, you're right, I have been reading about this all afternoon and what with the undergrounded-ness of it, my sloppy mind just threw 'tube' in there.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 2:00 PM on April 22, 2015

Occult groups have such poor organizational memory,

The last encounter of any occult group is usually poorly documented apart from

"T̞̤̫ͮ̌ͯͩ̂̋̈́h̯̤͔͇ͪͮê̳̈́̂ ̲̭͍͎̤̂̇̊u̙͎̯̙̩͇̽ͨ̿̏̑̋ͫ̓ͅń̲͖͕̬̅͛ͫͪ̔̃s̗̹̭̪͔̗̻͛ͫ͛ͣͦ͐̿̽p̦̮̻̖̥̹̋͆̊ͅe͚̩͓̣ͬ̑͊͐͆̎͂ͯa̖̖̅͊k̜̝̲̙̜̰̝̟ͧ͛ͪ͛̿̄ͥ͒̂a͚̖̠̞̿͐̅̂ͪb̝̹͔̝͇͗̉̇l̤͓̺̖͑̀̑ͤ̾ĕ̻͎̼̘͚̲̠ͧͥͬ̈́͋͐̋̾ ͙͉̻ͭ̓ḧ̖͖̺̱̹̲́̾͂̋ǒ̲̝̭̼̰͊ͤͣ̅ͮr̮̈́̈ͭr̼͙̦̗̅͛̋ͨ͗͆͒̚o̖̙̰̘̤̯ͯͩ̉̈́r̯͕̺̼̎ͣ̓ͤͪ"
posted by Ogre Lawless at 2:11 PM on April 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

So what is the difference between a programme and a scheme? This colonial rebel has never been able to work it out.
posted by wierdo at 2:41 PM on April 22, 2015

If they next discover pre-human ape-like fossilized skulls and what they think is an unexploded V-rocket, they need to contact B.E.R.G.'s Prof. Quatermass for an expert opinion.
posted by Doktor Zed at 2:47 PM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

London: dead people are under you at all times

The trouble with having people under you is that they're not a very reliable building material.
posted by ambrosen at 3:01 PM on April 22, 2015

So where are the giant insects that can look like people?
posted by brundlefly at 3:15 PM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

Typical bureaucracy, always killing the last horde.
posted by rhizome at 3:16 PM on April 22, 2015

Doktor Zed: "If they next discover pre-human ape-like fossilized skulls and what they think is an unexploded V-rocket, they need to contact B.E.R.G.'s Prof. Quatermass for an expert opinion."

Yeah, next stop is Hobbs End.
posted by meehawl at 3:32 PM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

No, it wasn't a tube station - an ordinary rail station, long since closed. There are lots of those in central London close to terminuses, from the period before buses, Tubes and trams got properly organised and capacious enough to take most of the short-distance traffic. Mostly, they were built into arches, bridges and other mainline infrastructure, so when they were closed they were just boarded up and left - at least initially.

I think the buried bodies come from the 1970s, when strikes and lack of investment meant a lot of London's transport infrastrucure was run by skeleton staff.
posted by Devonian at 3:39 PM on April 22, 2015 [10 favorites]

The last encounter of any occult group is usually poorly documented

Honestly, if I see ONE more journal, diary, research record or meeting minutes that ends in "Aaaaaaaarrrgh!!!", I will scream, I swear it.
posted by happyroach at 3:49 PM on April 22, 2015

Nice, fascinating FPP! I always love when games, books or films play with the Long Forgotten Tube/Railway Station idea. There's bound to be TV Tropes page for it, yeah?

"Do not open until Doomsday!"
posted by comealongpole at 4:02 PM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

The Whelk: Did they check for wards? Sigils? It was closed and forgotten for a REASON people.

And it was rediscovered for a reason, too. Eldritch wards need maintenance like anything else. Especially if they were first inscribed all higgledy-piggledy by freelancers as is too often the case.
posted by traveler_ at 4:54 PM on April 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

so many unfortunate incidences can be traced back to the mid-15th century misconception that a "virgin sacrifice" had to be someone who had never done a sex rather than someone whose blood had never before been used ritually.
posted by poffin boffin at 5:00 PM on April 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

I MEAN so i've heard
posted by poffin boffin at 5:00 PM on April 22, 2015

"Do not open until Doomsday!"

When I was a kid and saw that episode, I thought the door was saying "Tuesday" instead of "Doomsday," presumably because I wasn't familiar with the word "Doomsday." Anyway, it really made me wonder why that foreman couldn't just wait until Tuesday...
posted by Juffo-Wup at 5:52 PM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

"dead people are under you at all times"

True at all times in all places, and, I reiterate, why my husband has a colleague whose job title is "Human Skeletal Remains" with no clarifying detail.

True phone call: "So, if I buried my son in my front yard and now I've been foreclosed on but I'm not allowed to dig him up because he's dead, what do I do?" "How did you get the body in the first place?" "Oh, I just took it." "... You really need to be talking to the cops and the coroner, not historic preservation."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:25 PM on April 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

chr!st, the new bbc news site is horrid
posted by Sintram at 12:14 PM on April 23, 2015