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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

There is no access from the bridge to Platform 2 (northbound) because part of the bridge and stairs is unsafe. The entrance has been secured with baulks of wood which suggests this will not be a one-day wonder. [Update - the National Rail site is now citing Sunday 29 January for a return to normal service].

From Finsbury Park you will need to get off at Hornsey and double back. To go north of Harringay, get a train to Finsbury Park and change platforms.

Tags for Forum Posts: harringay station, trains

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Thanks Gordon

Thanks; wonder exactly what it is… the station has been falling apart for years now and I was only thinking this week how bad it looked and how bodged the repairs are. I get the impression that proper repairs fall into the “too difficult” bracket and I bet they weren’t planned alongside the other works which are happening. At some point the whole bridge will need replacing and it would be nice if it got planned before the string and sellotape fall apart and force the issue. I’m sure it’s technically safe, but it is also rubbish. The kids will miss the giant puddles on the bridge if that ever gets sorted though.

It could be a detached metal stair tread, I've noticed the odd loose one in the past. There was no-one working there yesterday.

More broadly, the works announced in October [link], to be finished in February, seem to be running behind schedule. So far the interior of the old ticket office has been removed and support metalwork for replacement waiting shelters has been installed, but that's all that I can see.

New bridge? At least that dead pigeon will be no more. 

Different bridge.

Pigeon is gone! Still living on Google Maps.

Update (edited) from Network Rail, Tue 24 Jan:

"Urgent repairs to Harringay station’s footbridge will begin this evening (Tuesday 24 January).

The bridge, which connects passengers to platform 2, has been closed since Sunday to keep passengers and staff safe until urgent repairs can be made.

Once engineers have completed sufficient strengthening work, we will be able to reopen to platform 2 and services will be able to call there once more.

Harringay station will be closed overnight (on Tuesday 24 and Wednesday 25 January) between 10pm and 6am whilst the work takes place."

The problem with most stations on this line is that they are completely inaccessible to anyone who can't manage stairs. Finsbury Park station claims to be fully accessible, but that does not extend to the overground platforms which do not have lifts. If any upgrading work is done to the bridge, surely it should include platform lifts.

Indeed - Harringay, Hornsey, even busy Alexandra Palace have no lifts nor any foreseeable likelihood of them**. Bus to Finsbury Park and there engage is about as (minimally) step-free as it gets for Ladder/Gardens users.

Finsbury Park will, though, have lifts to all platforms shortly - even on platforms 7+8 - for those more fortunate step-free station users in The North.

** Notional 'accessible' funding for Alexandra Palace came and went a few years ago, and seemed to be on the 'aspirational' end of plans even then.

Harringay station has reopened to northbound trains, the repair work now permits this.

Although Harringay now has something approaching a Metro-style service, there are still relics of the old-fashioned unimportant urban station about it. I remember in the 1960s there were two trains an hour, unevenly spaced, towards Kings Cross, in some cases requiring a change and a five-minute wait at Finsbury Park. Even then there was a good chance you'd end up at York Road rather than Kings Cross proper. In other words the station (along with Hornsey) was an inconvenience to the railways. This meant that few people used the 'service'. The station itself was dilapidated (though there was a waiting room heated with a coke stove, and it did have electric light (unlike gas-lit Wood Green (Alexandra Palace). It was never repaired properly after the fire in the early 1970s, and in spite of the 'remodelling' of the platforms (i.e. reducing the number of platforms from four to two) in the last decade, the main structure remained an eyesore.

TfL want to take over the lines to Hertford and WGC and run them as 'Overground' services, but that aim has been repeatedly blocked by the government. Had they done so, I suspect Harringay station would have been rebuilt (albeit as a simple structure) and smartened up, with a proper Metro service where all trains on those lines stopped there, rather than just every other one as at present. After all, look what they did to the even more run-down Gospel Oak-Barking line.

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