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I find it facinating that in a growing population that large places like Paris have stations that became disused. But that seems to be the case upon many large

by Zenst 5y ago

I find it facinating that in a growing population that large places like Paris have stations that became disused. But that seems to be the case upon many large underground networks that have been around long enough and in London the list is not short: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/culture-and-heritage/londons-transport-a-history/london-underground/disused-underground-stations https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/culture-and-heritage/... Though that does not include stations part built and then never completed of which there are a fair few for London, unsure about Paris but I would imagine be some instances of part built or intended stations that never got finished. Indeed I had a look at seems at least two got built and never saw use - https://www.renfe-sncf.com/rw-en/blog/destinations/paris/visit-underground-stations https://www.renfe-sncf.com/rw-en/blog/destinations/paris/vis...

kweks 5y ago
The Renfe stations are still there, but rather uninteresting - empty concrete cut and cover affairs. The Barcelona metro does have a few abandoned stations. They also have the mosos police, which wage violent war against graffers, making 'innocent exploration' a high stakes game.
johncoltrane 5y ago
Retired Parisian graffiti writer, here. The parent article does a good job at explaining the whys and hows. For the stations that where actually open at some point, it was mainly a matter of optimization: new hubs being built, profitability, etc. The end of WWII has been the turning point for most them. Porte des Lilas was a prototype station repurposed for shooting movies in a controlled environment. Haxo was part of a failed project to connect two lines. It was never officially opened so we, locals, don't really consider it as a station. The buff between Place d'Italie and Corvisart has never been a station. It's more of a curiosity than anything. Not mentioned in the article are the former end-station of line 5 at Gare du Nord, now a training ground for metro drivers, Arsenal on line 5, Porte Maillot on line 1, and Molitor, which was never even connected to the surface. I am not sure how popular the ghost stations of the métro, the prohibited sections of the catacombs, and the "petite ceinture" are with today's teens but they made Paris a gigantic interconnected playground back in the 80s/90s.
- Zenst 5y ago
  Yes for London the WW2 period sure did change the landscape in many ways and I recall being supprised that it wasn't until 2015 that London's population had finally caught up with level it had in 1939. That alone really did highlight how some things can be impacting far wider than we appreciate.
- kweks 5y ago
  I was always curious: the Sprague/s were left virgin for so many years. Was it because they hadn't been discovered by writers, or because they were considered untouchable for reasons of historical importance. Obviously the scene has all types, and both scenarios seem as unlikely as each other.. can you elaborate ? Edit: "Sprague" or Sprague Thompson is rolling stock dating back to 1908. There are one or two hidden very well in the system, with one still in mint, serviceable condition.
  - johncoltrane 5y ago
    There are still quite a few Sprague cars preserved and maintained by various entities, some of them are even inserted in the traffic for special occasions like "Les journées du Patrimoine" during which the RATP ans other organisations show off a lot of very interesting and usually hidden stuff. That particular train of Spragues, the one that is covered with paint, has been stored in many places over the years, without a clear intent as to its future, like the BOA prototype. The first time I saw it was in the Vaugirard yard, which wasn't exactly a walk-in, so that made it a hard target compared to the regular trains. When they moved it in the connexion between lines 7 and 10 it became a much easier target and a go-to place for just about everyone. I'm afraid the RATP doesn't care much about that specific train. As for types, yes, we have all of them. Very few of us care about historical importance but it might actually be more of an attractor than a detractor for those who do.
    - kweks 5y ago
