King's Cross Goods Yard Buildings

[60048]

Afternoon all,
I am currently doing a bit more research into the King's Cross Goods Yard area. I know the buildings that existed at the King's Cross station end of the yard were deemed as 'Outward Goods', while those nearer to the NLL and Maiden Lane were 'Inward Goods', but does anyone know what the individual designations of the buildings/areas was?

Looking at the King's Cross redevelopment work, the location of the former stables and coal yard become reasonably obvious, when compares with aerial images from Britain from Above, but any further details, or pointers as to books that explain the workings would be welcomed.

Rich

[john coffin]

There was published a book about Kings Cross Goods yard, but it is presently unavailable.
Pre lock down, it was about 60£. It was partially titled "an immense and exceedingly commodious goods station"

The other book is the KIngs Cross Story by Peter Darley, that haas some useful data around 20£.

HTH

Paul

[Mickey]

I use to like the old Kings Cross Goods yard (that was GNR hallowed ground). There was a fairly large building at Five Arch which was a railwaymen's/traincrew messroom plus the shunter's had a lobby as well in the same building and there may have also been the yardmaster's office located as well in the same building?. Outside and diagonally opposite the messroom & shunter's lobby across a 'mess of pointwork' stood Five Ach Shunting Frame box.

Legend had it that a LARGE old kettle in the messroom at Five Arch had always been kept on the boil or simmering away on a old gas cooker ever since 1910!. Whenever the hot water got a bit low someone would always kindly refill it a driver or a guard that mite be in the messroom.

That old kettle wasn't a ordinary household domestic kettle it was a big old heavy thing capable of holding a gallon or two of water and probably needed a good descaling!!.

[60048]

There was published a book about Kings Cross Goods yard, but it is presently unavailable. Pre lock down, it was about 60£. It was partially titled "an immense and exceedingly commodious goods station". The other book is the KIngs Cross Story by Peter Darley, that haas some useful data around 20£.

Paul

Thanks Paul,
I had heard/seen something about a exceedingly commodious goods station but didn't realise it was a book! Thanks, I'll keep my eye open for a copy.

Micky,
Thanks for that, I wondered where Five Arch box was, that kind of places it, but what a wonderful tale. One of those, you really hope is true!

Rich

[60048]

There was published a book about Kings Cross Goods yard, but it is presently unavailable. Pre lock down, it was about 60£.

I had heard/seen something about a exceedingly commodious goods station but didn't realise it was a book! Thanks, I'll keep my eye open for a copy.

Just in case anyone else is looking for a copy, it is available new from PCA who published it at £36.50 post free. Copy ordered!
https://www.pre-construct.com/product/a ... s-station/

Cheers Paul. Given that it was the first of three volumes, and published in 2016, one would hope that Volume 2 is not too far away!

Rich

[Mickey]

Below is a panoramic view featuring Kings Cross Goods yard in it's 'twilight years' looking in a south westerly direction from the tall North London line railway overbridge that crosses Belle Isle with St Pancras station and central London in the far distance and was probably photographed in either the 1980s or 1990s?. Five Arch Shunting frame box stood the other side of the arches either to the right of the third or fourth arch from the left and the buildings that I mentioned previously stood to the right of Five Arch Shunting Frame across a couple of lines but in this view looking from this vantage point it looks very much like that old building housing the traincrew messroom and shunter's lobby has been demolished by the time this photograph was taken.
http://www.rail.co.uk/images/8528/origi ... -Marsh.jpg

[60048]

Thanks for posting that Mickey,
I have a better understanding of those locations now, and what a lovely, detailed shot of York Road Viaduct. I know Phil Marsh, who is credited as taking that shot, so will have to pester him for a copy of the original next time I see him!

Of note is the building above Arches 1-7 on the left .. two brick buildings with pointed roofs with what appears to be wooden canopy's between them. That part of King's Cross goods still survives and can be found on Google Earth, but is also in this view https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW028504 at the very top left of the picture, if you zoom in - you need to be registered with the site to zoom in however.

