Bakerloo Line

Bakerloo Line – Harrow and Wealdstone to Elephant and Castle

There are 17 stations which I haven’t yet bagged on the Bakerloo. That’s a long trip, however the Bakerloo is ideal for this undertaking for one reason. It has no branches or arms, and is the first line which is just the one line that I’ve encountered during the challenge. Apart from the Waterloo and City, I suppose, but that doesn’t count because I completed that line as a consequence of doing other lines.  Of course, we need to build a walk into the trip, and on reflection I’ve decided to walk from Kilburn Park to Warwick Avenue, via Maida Vale. I’ll maybe say a little bit more about that when I get there.

Still, best not to get ahead of myself. So, Harrow and Wealdstone, then. I’m tempted to suggest that this station was named after an even more down at heel music hall act than Chalfont and Latimer, but you’ll probably be pleased that I won’t. While I was working my way through the Metropolitan I did mention that one of the things I cherish the Tube for is its individuality. Well, I think I can safely say that one of the two Harrow and Wealdstone station buildings is quite different from anything else I’ve seen so far. In some ways it reminds me a bit of a late Victorian or Edwardian police station. This station was the scene of the worst peacetime rail accident, when two national rail trains collided, killing 112 people, and memorial plaque which was erected to mark the 50^th anniversary can clearly be seen on the station. So it’s with fairly sombre mood that I await the train to Kenton.

Despite the old fashioned canopies above the platforms at Kenton, it doesn’t really have the countrified feel of a lot of the outlying stations of similar Edwardian vintage that we’ve visited so far on other lines. The wee Edwardian station building, quite charming in an understated way, seems really out of place, situated as it is on a wide, modern main road, and dwarfed by a modern office block. It’s not a listed building, so I can only hope that nothing happens to convince the Underground to pull it down and put a bright, shiny new station in its place. This area needs something like this station to humanise it a little bit. I return to the platform and find that I’m unable to come up with a new tube based game. Kenton doesn’t really lend itself that well to rhyming slang, so I come up with the definition, Kenton: verb (intransitive) – of politicians – to admit that you are unable to fulfil a specific manifesto promise, which everyone knew to be complete Balham in the first place.

There’s nothing of an Edwardian air about South Kenton, which is hardly surprising since it wasn’t even a glint in the architect’s eye until the 1930s. The platforms are functional then, serving Arriva Rail London as well as the Underground, but no better than that. As for the building, well, from the surface, well for want of a better word it’s like a hole into a tunnel underneath a bridge. But once you get up to the platform level ticket hall things improve considerably. This is pure art deco, streamlined curves at both ends, with glass panels absolutely typical of the period. If this building was out on the street, then I reckon it would have a chance of being one of the network’s more striking stations. As it is, at least it stands as a reward for the rather depressing walk in from the street. As for rhyming slang, the best I could come up with was South Kenton- Sergeant Benton. Fans of the original 1963-89 incarnation of Doctor Who will understand, and others really shouldn’t worry about it.

Sometimes you emerge from one station to think you’ve gone the wrong way, and arrived back at a station you visited a couple of stops ago. This is how I feel when I come out of North Wembley, as the station, and its situation are pretty similar to Kenton. However the buildings to the right, which stylistically look as if they may have been originally built in the 30s, are at least a little more in sympathy with the Edwardian station. I’m interested to learn that the station only opened as a mainline station in 1912, and didn’t connect to the underground until 1917, during the first world war. I’m tempted to play rhyming slang with the station name, and being a Spurs fan, of course I come up with North Wembley – Ossie’s knees were trembly. Mind you, so were mine when I kept shouting at Ricky Villa to pass the bleeding ball before he scored one of the most memorable goals in the history of the FA Cup. Apologies to Chas n’ Dave for that. 

So we arrive at Wembley Central. Various schoolboy suggestions for rhyming slang come to mind, but then I’ve had my own mental health issues in the last 10 years, so I’m definitely not going down that particular route. Wembley Central – can’t stand lentils? True, although not the funniest. As for the station entrance itself, well, what do you say. The station itself is unremarkable, it’s modern, rectangular, bulky grey tiles at street level, white block with tall narrow windows above it. However, the station is in a block where at least some attempt has been made to relieve the drab awfulness that is the characteristic of the residential blocks of the second half of the 20^th century. Random blocks of red and orange have been painted around some of the windows, and my heart and spirits lift a little bit to see that someone has had the sense to do something which does nothing to hurt the block for the residents, but hugely improves it for the poor sods who have to look at it on the way into the station. When I was a kid I used to rather like Wembley Central. I can’t remember why I was on the platform a few times, but I remember liking the fact that you could see the British Rail Electric locomotives passing through on their way North. My part of Ealing is graced only by the routes out of Paddington, which predominantly head West, and at the time you were only going to see diesels. Mind you, for the most part I did find the diesels rather more interesting, and as for steam locomotives, which had been phased out during the previous decade, I could wax lyrical – but won’t.