      I was referring specifically to the Sprague that was used in the Journée de la Patrimoine (which was sadly banned post 2010 I believe). It was well hidden, but then got trashed a few times with 'low effort' painters (throwing of paint over it, or quick chrome throwups as opposed to decent panels) Couldn't understand if this specific one was "spared" for so long because it was well hidden, or because most painters considered it "too nice" to paint (or pointless, as it was rarely in service..) The other ones (Monceau, etc) were obviously well and truly rinsed. There's a few nice examples of preserved rolling stock in the RATP's "secret warehouse", but they only kept the head and trashed the wagons. Vaugirard was definitely a nice yard, hard until we found a nicely hidden trapdoor-in-a-wall behind a 03..
fmajid 5y ago
Paris Métro stations are much closer together than London ones, and in some cases it makes no sense to keep open a low-traffic station that's just 100m from another, due to the cost of staffing them and the delay of a stop there to the entire line.
- HelloNurse 5y ago
  I remember walking between two stops of the same line within Châtelet-Les Halles (presumably current line 4), but maybe such a conglomerate is unusual even for Paris.
  - johncoltrane 5y ago
    The average distance is somewhere in the 500m-700m range so taking the métro might not be necessary if your destination is one or two stops away.
  - fmajid 5y ago
    Châtelet-Les Halles is the biggest and busiest Métro and RER station in Paris and that's why line 4 stops twice there (at Châtelet then at Les Halles).
Symbiote 5y ago
The Wikipedia list says why each London Underground station was closed. Several are now only for suburban trains. Others were closed when replacing lifts with escalators meant entrances had to be moved, and were now too close to the next station. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_and_unopened_London_Underground_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_and_unopened_Lo... See also: http://cartometro.com/cartes/metro-tram-london/ http://cartometro.com/cartes/metro-tram-london/ , which marks the closed stations — you can usually see how close they are to other stations.
rst 5y ago
New York also has a few abandoned stations, most often (as in a lot of these Parisian stations) because they were so close to other stations that there wasn't much point in operating both -- doubly so after platforms on the stations still in use were lengthened to accommodate longer trains. (There are also a bunch of former connections to elevated lines that no longer exist.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_closed_New_York_City_Subway_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_closed_New_York_City_S...
- mtalantikite 5y ago
  I also read once that it made sense to build stations that weren’t yet required for the system because they were already close by digging the tunnels for other stations and they were doing some future capacity planning that ended up getting abandoned. The station near the Broadway G stop comes to mind, which you can access from the north side of the southbound G platform not too far up the tunnel. A while back some artists did an (illegal) show in it.
  - elygre 5y ago
    Somewhat unrelated, under the Bank of Norway head office in Oslo, there is a piece of tunnel that was never used. There were two alternative routes being considered for a tunnel under Oslo, and when they built a new bank over one of the routes, they built the tunnel just in case. In the end, the other route was selected. The tunnel was initially used as a firing range for the national bank guards, and later transformed to a parking garage.
  - rst 5y ago
    There are a bunch of partially completed stations (or expansion provisions for future stations) which were intended for the "IND Second System" -- a massive set of projects that got killed off by the Great Depression. (The beginning of one of those lines actually got built and put into service, in the form of a one-station spur line branching off Hoyt-Schermerhorn in Brooklyn, and going to Court Street, where the line now stops. It was originally intended to continue into Manhattan and become the Second Avenue Line. Instead, it was operated for a time as a shuttle, then discontinued. Court St. Station is now the main site of the Transit Museum, which may reopen one of these days. There's now a rump Second Avenue Line recently put into service on the Upper East Side -- three stops of it -- but construction of the rest isn't fully funded, it's not planned to reach lower Manhattan for a few more decades, and there are no active plans to continue it into Brooklyn.)

