Moorgate tube station in the middle of the City of London, is one of those stations that is a myriad of lines. As well as having changed a lot over time, has left lots of disused parts. Along with Kev, we had tried numerous times to try to find a way into the deep level bits of Moorgate. We accessed it from the surface, as written up here. We found old maps, old doors, all sorts. However, we had never managed to get the right access. The annoying thing is, that all of the bits we wanted to see, were just off the platform. A quick hop, skip and jump, and we'd have been there. The only problem is that most platforms are heavily monitored, mainly by CCTV. There is also a little office with a one way mirror window on it. One of the main thrills I guess you call it, of exploring, is to avoid being caught. Something I'd been doing pretty bloody well at, and didn't want to damage my record. So I chose the hardest of hard options, a very long jog from Islington, down the NCL tunnels. This is covered in the GES298 report. I invited Zero along for this explore, and he was very up for it.

As described in GES298, we had made it all the way down to Moorgate, and passed the end of the platform it would have been so easy to just jump off. This is a shot looking back to the platform we'd just run down. Just above the little buffer at the end of the tracks, is the small office type building, and coming towards the camera on the back of the office (a blue object can be seen), is an opening in the side that leads into the passages described below.

We walked into the side passages from the main tunnel, some air quality equipment on the right. An interesting mix of duct boards and steps.

A rail and mesh blocked off this area of the old steps. However the top bit of mesh had been removed, and with some careful movements, it was possible to access the area. I wasn't keen to hang around, so only took a couple of shots. The air and questionable stuff on the walls didn't look good for my health. Looking up the steps.

At the top of the steps, the stairs split, one side going left...

...And the other side going right!

Looking back down the steps with the original ye olde white tiling from early days of the tube. At the bottom is the barrier to block off these steps.

From the above steps, I returned to the side passage, and it descended some steps. Note the black strip of tiling, denoting we were in Northern Line territory. At the bottom was a T junction. 

Just visible on the wall here were some old posters.

Going right from the T junction seen above but one, we were in a passage with lots of ventilation ducts. This looks back to the yellow barrier at the base of the stairs.

Halfway along the passage, a side passage lead to a vent shaft. 

It was probably an old lift shaft, now used for ventilation. Steps and doors were below, however we didn't think they would lead anywhere useful, and we were on a time limit. So didn't climb down.

Moving past the side passage to the vent shaft, the passageway bent like an S shape. 

The passageway ended shortly after the above shot, at a giant ventilation fan. The passage continued on the left of the fan. 

A small area with some cool old font on the signs and the tell-tale black tiles of the Northern Line on the wall. 

Returning back to the T junction, the left passage went immediately through a door, which lead to this door. I have named this the bastard door, as we couldn't get through it. It didn't seem a complicated lock, but looking around we were unable to find anything to open it. I never carry tools, so didn't have anything useful to help. 

We then returned to the main running tunnel to see what we had mainly come for. Moorgate has a Greathead Shield in-situ at the end of the tunnel. Presumably where it was finished with. 

At this point, on the right of the camera was a small passageway. We thought it might lead somewhere interesting, possibly past the bastard door. Zero being the diminutive member of the explore, climbed in and looked, but it went nowhere.

Meanwhile I climbed up onto the Greathead Shield. 6 workers would have toiled away in each of the 6 sections. As they cleared away the soil, they would have pushed the shield forward using the bits with holes in that sit around the ring outside the 6 worker sections. I'm 190cms, so you can see there wasn't a huge amount of room. The whole tunnel network around here was all dug by hand in this way. 

Time was running out, but I quickly nipped over to the end of the other line here and Platform 9. This is where 43 people died, as a runaway train crashed into the buffers in the morning rush hour of 28th February 1975. The driver's cab was 91cms, but after the crash had been reduced to 15cms with the dead driver in it.

An imaginary alarm bell rang, and our time was up. We needed to get out of there. And so began the great hike out, again, detailed in GES298.

Thanks to Zero, although ya need to work on your fitness :p