"Canonbury railway station serves the districts of Canonbury and Highbury within the London Borough of Islington in north London. It is on London Overground's North London Line and East London Line. The station and all trains serving it are operated by London Overground, and the station is in Travelcard Zone 2. This location of the station is close to the boundary with the London Borough of Hackney.
The station originally opened in 1858 to the east of its present location as "Newington Road & Balls Pond" and was renamed "Canonbury" shortly before the move to its present site in 1870.
In 2007, the ticket office was extensively refurbished, as part of the station upgrade programme delivered through conversion to London Overground. On 1 June 2010, as a result of the East London Line extension, North London Line services were rerouted to the newly constructed platforms 3 and 4, with the East London Line trains now using refurbished platforms 1 and 2.
To the west of the station is the Canonbury curve, a freight-only connection through the Canonbury tunnel to the East Coast Main Line at Finsbury Park which had opened in 1874. A passenger service operated to/from Broad Street from 1875 until 1976 when suburban services from the main line were diverted to Moorgate via the newly built surface connection between Finsbury Park and Drayton Park.
The North London Line between Gospel Oak and Stratford closed in February 2010, for installing a new signalling system and for extending 30 platforms, in order in due course to allow four-car trains to run on the London Overground network. After reopening on 1 June 2010, the work continued until May 2011 with a reduced service operating Mondays to Saturdays and no service at all on Sundays.
During the NLL closure of February–May 2010, the through route was moved to the north side of the cutting, and two adjacent brand new platforms provided, an island platform replacing the former eastbound platform. This allowed the extended ELL to serve Canonbury (and Highbury & Islington) on a pair of completely segregated tracks occupying the former route on the south side of the cutting.
Since the northern extension of the East London Line, which was completed and opened in March 2011, Canonbury station has had four platforms, giving interchange between the London Overground East London Line (ELL) and North London Line (NLL) with step-free access to all platforms and peak service frequencies of 12 trains per hour in each direction.
London Buses routes 30 and 236 serve the station."