Meanwhile, the depot, Park Junction box and the running lines remained in use, with trains still using the shunt neck to leave the depot and regain the northbound running line to East Finchley. The southbound and northbound main lines were still controlled by the standard LT 2-aspect colour light semi-automatic signals with fog repeaters installed in 1939 for the proposed extensions and the depot roads and shunt neck by LT disc-type shunt signals, all worked from Park Junction box. However, the whole depot complex closed on 25.3.84 after further service reductions, along with Park Junction signalbox. The signals were eventually removed and the tracks began to rust and slowly become derelict. The shunters cabin for Highgate Wood Sidings was demolished around 1987.By the late 1980's, traffic levels began to rise enough to consider bringing part of the depot back into use.

The occassional battery loco would visit the depot to test if this was feasable. It was considered worthwhile and a revised depot was opened on 23.1.89. The original depot building was re-used (the building had been re-roofed in 1970). The site of Highgate Wood Sidings became heavily overgrown, and Park Junction signalbox was vandalised and found itself surrounded by a jungle of trees and foliage, effectively hiding it from view within Highgate Woods. It became a grim haunt of vagrants and undesirables and was demolished in 1995. The disused portion of the main lines, fenced off from the depot area in use remained all the way up to Highgate West Tunnel but were overgrown and half-lifted, adding to the neglected feel of the area. The course of the Alexandra Palace branch where it diverged at Park Junction was lost to tree growth and became a part of the woods.

This is how the area remained until 1996, when the overgrown areas south of the depot were cleared and work was done to expand the site for the 1995 stock trains. Southern access was once again laid, the roads fanning up to a new shunt neck near the tunnels in a similar position to the previous one. The southbound main line was restored as a test track down to the shunt neck, with a small portion of track on the space of the northbound line. Concrete retaining walls were built round the eastern perimiter of the site, the fenced off area beyond being banked up in height.

A section of the site of Highgate Wood Sidings outside the depot limits remains overgrown, although there were plans at one time to use this area to build a new Northern Line control centre. The depot's south end tracks are joined to the existing depot roads 1-9 but are separated by moveable standing red lamps and for the time being are used to store withdrawn 1959 stock. The area to the west side of the depot (backing on to the Great North Road) was once the site of Wellington LNER freight sidings (closed on 1.10.1962) but is now just a bare space of ballasted land that was once overgrown but cleared for the depot enlargement.

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