Rich

[Mickey]

When I was a secondman (fireman) at Kings Cross loco between 1974-75 there was a small number of diagrams (jobs) that started and finished in Kings Cross Goods yard at that time so occasionally after 'signing on' you and your driver mite walk up to the Goods yard to work a train something like the mixed goods 9B69 Kings Cross Goods yard to Temple Mills comes to mind which departed the Goods yard around 9:30am on a weekday morning and it's return working back from Temple Mills arriving back in the Goods yard in the early afternoon also the 'Huntingdon goods' 7B66 departing the Goods yard around 2:30am on a weekday morning and stopping at WGC, Hitchin, St Neots & Huntingdon. Another working was 'the fish' that came up from Grimsby and after relieving a 'northern traincrew' at 'Donny' on a EE type 4 (whistler) it was then 'right away' Kings Cross Goods yard arriving in the potato market at 2:30am. Then it was a case of 'screwing the loco down' and hurrying back down to the passenger station to catch the 3:10am staff train (a x2 car Cravens unit) from Kings Cross back to Welwyn Garden City and home to bed!. Ha ha those were the days...

[60048]

Hi Mickey,
Sounds like happy memories! Which part of the yard did you mean when you referred to the 'potato market'?

Rich

[Mickey]

Which part of the yard did you mean when you referred to the 'potato market'?

I always knew it as the 'Potato market' I presume I must have heard it being called by that name by a Kings Cross driver or another railwayman so I always called it by that name as well. Where was it?. If you was riding on a loco and you came into the goods yard with a train and was passing Goods And Mineral Junction box and heading towards Five Arch Shunting Frame your train would then be routed to the left on passing Five Arch Shunting Frame around a curve and then you would run underneath a huge overall roof and eventually at the end of it you would come to a dead end at a set of buffer stops. That overall roof is still there in part although it's obviously been renewed in recent years because the old Kings Cross Goods yard of the early/mid 1970s which had vast sprawling tracks of empty and rusty railway sidings has now been torn up and converted into a vast new area of office blocks and residential high rise housing for a new generation of people who now live there that has sprung up over the last 3 or 4 years. Apparently the Kings Cross area is now a 'desirable' place to live these days?.

All those roads around Five Arch Shunting Frame had individual names like the straw road or the brick road or the fish road or the potato road and so on and so forth but don't ask me which road was called what?.

[rockinjohn]

Hi Mickey yep I remember those potato sidings&the covered way for the lorries to load the same, also seem to remember long bogie wagons carrying "flettons?"bricks alongside those sidings,usually shunted by J52's but did sight a diesel shunter once, Boston shed's 11177, there were more Potato Sidings/Wood Yard(shunted by an N1(34B)? on the up side just before the Wightman Rd Bridge over the St.Pancras-Barking line near Hornsey which you would wait along time to see any trains on that line pass under that bridge, in those days unlike now.

[Mickey]

Thanks rockinjohn for the confirmation of the name 'Potato sidings' or as I always referred to that covered area as the 'Potato market'.

I was in the Goods yard one day way back around 1974-75 on a diagram with my driver and after sitting in the traincrews messroom at Five Arch for a while drinking a can of tea I decided to take a walk outside to have a look around (I should have climbed the staircase of Five Arch Shunting Frame box it was only a stones throw away from where I was and had a look around?) anyway I walked around a long curve towards where the sidings ended at buffer stops at a higher level with the Regents canal below and was amazed at the vast emptiness of the whole area and would say that the area consisted of around 12-15 siding roads that were virtually all empty except for one or two vehicles that were standing around on one or two of the roads. There was a old lattice post bracket signal amongst all those sidings roads carrying two separate semaphore 'fixed' distant signals on either doll which I believe may have belonged to Goods And Mineral Junction box?. I think both the green and yellow spectacles in both the distant signals were both missing?.

These days that whole area of the former Goods yard has been re-developed and now consists of high rise office blocks and high rise housing built on the former railway land.

[john coffin]

The Potato business was big business for the GNR for many years, particularly from the Lincolnshire potato fields.
The GNR established the first railway potato market in the original station which had closed after the opening of
Kings Cross, in 1852, it was expanded a number of times up to 1900.

The location was much nearer to Covent Garden than a site in Southwark which had existed in Tooley Street.

As the GNR became more successful in the potato business, other railways like the Midland, also built potato
markets.

A number of wagons were converted to carry the potato sacks with extensions on normal open wagons.
I believe that there were actually dedicated potato trains.

HTH
Paul

[jwealleans]

Mr. King and I have recently seen an account from an employee of the LNER who worked in Leicester and said that the bogie brick wagons were used to deliver potatoes at certain times of year.

[60048]

Thanks guys for all the replies - fascinating!

From looking at an old circa 1900 map, the Potato Market/Sidings were the eastern most sidings above Gasworks Tunnel - assuming their designation wasn't changed over the years.

Rich