Stonebridge Park is one of a surprisingly small number of stations whose buildings were destroyed by bombing during world war two. Or so says Wikipedia. I can only conclude that I misread this, or it meant that parts of the station were destroyed, since the entrance, which I sketched, is clearly an Edwardian structure, and very unlike anything likely to have been built in 1948. I take a closer look, and find that the Wikipedia entry does admit that the booking hall seems to be the original building. It’s a fair cop, guv. All in all it’s a rather lovely little building, similar to Kenton and North Wembley, although nicer due to where it’s sited. It’s all the more surprising considering it is literally metres away from a depressing brick viaduct over the North Circular. I can’t quite remember if this is the same viaduct which proclaimed M.KHAN IS BENT in defiant graffiti for so many years in the 80s, but it might be. I google further, and find out that no, this was much closer to Bounds Green. Ah, nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

My Dad, although born in Battersea, of Scottish extraction, grew up in Acton, and he was always far more familiar with the Acton, Willesden, Harlesden area than I ever was. I remember the only times I was ever anywhere near the area when I was growing up was when the old fellow used to take my brothers and me to Old Oak Common depot, to see if he could blag his way into getting any of the drivers of the class 52 ‘Western’ Diesel Hydraulics, and the brand, spanking new Intercity 125s to let us look in the cabs. It was one of very few things I can remember him being conspicuously good at. I remember it as being a determinedly industrial area, not unlike the Great West Road and the Western Avenue, and the Cheeseborough Ponds factory particularly sticks out in my memory. By the look of things, Harlesden Station predated all of that. My initial thought is that it’s another 1912 job, and that’s exactly what it proves to be. The first station on the site, though, was opened a mere 69 years earlier, in 1841. Putting that into perspective, Queen Victoria was still in her early 20s at that time, and the opening of the world’s first steam powered passenger railway, the Stockton and Darlington, had happened a mere 16 years earlier. Today, the walls of the platform I face are pretty much devoid of advertising, making this one of the most featureless overground platforms that I’ve visited, so I’m not sorry when the train pulls in.

There’s some really rather nice period features I notice on the platforms of Willesden Junction, with ornamental ironwork holding up what I’d guess could be the original canopies. However, when I emerge from the station it’s as if I have come forward over 100 years in as many seconds. My usual inadequate research fails to tell me when this modern building was opened, but I’d be surprised if its celebrated its 20^th anniversary yet. It’s perfectly pleasant, but, well, how can I put it, if you removed all the signage, put up Tesco Express signs and painted it in the appropriate colours, this would easily pass for one. Which is fine and dandy if you want to catch a train in a station that looks like a supermarket. Willesden Junction – never mind the form, feel the function. One thing that my research does reveal is that this station (and its predecessors) has had more than its fair share of incidents and accidents over the years, no fewer than 14 bullet points’ worth on its wiki entry.

I’ve found a photograph on the net taken in 1980 which shows the current Kensal Green station well on the way to being finished, and the old station, shortly to be demolished. The old station was a small, 1916 one, not totally dissimilar from others on the line. The new station just looks like a large shed. It still does. It says a lot for the 70s and 80s that demolishing one and building the other would have been seen as progress. Now, I do know that ‘modern’ and ‘bad’ are not interchangeable terms. I’d like to think that I’m as quick to praise striking modern stations like Hounslow East, as I am to condemn 70’s/80’s eyesores like Gunnersbury – several times voted the ugliest station on the network. But I’m very sorry, in my opinion, any station which looks more like a medium sized warehouse than a station is just plain wrong. Kensal Green – best left unseen.

My rather grumpy mood really doesn’t improve as I get out of the train at Queen’s Park station. As a rough rule of thumb, I do think that stations which have platforms that are above ground shouldn’t try to pretend otherwise. The platforms where I get off here are glazed over, and frankly, bearing in mind the uninspiring design ethic here, so am I. The station is shared with London Overground, and I’m afraid that, from the outside, it looks just like any 70s/80s British rail town station. Not a curve anywhere, and precious few diagonals. I did actually know that Queen’s Park Rangers FC, now comfortably based in the Shepherd’s Bush/White City area, did once have a ground nearby, hence the name. Mind you, I may be wrong, but I think that QPR had more grounds in their time than any other London club. Queen’s Park Station – pointless creation. Hmm, the negativity I’m feeling towards the Bakerloo line at the moment is starting to worry me. I’ve done 10 stations so far, but with this being a marathon trip, I’ve still got over half a dozen to go. At this stage I can only hope that the rain, which seems to about to start at any moment, holds off on my walk from Kilburn Park to Warwick Avenue.

