On this day – July 20th

Euston was the first inter-city railway station in London. It opened on 20 July 1837 as the terminus of the London and Birmingham Railway. The old station building was demolished in the 1960s and replaced with the present building in the international modern style.

The site was chosen in 1831 by George and Robert Stephenson, engineers of the L&BR. The area was mostly farmland at the edge of the expanding city, and adjacent to the New Road (now Euston Road), which had caused urban development. The station was named after Euston Hall in Suffolk, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Grafton, the main landowners in the area.

The final gradient from Camden Town to Euston involved a crossing over the Regent's Canal with a gradient of over 1 in 68. Because steam trains at the time could not climb such an ascent, they were cable-hauled on the down line towards Camden until 1844, after which they used a pilot engine The L&BR's Act of Parliament prohibited the use of locomotives in the Euston area, following concerns of local residents about noise and smoke from locomotives toiling up the incline

The station building was designed by architect Philip Hardwick with a 200 foot-long train-shed by structural engineer Charles Fox. It had two 420-foot (130 m)-long platforms, one each for departures and arrival. The main entrance portico, a great Doric Arch, was also designed by Hardwick, and was designed to symbolise the arrival of a major new transport system as well as being seen as "the gateway to the north". After much protest the great Euston Arch was eventually demolished to make way for the new, much expanded, modern station.

When was the Euston Arch demolished?

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