Kings Cross Anniversary

I will never forget it, I passed through the station changing from Met to Vic just 30 minutes before the flashover on my way to Seven Sisters from Farringdon where I had been working late in the signal cabin relay room. I then drove to Holloway to visit a workmate and watched the incident unfolding on his TV set. Within 12 hours I was one of the team of Comms and Electrical staff called upon to get some basic station services running and I worked from 0800 to 2400 on the Saturday and from 0800 to 2200 on Sunday. At that time LU was still hoping to open the station within a few days but it was not possible due to the asbestos hazard.
I returned to work at Kings Cross again once the hazards in the ticket hall were cleared after several days and commenced fitting out the new operations room between the Picc and Vic escalators as soon as the station was partially re-opened spending several months installing CCTV, PA, telephones, siding T/T equipment and Vic line code destroyers as well as the comms side of the Electricals EDNE signs. My work there redesigning the PA system earned me a written commendation and led to a promotion which would otherwise have never been available to me.

20 years on I can still smell the smoke which permeated our clothes and could not be washed away. As much as a year afterward I could still smell the smoke when working in the machine chambers and relay rooms as the odour seemed to cling to the dust that covers everything in tube stations.

I also think of the people I was with at the time and what befell them subsequently.

It did more than change the culture, I think it changed me forever.

Brian

I remember it very well. I was in my bedroom doing my homework listening to the radio. There was a news flash about the fire. I went downstairs to see the 9 o'clock news, and remember seeing the now well known footage of smoke billowing out of the forecourt entrance to the ticket hall.

The next day I stopped off at the newsagents on my way to the school bus and bought copies of 'Today', the 'Mirror' and the 'Express'. At school we said a prayers in assembly for the victims and their families.

We passed through the 'temporary' ticket hall not long after it opened when we went on holiday. My Mum was very upset by it - you could still smell a horrid acrid smell.

My thoughts to all those who's lives were changed forever by this disaster.

1987 was the same year as the Herald of free enterprise ferry incident at Zeebrugge, it was also the year of the great storm, also The Kings Cross fire & the year of my first one under, 14th December.

1987 holds lots of wonderful & sad of memories for me

I walked through the involved booking hall at Kings X a few weeks after it happened and took a photo of the scene.... I have always been in two minds whether to add it to my Fotopic railway site

To date I haven't....

There were wreaths by the plaque in the Western Ticket Hall this morning,there must have been some sort of service there yesterday.

Yes, Greenford still has a wooden escalator.

I can confirm that Greenford is now the only LU station to have an escalator with wooden step treads - No.3 - in service 30/6/47.