Thankfully, my mood starts to lighten as I alight at Kilburn Park. I know that this is an early Stanley Heaps station, when Heaps took over Leslie Green’s in house style and ran with it in his own direction. Hence, when you first look at it, you can recognise that this is a tube station from the first couple of decades of the 20^th century. It certainly looks superficially like a Green station, with the ox blood terracotta tiles, and semi circular windows. However if you look for a moment longer, you begin to notice that the windows aren’t the same as any Green station. The semi circles are just the arches at the top of longer windows than Green typically used, and the glass is attractively leaded in diamond patterns. The station name in the cream banding along the top is very attractive too. According to my research this station, built in 1915, as one of the underground’s very first to be built to incorporate escalators rather than lifts, which meant that there was no bulky lift machinery to have to house. I like the ornamental lights as well. For me, this is a great and stylish station. Poor old Stanley Heaps – he tends to sit in the shadows behind Leslie Green and Charles Holden. His own distinctive style in stations like Edgware probably didn’t produce the finest stations on the network, and his best stations tend to owe to the work of Green or Holden. Yet he was more than just a hack imitator of other architect’s work, and Kilburn Park is a good demonstration of his versatility, and his ability to add originality to a particular style. I start to feel better as I set off along Cambridge Avenue, even though a light drizzle starts as I skirt the Paddington Recreation Grounds.

Now, I have a particular fondness for Maida Vale Station. A few years ago, not long after I began urban sketching, I made a visit to London, during the course of which I made an ink and watercolour sketch of Maida Vale station, which I sold. Yes, dearly beloved, I do sell my stuff. My artistic soul is for sale, and the price is a lot cheaper than you might expect. Back then, I pretty much divided all London underground stations into three mental piles – the ones with oxblood tiles, the Charles Holden ones from my childhood, and everything else which wasn’t worth bothering with. I’d call this attitude the folly of youth, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’d already turned 50 by this time. So, now I know that this is another early Stanley Heaps station, another very distinctive one considering that it’s on a corner site. I don’t know exactly what it is, but this is just a particularly picturesque station. It’s grade II listed – rightly so. I’m rather charmed to see that the exterior of the station became the fictional Westbourne Oak station in the rather charming 2014 Paddington film. It’s just that kind of station.

It’s only about half a mile from here to Warwick Avenue Station. The wind’s blowing quite hard now, making my umbrella less of a portable shelter than an offensive weapon. So I don’t take especial note of the rather nice residential buildings in these parts. All I know at this point about Warwick Avenue tube station is the song by Duffy. I’ll be honest, I loved the song when it first came out, but to paraphrase the lyrics – When I get to Warwick Avenue I’m a bit disappointed to find out that there’s not a lot to see, the station being underground. The stairs, well, what do you expect? They’re steps. Come to think of it, though, the song is about a final meeting with a girlfriend/boyfriend, to say it’s over, and being honest, in the long run it’s probably better to be brutal by dumping someone in a dump like this, rather than trying to soften the blow in a more attractive station like Maida Vale or Kilburn Park. To be a wee bit fairer, there is a large, rectangular brick ventilation shaft, but its plainness is only highlighted by the fact that there’s what appears to be a delightful original cabmen’s shelter right next to it.  

There’s 6 minutes for me to wait on the platform for the next train, which is more than enough time for the cabbie’s shelter to set me off on a train of thought. When the Bakerloo Line was first built, horsepower literally was the most popular – if not only – form of surface transport. That and Shanks’ pony. Alright, the internal combustion engine had been invented, and London’s first double decker motor buses, the estimable type B had been plying the capital’s streets for several years. My great great grandfather wasn’t actually a cabbie, he was a ‘carman in vestry’ in Hammersmith, which I found out was the late 19^th century equivalent of a corporation dustman. Why the cabmen’s shelter brought him to mind was that he died of pneumonia at the age of 29. So the shelters were surely a great boon to those working the streets, even if a water trough was all that was on offer to the poor horses.

