‘I assumed I used to be trapped in an deserted tube station with no means out’

An urban explorer has spoken about how she was busted on a recent late-night “stealth” mission in an abandoned tube station.

Tokyo Matilda also thought she was going to have to spend the night in the derelict north London station which has been out of operation since the 1980s, after discovering the door out was locked.

The 20-year video editor from Sheffield says the station was abandoned after the number of passengers using it dwindled to just 1,000 a year, and described the exploration as “the biggest stealth mission” she had ever done.

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Tokyo explained to Daily Star how she, and her partner, who goes by the name ExploreMore, and fellow urban explorer Place Haking, had to sneak and hide to get into the station, while knowing it would only take just one sound to be caught.

She said: “We had to wait until 1am to finally get the opportunity to go down when a worker left everything ajar. We then had to be so quiet and quick getting down and hiding, as if we were caught there were possibly big consequences.”

Tokyo and her fellow explorers were down in the station for just “17 minutes” before they were caught by the worker, who was dismantling tracks.

She said: “We didn’t want to stay down there too long, however we got to the door and it was locked behind us so we couldn’t get out at all.”

Tokyo said she was “terrified” on realising the door was locked, as the only other way out was “running up the tracks” which was not only extremely dangerous, but could have sent the group to jail. So the trio ran down the stairs, alerting the worker who shouted at them to come out.

“He was surprised but then quite angry to see us down there”, said Tokyo. “He informed us the police had been called but then just let us go after realising we just wanted to take some pictures.”

Did getting busted put Tokyo off future expeditions? “It nearly did at one point when I thought I was trapped in an abandoned station with no way out!” Tokyo revealed, “However the rush and thrill is what gets me up in a morning.”

Tokyo, who has travelled as far as Japan to the Fukushima region to explore abandoned locales, described the station’s posters that dated between the 1950s and the 1980s as “insane” and made her feel like she was “stepping back in time”.

She explained that she used underground maps and blueprints online to track down disused railway lines, and that explorations like these can take months of research beforehand while working out how to sneak in and out.

While this exploration marked Tokyo’s first in a tube station, it won’t be her last. She said: “I’ve had a passion for trainspotting ever since I was a kid, so to get the opportunity to explore a derelict one with everything left was a dream come true.”

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