The Edgware, Highgate and London Railway was a railway in North London, England. The railway was a precursor of parts of London Underground's Northern line and was, in the 1930s, the core of an ambitious expansion plan for that line which was thwarted by the Second World War. Parts of the line were closed in the 1950s and have since been removed.
Establishment
The company was established by a private act of parliament passed on 3 June 1862. The route, measuring , ran through parts of rural Middlesex (now suburban north London) from Finsbury Park through Stroud Green, Crouch End, Highgate, Finchley and Mill Hill to Edgware. Additional acts in 1864 and 1866 granted powers to construct branch lines from Highgate to Muswell Hill and from Finchley to High Barnet respectively.
The railway was sponsored by the larger Great Northern Railway (GNR), whose main line from King's Cross ran through Finsbury Park on its way to Potters Bar and the north. Before the line to Edgware was opened, it was purchased in July 1867 by the GNR and was opened as a single track line on 22 August 1867.
At first, services ran from Edgware to Finsbury Park, King's Cross and, via Snow Hill tunnel, to Ludgate Hill, Blackfriars and Loughborough Road on the south of the Thames. After 1869, trains terminated at Moorgate. Services could also run from Finsbury Park via the North London Railway to Broad Street after the Canonbury-Finsbury Park link opened in 1875. 21 trains a day ran to Finchley, usually in 24 minutes from Kings Cross, and 14 continued to Edgware. In 1870 the track between Finsbury Park and Finchley & Hendon (now Finchley Central) was doubled in preparation for the opening of the High Barnet branch and Muswell Hill branch.
Because of the rapid rise and fall of the terrain in the area traversed by the railway, the line made extensive use of cuttings, embankments and viaducts. Particularly notable were the cutting in Highgate Hill in which Highgate station was constructed with tunnels on either side, and the viaducts over the Dollis Brook and at Muswell Hill.
Branch lines
The High Barnet branch opened on 1 April 1872 with two intermediate stations at Woodside Park and Totteridge & Whetstone (West Finchley did not open until 1933).
The line to Barnet stopped short at Underhill, south of the main village located at the top of the hill. As Barnet was a larger village than Edgware and new residential development at Finchley grew at a faster pace than on the original line, the branch line quickly became the dominant route. Direct services from London ran to High Barnet and a shuttle service was operated between Finchley and Edgware for most passenger journeys on that section, which remained a single track.
The Muswell Hill branch from Highgate to Alexandra Palace was constructed by a separate company, the Muswell Hill Railway Company and opened on 24 May 1873 along with the Palace. However, when the Palace burned down only two weeks after opening, the service was considerably reduced and then closed for almost two years whilst the Palace was rebuilt. It reopened in May 1875.
Another separate company, the Watford and Edgware Railway (W&ER), was established in the 1860s and had various plans to build a link from the EH&LR near Edgware to Watford in Hertfordshire. The W&ER was unable to attract sufficient funds for the project and the company and the right of way that it had obtained passed through the ownership of a number of other railway companies until plans were made in the 1930s to make use of its route (see below).
Development, overcrowding and competition: 1900-1918
By the 1900s the whole line was under pressure from overcrowding. The populations of areas along the line, particularly at Hornsey, Highgate, Muswell Hill, and Finchley, had increased considerably with the rapid Victorian expansion of London, but the GNR service had not been expanded to cope. The line was also congested with goods traffic, mostly coal and building materials. By 1903 the morning trains from Barnet were full by the time they arrived at East Finchley. As the doors of the compartments in the carriages were in those days locked with aid of a simple square key, some passengers took to purchasing these keys from local ironmongers, and locking the doors from the inside. It was not unknown for harsh words and even, on odd occasions, for blows to be exchanged.
New stations were opened at Cranley Gardens (1902, between Highgate and Muswell Hill) and Mill Hill (1906, between Mill Hill East and Edgware).