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King's Cross railway station〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Stations Run by Network Rail )〕 is a major London railway terminus which opened in 1852 on the northern edge of central London. King's Cross is the southern terminus of the East Coast Main Line, providing high speed inter-city services to Yorkshire, the North East and Scotland. Virgin Trains East Coast is the main inter-city operator with destinations including Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh. Other inter-city operators serving the station include Hull Trains and Grand Central. King's Cross is also a terminus for Great Northern which provides commuter services to North London, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire. Immediately to the west across Pancras Road is St Pancras International, the London terminus of Eurostar services to continental Europe. The two stations share King's Cross St. Pancras tube station on the London Underground network and taken together form one of Britain's biggest transport hubs. The station is north-east of Euston, the southern terminus for the West Coast Main Line. ==History== King's Cross was built in 1851–1852 as the London hub of the Great Northern Railway and terminus of the East Coast main line. It took its name from the King's Cross area of London, which was named after a monument to King George IV that was demolished in 1845.〔(''Highbury, Upper Holloway and King's Cross, Old and New London: Volume 2'' (1878) ), pp. 273–279. Retrieved 15 May 2009.〕 Construction was on the site of a fever and smallpox hospital and it replaced a temporary terminus at Maiden Lane that had opened on 7 August 1850. Plans for the station were first made in December 1848 under the direction of George Turnbull, resident engineer for construction of the first of the Great Northern Railway out of London.〔Diaries of George Turnbull (Chief Engineer, East Indian Railway Company) held at the Centre of South Asian Studies at Cambridge University, England.〕〔Page 87 of ''George Turnbull, C.E.'' 437-page memoirs published privately 1893, scanned copy held in the British Library, London on compact disk since 2007.〕 The detailed design was by Lewis Cubitt, the brother of both Thomas Cubitt (the architect of Bloomsbury, Belgravia and Osborne House), and of Sir William Cubitt (who was chief engineer of The Crystal Palace built in 1851, and consulting engineer to the Great Northern and South Eastern Railways). The design is magnificent in its simplicity, being based on two great arched train sheds, with a brick structure at the south end designed to reflect the main arches behind. In size, it was inspired by the long Moscow Riding Academy of 1825, which it handsomely exceeded at . At the time King's Cross station was the last word in functional modernity. Lewis Cubitt was also responsible for the design of the Great Northern Hotel (see below), and the 1847 cast-iron railway bridge over the River Nene at Peterborough. The main part of the station, which today includes platforms 1 to 8, was opened on 14 October 1852. The platforms have been reconfigured several times. Originally there was only one arrival and one departure platform (today's platforms 1 and 8 respectively), with the space between used for carriage sidings. As suburban traffic grew additional platforms were added in the 1860s and 1870s with considerably less grandeur. The suburban station building now containing platforms 9–11 is from that era. A new platform, numbered 0, was opened in 2010. To the east of platform 1, it created capacity for Network Rail to achieve a phased refurbishment of platforms 1–8 that includes new lifts to a new footbridge between the platforms. By 2013 the entire station will have been restored and transformed.〔(King's Cross Redevelopment ), First Capital Connect. Retrieved 10 October 2010.〕 A number of famous trains have been associated with King's Cross, such as the Flying Scotsman service to Edinburgh, and the Gresley A3 and later streamlined A4 Pacific steam locomotives, which handled express services from the 1930s until the early 1960s. The most famous of these was ''Mallard'', which still holds the world speed record for steam locomotives (set in 1938). In 1972, a single-storey extension designed in-house by British Rail was built on to the front of the station to contain the main passenger concourse and ticket office. Although intended to be temporary, it still stood 40 years later, obscuring the Grade I-listed façade of the original station. Before the extension was built, the façade was hidden behind a small terrace of shops. The extension was demolished in late 2012, revealing once again the Lewis Cubitt architecture. In its place, the 75,000 sq ft King's Cross Square was created, which was opened to the public on 26 September 2013.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24274049 )〕 On 10 September 1973, a Provisional IRA bomb exploded in the booking hall at 12.24, causing extensive damage and injuring six people, some seriously. The device was thrown without warning by a youth who escaped into the crowd and was not caught.〔 〕 The King's Cross fire of 1987, in which 31 people died, was at King's Cross St Pancras Underground station. In 1991 British Rail proposed a new station under Kings Cross, with four platforms for international trains through the Channel Tunnel, and four for Thameslink trains, with some commuter trains to be diverted to St Pancras. These plans were abandoned in favour of the international trains using a new terminal at St Pancras.〔"Kings Cross Project" brochure, published by British Railways Board, 1991〕 The station has changed ownership a number of times: firstly the Great Northern Railway (GNR) (1852–1923), then the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) (1923–1948), then following nationalisation British Railways (1948–1996), then upon privatisation Railtrack, then Network Rail. When the railways were privatised in 1996, express services into the station were taken over by GNER. Though it successfully re-bid for the franchise in 2005, it was asked to surrender it in December 2006. National Express East Coast took over the franchise on 9 December 2007 after an interim period when GNER ran trains under a management contract. In July 2009, it was announced that National Express was no longer willing to finance the East Coast subsidiary and the franchise was taken back into public ownership, handing over to East Coast in November 2009. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「London King's Cross railway station」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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