Farringdon station
Farringdon is a London Underground and connected main line National Rail station in Clerkenwell, central London. The station is in the London Borough of Islington, just outside the boundary of the City of London. Opened in 1863 as the terminus of the Metropolitan Railway, the world's first underground passenger railway, Farringdon is one of the oldest surviving underground railway stations in the world. Today the Underground station is served by the Circle, Hammersmith & City, and Metropolitan lines between and . The National Rail station is on the Thameslink route between and , and is due to become an interchange  station between Thameslink and the Elizabeth line which is planned to open in 2022. History. The station was opened on 10 January 1863 as the terminus of the original Metropolitan Railway, the world's first underground metro line. The station, initially named Farringdon Street, was originally a short distance from the present station building. The line ran from the Farringdon area to , a distance of . The station was relocated on 23 December 1865 when the Metropolitan Railway opened an extension to Moorgate. It was renamed Farringdon & High Holborn on 26 January 1922 when the new building by the architect Charles  Walter Clark facing Cowcross Street was opened, and its present name was adopted on 21 April 1936. It was built in conjunction with a freight station to take livestock to a slaughterhouse to its south-east to supply Smithfield Market; remains of cattle ramps on a street outside the market, West Smithfield. Smithfield was redesignated as a wholesale 'deadmeat' market in the 19th century and the freight station was last used in the 1920s. The lines from Farringdon towards King's Cross St. Pancras run alongside the Fleet ditch, culverted since 1734. The station building is unusually well-preserved early  20th-century London Underground architecture. It retains indications of the Metropolitan Railway's main-line style operation such as a sign for a parcel office on the outer wall and some original signage, with the 1922–1936 name on the facade. After the bay platforms at closed on 21 March 2009, Southeastern services that previously terminated at Blackfriars were extended to , St. Albans, Luton or Bedford, calling at this station. Thameslink trains to Moorgate ceased at the same time. Current developments. There are three major rail development projects in progress that involve Farringdon. Crossrail is a new east–west railway scheduled  to open in 2018, but now delayed until 2022; the Thameslink Programme is a major upgrade to the existing north-south Thameslink route, enabling longer and more frequent trains, completed in 2018 and the Four Lines Modernisation involves the wholesale resignalling of the London Underground's sub-surface lines bringing a major boost in capacity to Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan line services calling at Farringdon. Once all projects have been completed by 2023, Farringdon will be one of the country's busiest stations with approximately 200 , an average of one departure every 20 seconds. It will be the only  station where passengers can change between Crossrail and Thameslink. A new building, housing a dedicated ticket hall, has been constructed to serve these extra passengers. The new building is to the immediate south of the original station, which itself has been upgraded as part of the programme. An additional entrance has also been built at the north end of the original station, onto Turnmill Street. Thameslink upgrade. Farringdon Station has been rebuilt to accommodate longer Thameslink trains and to make other improvements to the station. The existing station building has been refurbished with a new roof canopy covering the north  end of all four platforms and a new entrance and concourse facing Turnmill Street. An additional ticket hall has been built on the south side of Cowcross Street providing access to the Thameslink platforms, which have been extended southwards underneath this building, allowing the station to handle 240 m (12-carriage) trains. Platforms have been widened to accommodate increased passenger numbers. This process required the bridge that formed Cowcross Street to be demolished and rebuilt. Cowcross Street is now pedestrianised. Lifts have been provided throughout. The existing listed ticket hall and concourse have been remodelled, for use by London Underground  and Thameslink passengers. Interchange within the station has been improved by removing the interchange bridge and installing new stairs and lifts with access to all four platforms, allowing passengers with impaired mobility to use the station. It was necessary to build the Thameslink platform extensions to the south, since there is a sharp gradient to the immediate north of the station. This resulted in the two-station branch to Moorgate being permanently closed. The platform extensions cross the former Moorgate line and reach within a few metres of the entrance of the Snow Hill Tunnel. The alternative of realigning both  the Thameslink and Circle/Hammersmith & City/Metropolitan lines was impractical as the latter crosses over the former on a bridge almost immediately to the north of the station. Crossrail project. The Farringdon Crossrail station is being built between Farringdon and Underground stations and it will have interchanges with both of them. Access at the Farringdon end will be via the new Thameslink ticket hall. Work was anticipated to be completed in 2018, but the scheduled opening date was postponed and is now planned for early to mid-2022. Crossrail