by Zenst 5y ago

kweks 5y ago

The Renfe stations are still there, but rather uninteresting - empty concrete cut and cover affairs. The Barcelona metro does have a few abandoned stations. They also have the mosos police, which wage violent war against graffers, making 'innocent exploration' a high stakes game.

johncoltrane 5y ago

Retired Parisian graffiti writer, here. The parent article does a good job at explaining the whys and hows. For the stations that where actually open at some point, it was mainly a matter of optimization: new hubs being built, profitability, etc. The end of WWII has been the turning point for most them. Porte des Lilas was a prototype station repurposed for shooting movies in a controlled environment. Haxo was part of a failed project to connect two lines. It was never officially opened so we, locals, don't really consider it as a station. The buff between Place d'Italie and Corvisart has never been a station. It's more of a curiosity than anything. Not mentioned in the article are the former end-station of line 5 at Gare du Nord, now a training ground for metro drivers, Arsenal on line 5, Porte Maillot on line 1, and Molitor, which was never even connected to the surface. I am not sure how popular the ghost stations of the métro, the prohibited sections of the catacombs, and the "petite ceinture" are with today's teens but they made Paris a gigantic interconnected playground back in the 80s/90s.

Zenst 5y ago
Yes for London the WW2 period sure did change the landscape in many ways and I recall being supprised that it wasn't until 2015 that London's population had finally caught up with level it had in 1939. That alone really did highlight how some things can be impacting far wider than we appreciate.
kweks 5y ago
I was always curious: the Sprague/s were left virgin for so many years. Was it because they hadn't been discovered by writers, or because they were considered untouchable for reasons of historical importance. Obviously the scene has all types, and both scenarios seem as unlikely as each other.. can you elaborate ? Edit: "Sprague" or Sprague Thompson is rolling stock dating back to 1908. There are one or two hidden very well in the system, with one still in mint, serviceable condition.
- johncoltrane 5y ago
  There are still quite a few Sprague cars preserved and maintained by various entities, some of them are even inserted in the traffic for special occasions like "Les journées du Patrimoine" during which the RATP ans other organisations show off a lot of very interesting and usually hidden stuff. That particular train of Spragues, the one that is covered with paint, has been stored in many places over the years, without a clear intent as to its future, like the BOA prototype. The first time I saw it was in the Vaugirard yard, which wasn't exactly a walk-in, so that made it a hard target compared to the regular trains. When they moved it in the connexion between lines 7 and 10 it became a much easier target and a go-to place for just about everyone. I'm afraid the RATP doesn't care much about that specific train. As for types, yes, we have all of them. Very few of us care about historical importance but it might actually be more of an attractor than a detractor for those who do.
  - kweks 5y ago
    I was referring specifically to the Sprague that was used in the Journée de la Patrimoine (which was sadly banned post 2010 I believe). It was well hidden, but then got trashed a few times with 'low effort' painters (throwing of paint over it, or quick chrome throwups as opposed to decent panels) Couldn't understand if this specific one was "spared" for so long because it was well hidden, or because most painters considered it "too nice" to paint (or pointless, as it was rarely in service..) The other ones (Monceau, etc) were obviously well and truly rinsed. There's a few nice examples of preserved rolling stock in the RATP's "secret warehouse", but they only kept the head and trashed the wagons. Vaugirard was definitely a nice yard, hard until we found a nicely hidden trapdoor-in-a-wall behind a 03..

fmajid 5y ago

Paris Métro stations are much closer together than London ones, and in some cases it makes no sense to keep open a low-traffic station that's just 100m from another, due to the cost of staffing them and the delay of a stop there to the entire line.

HelloNurse 5y ago
I remember walking between two stops of the same line within Châtelet-Les Halles (presumably current line 4), but maybe such a conglomerate is unusual even for Paris.
- johncoltrane 5y ago
  The average distance is somewhere in the 500m-700m range so taking the métro might not be necessary if your destination is one or two stops away.
- fmajid 5y ago
  Châtelet-Les Halles is the biggest and busiest Métro and RER station in Paris and that's why line 4 stops twice there (at Châtelet then at Les Halles).

Symbiote 5y ago

The Wikipedia list says why each London Underground station was closed. Several are now only for suburban trains. Others were closed when replacing lifts with escalators meant entrances had to be moved, and were now too close to the next station. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_and_unopened_London_Underground_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_and_unopened_Lo... See also: http://cartometro.com/cartes/metro-tram-london/ http://cartometro.com/cartes/metro-tram-london/ , which marks the closed stations — you can usually see how close they are to other stations.

rst 5y ago

New York also has a few abandoned stations, most often (as in a lot of these Parisian stations) because they were so close to other stations that there wasn't much point in operating both -- doubly so after platforms on the stations still in use were lengthened to accommodate longer trains. (There are also a bunch of former connections to elevated lines that no longer exist.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_closed_New_York_City_Subway_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_closed_New_York_City_S...

mtalantikite 5y ago
I also read once that it made sense to build stations that weren’t yet required for the system because they were already close by digging the tunnels for other stations and they were doing some future capacity planning that ended up getting abandoned. The station near the Broadway G stop comes to mind, which you can access from the north side of the southbound G platform not too far up the tunnel. A while back some artists did an (illegal) show in it.
- elygre 5y ago
  Somewhat unrelated, under the Bank of Norway head office in Oslo, there is a piece of tunnel that was never used. There were two alternative routes being considered for a tunnel under Oslo, and when they built a new bank over one of the routes, they built the tunnel just in case. In the end, the other route was selected. The tunnel was initially used as a firing range for the national bank guards, and later transformed to a parking garage.
- rst 5y ago
  There are a bunch of partially completed stations (or expansion provisions for future stations) which were intended for the "IND Second System" -- a massive set of projects that got killed off by the Great Depression. (The beginning of one of those lines actually got built and put into service, in the form of a one-station spur line branching off Hoyt-Schermerhorn in Brooklyn, and going to Court Street, where the line now stops. It was originally intended to continue into Manhattan and become the Second Avenue Line. Instead, it was operated for a time as a shuttle, then discontinued. Court St. Station is now the main site of the Transit Museum, which may reopen one of these days. There's now a rump Second Avenue Line recently put into service on the Upper East Side -- three stops of it -- but construction of the rest isn't fully funded, it's not planned to reach lower Manhattan for a few more decades, and there are no active plans to continue it into Brooklyn.)