Angel tube station

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Angel
Location
Place	The Angel, Islington
Local authority	Islington
Operations
Managed by	London Underground
Platforms in use	2
Transport for London
Zone	1
Annual entry/exit	14.03 million †
History
Key dates	Opened 1901
Transport for London List of London stations: Underground \| National Rail
† Data from Transport for London [1]
London Transport Portal

Angel tube station is a London Underground station in The Angel, Islington. It is on the Bank branch of the Northern Line, between Old Street and King's Cross St. Pancras stations. It is in Travelcard Zone 1.

Angel station was originally built by the City & South London Railway, and opened in 1901 as the northern terminus of a new extension from Moorgate. As with many other stations on the line, it was originally built with a single central island platform serving two tracks – an arrangement still seen at Clapham North and Clapham Common – and access from street level was via lifts. The most recent lifts were of the Otis "drum hoist" design used throughout the rest of the tube system, but were of about half the size. For years, the station regularly suffered from congestion and overcrowding which, especially with the island platform, constituted a major safety issue. Consequently, the station was comprehensively rebuilt, re-opening in 1992.

Southbound platform tunnel originally occupied by tracks in both directions

A new section of tunnel was excavated for a new northbound platform and the southbound platform was rebuilt to completely occupy the original 30-foot tunnel, explaining why it is larger than most deep-level platforms. The lifts and the ground level building originally on the corner of Torrens Street and City Road were closed and a new station entrance was opened around the corner in Islington High Street. Because of the distance of the new entrance from the platforms, and their depth, two flights of escalators were required aligned approximately at a right-angle. These include the longest escalators in Western Europe, with a vertical rise of 27.4 m (90 ft) and a length of 60 m (197 ft).

Between Angel and Old Street stations is the disused tube station City Road.

[edit] Trivia

Angel station is the subject of 40 minutes: Heart of The Angel, an award-winning BBC "40 minutes" documentary, by Molly Dineen.
Angel station is one of the most popular stations in terms of merchandising.
Angel station appears in Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses.
The angel, Islington, is a character in Neil Gaiman's novel Neverwhere.
In March 2007, an unidentified man posted a video on YouTube of himself skiing down the escalator (reportedly sometime in 2006), an action condemmed by the Police and London Underground officials ^[1].