I already sketched the Bakerloo Praed Street station since it’s shared with several other lines. On the same trip I also sketched the Bakerloo Edgware Road station. So I get what is the equivalent of a trip into hyperspace as I hop forward as far as Marylebone Station. Hmm. Marylebone Station. Would those words have any meaning to the vast majority of Londoners had it not been included on the original London Monopoly Board? I rather think not. In my fifty plus years on this planet I had never before had any cause to visit the station – and I was a train spotter too. As a matter of fact, in all likelihood Marylebone was only included on the board because it was an LNER terminus at the time, like Kings Cross, Liverpool Street, and the even more obscure Fenchurch Street, which doesn’t even have its own tube station. I’m told that this was one of the last, if not the last mainline terminus to open in London. As a tube station, it’s very large. As a mainline terminus it’s a little on the small side, and when you compare it with the gothic exuberance of, say, St. Pancras and the Great Midland Hotel, its very late Victorian gothic is rather restrained. In one way at least I’m glad to visit, since this was where the opening scenes of the Beatles’ best film “A Hard Days Night” were made. The Harry Potter films were actually shot at Kings Cross though, although next door St. Pancras was used for the exteriors. Well, there we are, that just about wraps it up for Marylebone Station. I did not pass go and I certainly did not pick up £200.

Baker Street is one of those stations that just keeps giving when you’ve visited it once, and so I pass through without getting off the train. Next stop is Regent’s Park, and this is the last Bakerloo line station that doesn’t connect with any other line, until we’ve crossed the river. The next – and last time it happens is at Lambeth North, which, incidentally, is the least used station in travelcard Zone 1, according to Wikipedia. Regent’s Park is the 2^nd least used. The ticket hall has always been subsurface. Apparently in the original act of Parliament for the building of the line, no station was to be built here. The ticket hall was dug beneath part of the park itself, which did cause quite serious subsidence.

I head back down towards the lifts, and it strikes me that I’ve been on the go for several hours now, and haven’t got round to eating my rolls. Yet I look at the map on the platform, and realise that although there are 5 stations between here and Lambeth North, I have actually visited all of them before. In fact, Lambeth North is the only Bakerloo line station I haven’t yet bagged on this or a previous trip. Lambeth North is a station I remember only due to its proximity to the Imperial War

Museum. In fact, bearing this in mind I can’t help wondering why it’s the least used station in zone 1. It’s funny the things you remember. The first thing I remember from childhood rips to the Imperial War Museum is passing by a house which a blue plaque announced used to be the home of William Bligh, of Mutiny on the Bounty fame. A superlative navigator, Bligh safely brought an open boat full of his loyal men to Timor after a journey of 3000 miles. He was honourably acquitted of any wrongdoing in the events leading to the mutiny. Didn’t do him that much good. Some 16 years after the mutiny he was set as Governor to New South Wales, where he was deposed in another mutiny. Despite this, though, he did eventually rise to the rank of Vice Admiral.

My other memory of Lambeth North is of a joyous occasion when my O Level History class were taken on a day trip to the Imperial Museum. We were trusted to be able to go on the tube – a trust which proved rather misplaced. Changing to the Bakerloo at Piccadilly Circus, Mrs. Crichton warned us all not to go running off. So Steve Jansz and Kwinny Sanger both did exactly that, got an earlier train than the rest of us, and were laughing their tripes off waiting for us. A stern talking to from Mrs. C. had no effect as they did the same on the way home. And headed off to Elephant and Castle by mistake. Mrs. C. sent the rest of us to make our own way home, and waited to rendezvous with the others when their train returned.

The station itself is a little bit of what my dear old Nan would have called ‘fur coat and no knickers.” The façade is a nice, though fairly small, 3 arch Leslie Green job. However, if you walk round the side you soon see hat this station’s beauty is only skin deep. I’d imagine that the buildings originally next door have since been removed, so when you look you can clearly see where the tiling ends, and what’s left on the side is a bare cliff of a wall unrelieved by anything other than a large billboard.

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There we are, then, a whole line in a single day! I’ve come through a seriously grumpy stretch between Willesden and Kilburn Park, and the realisation starts to dawn on me that with two more trips I could complete the challenge. Looking back, I think it would be difficult to make a case for the Bakerloo being one of the most architecturally interesting lines, but I’ve generally enjoyed the trip, and to be fair, some of the most impressive Bakerloo stations had already been visited on earlier trips.

Here’s a thought. With the exception of the Circle Line, which to be fair isn’t really a line, but a service, which has no distinct stations of its own, the three lines left are all lines which have been created in my lifetime. The Victoria Line first opened in 1968, the Jubilee in 1979 and the Hammersmith and City gained its independence in 1990. My plan is to go middle for diddle, taking one trip to do the Jubilee Line next. Apart from anything else, I know that there are some very distinctive Jubilee Line stations in Docklands built for the Jubilee Line extension.