will link Farringdon to Canary Wharf, Abbey Wood, Stratford, and Shenfield in  the east with Paddington, Heathrow and Reading in the west. The station will also be a hub for cross-London travel, being the only station to be on both the north-south Thameslink service and the east-west Crossrail service. Four Lines Modernisation. The Circle, District, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines – otherwise known as the sub-surface lines – make up over 40% of the London Underground network, moving over 1.3 million passengers everyday stretching from busy commuter hubs to rural backwaters. They also cover some of the oldest infrastructure on the Underground network. For example, Edgware Road signal cabin opened  in 1926 and required over 3,600 manually operated lever movements a day up until its closure as part of the upgrade in September 2019. This ageing system still in use across most of these four lines uses fixed block signalling where the track is divided into segments to keep trains a safe distance from each other. At the moment trains run further apart than they need to and data is not centrally monitored which means that this system requires regular maintenance and faults are more expensive, as well as taking longer to locate and fix any faulty equipment which in -turn reduces service reliability. Since the sub-surface lines are closely interlinked Transport for London announced in March 2015 that the sub-surface lines would be subject to a wholesale re-signalling programme to be known collectively as the Four Lines Modernisation, or 4LM for short. The upgrade will replace all the signalling equipment on all four lines, which will then be monitored from a new control centre currently under construction in Hammersmith. This will replace the numerous signal cabins and service control centres previously across the four lines. The new signalling system uses the Thales SelTrac moving block system  otherwise known as communications-based train control (CBTC) which uses WiFi to constantly let controllers know where trains are and how fast they are going. Precise speeds will be set by computers so trains will be able to run at higher speeds and closer together with a maximum service frequency of 32 trains per hour (every 2 minutes) in central London by the time the upgrade is complete in 2023. As well as reducing journey times a 33% increase in capacity will be created on all four lines making the best use out of 192 S-Stock trains which too  have a universal design exclusively for the sub-surface lines. Dual traction current supply. Thameslink trains switch between the 25 kV AC overhead supply used to the north of London and the 750 V DC third rail supply used to the south whilst standing at the platform. The trains that formerly ran to Moorgate used 25 kV AC throughout their journeys. This project was installed by the Network SouthEast sector of British Rail in May 1988. Until the start of the Thameslink Programme southbound trains that were unable to switch to DC were taken out of service at Farringdon and  stabled at Moorgate to prevent them from blocking the core section of the Thameslink route. As this option is no longer possible the catenary has been extended to City Thameslink to enable these trains to continue to the southbound platform at City Thameslink using AC and then return northwards using the new crossover in Snow Hill Tunnel. The pantograph on southbound trains is normally lowered at Farringdon. Underground trains serving Farringdon use the four-rail 630 V DC system. Services. London Underground. The London Underground part of the station is served by the Metropolitan, Hammersmith & City and Circle lines, between  and . All three lines share the same pair of tracks from Baker Street Junction to Aldgate Junction making this section of track one of the most intensely used on the London Underground network. Circle line. The typical service in trains per hour (tph) is: Hammersmith & City line. The typical service in trains per hour (tph) is: Metropolitan line. The Metropolitan line is the only line to operate express services, though currently this is only during peak times (Westbound 06:30–09:30 / Eastbound 16:00–19:00). Fast services run non-stop between Wembley Park, Harrow-on-the-Hill and Moor Park. Semi-fast services run  non-stop between Wembley Park and Harrow-on-the-Hill. The typical off-peak service in trains per hour (tph) is: Off-peak services to/from Watford terminate at Baker Street The typical peak time service in trains per hour (tph) is: Farringdon is in Transport for London's Travelcard Zone 1. National Rail. All National Rail services at Farringdon are served by Thameslink trains between St Pancras International and City Thameslink using part of the City Widened Lines and Snow Hill Tunnel respectively. The new Thameslink timetable through London Bridge was introduced in May 2018, the current off peak  service is as follows: After midnight, on all days, a half-hourly service runs between Bedford and Three Bridges. Prior to 2009, Thameslink services also ran to Moorgate via Barbican with trains diverging from the core route east of the platforms at Farringdon. This section of line was closed as part of the Thameslink Programme which involved the construction of a new ticket hall and the lengthening of platforms at Farringdon to enable platform extensions to accommodate longer 12 carriage trains which covered over the junction in the process. Farringdon is in Transport for London's Travelcard Zone 1. Connections . London Buses routes 40, 63 and 341, and night route N63 serve the station.