Last week, Baz Marratxi asked:
Sorry to be ignorant but could somebody please tell me more
about Palace Gates ? Where, when, etc.

Palace Gates station was indeed named after Alexandra Palace, but
was even farther from it than the present station of that name
(which was formerly called Wood Green). I don't have the exact
location, but it would appear to have been near the present-day
Imperial Road, which is off Bounds Green Road.

When Palace Gates opened on 1878-10-07, it was the terminus of a
Great Eastern branch extending 2 miles from Seven Sisters station
on their line to Enfield. An intermediate station on the branch
was Green Lanes, later called Noel Park, and the branch had opened
that far on 1878-01-01. There was a plan to extend the branch
to the Alexandra Palace station then existing, which actually was
adjacent to the palace, but this never came to fruition.

That Alexandra Palace station was the terminus of the Muswell Hill
Railway, a 3/4-mile branch line running northeast from a point
called Park Junction. This was 1/2 mile northwest of Highgate on
the Great Northern branch line that had originally ran straight
northwest from Finsbury Park to Edgware, then acquired a subsidiary
branch to High Barnet, and then the latter became more important
so that Edgware was now considered the subsidiary branch.

The Muswell Hill Railway first opened on 1873-05-24 along with
the palace, then closed and reopened several times over the years.
It was eventally bought by the GNR in 1911 and so became part of
the LNER. Thus if the connection had been completed, it would have
formed a loop like a bent and inverted letter U, Liverpool Street -
Bethnal Green - Seven Sisters - Palace Gates - Alexandra Palace -
Highgate - Finsbury Park - King's Cross. I don't know what actual
services were considered when the connection was being planned.

Another reuse for Alexandra Palace station that never came to
fruition was part of the 1930s Northern Heights plan. The LNER's
whole group of branches to High Barnet, Edgware, and Alexandra
Palace, along with the Moorgate - Finsbury Park route, were to
be transferred to the Underground's Northern Line, with track
connections at Finsbury Park and Highgate. But WW2, Austerity,
and planning changes left this project half-complete.

In the end, of course, the High Barnet branch was transferred to
the Northern Line, along with the Edgware branch only as far as
Mill Hill East, with the rest closing. But the Finsbury Park -
Highgate section, now serving only the Alexandra Palace branch,
remained in LNER and then BR hands, and closed in 1954. The station
name Alexandra Palace was subsequently transferred to Wood Green
on the main line.

The Palace Gates branch, being GER, had also become part of the
LNER, and in 1929 they decided to make a track connection from
there, not to Alexandra Palace, but onto their nearby Hertford loop.
This was not fully signalled until 1944, after which it was used
by Southend excursions. Most services continued to terminate at
Palace Gates; at this time off-peak trains just ran to Seven Sisters
while the peaks saw through service to Liverpool Street as well
as to North Woolwich (via South Tottenham) and perhaps other points.

Traffic at Palace Gates declined sharply in the postwar years;
passenger service ended on 1963-01-07 and the branch was closed
altogether on 1964-12-28.

[Most details in this posting are from "A Regional History of the
Railways of Great Britain", vol. 3, Greater London, by H.P. White,
1987 edition.]
--
Mark Brader | "...one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman
Toronto | Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to
| indicate successful termination of their C programs."
| -- Robert Firth
My text in this article is in the public domain.