Metropolitan Section 2

Metropolitan Line Section 2: Northwick Park to Aldgate

Bearing in mind we only have 10 unbagged Metropolitan stations to visit, I have an ambitious walking plan for this trip. If I walk from Finchley Road station to the next station, Baker Street, then I can also take in two Jubilee Line stations, and one former station in between. Even allowing for stopping to take photos, I ought to be able to easily do the walk in an hour. Knocking off these two stations will mean that the Jubilee Line will be a relatively leisurely one single trip.

Northwick Park is one of those stations which seems to not only lend itself to being used for tube rhyming slang, it positively demands it – Northwick Park – looks better in the dark. It probably does, too. As we’ve already noticed, stations tacked onto the side of an overhead line are not the best, and this is even more true for stations actually built into a glorified railway arch, as is the case here. There is actually some attempt at ornamentation on the entrance, which I’m guessing are original features, like the stone work on either side of the doorway, and the arches of the windows which have sadly been bricked and plastered in. The stonework, painted over as it is, does at least suggest that the station has a bit of age to it, as do the remains of the windows, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is the original station building. Wikipedia is unforthcoming. However, Wikipedia does alert me to the fact that Kenton station on the Bakerloo is nearby, and I am sorely tempted to knock off another Bakerloo. My mind is made up though, when I see that a train is soon due. This is only a slow service station, so there’s no way that I’m going to look this gift horse in the mouth.

The current station at the next stop, Preston Road, was built in 1931, when the station was resited from one side of the road to the opposite. There’s two things which I find especially of note about the station. Firstly, the platforms have flower beds, which is quite unusual, and they’re filled with plenty of trees, bushes and other plants. I’m not in the least horticulturally inclined, but I like it. It gives the station an exotic feel, and for a moment I half think about entertaining the only other person on the platform, a lady of indeterminate age whose hair is dyed red enough to make a statement, that statement being ‘I am trying too hard’, by pretending to be a Japanese soldier who hasn’t been told the war is over. Thankfully the urge passes. The other interesting thing about the station is the appearance of the exterior. The station itself is in the middle of a 1930s parade of shops which isn’t maybe quite the full Metroland experience of Watford and Croxley, but certainly owes more to them than to the stuff that Charles Holden was designing at the same time on other lines.

Wembley Park provides some happy memories. I used to go to the huge open air market on a Sunday morning, not far from the station, and three years in a row, 1981-3, I cycled early on the morning after the FA cup final to the stadium to buy tickets for the cup final replays. Two of these were great games, and the other. . . not so much. My sketch shows the modern entrance on Olympic Way, and surely the steps are meant to echo the sight of football ground terracing. In the same way the pipes above the canopy echo the Wembley Arch. That’s a clever design. I haven’t been to a game in the rebuilt stadium yet, but that’s on my to do list. As for the area, well, it’s interesting to think that at the start of the 20^th century this was just fields owned by the Metropolitan Railway. The chairman of the railway, a chap called Edmund Watkin, conceived the good idea to build Wembley Park here, and the less conspicuously good idea to build London’s answer to the Eiffel Tower here. The first stage only was built, but the ground proved prone to subsidence, and frankly the paying public weren’t interested in it. After Watkin’s death the constructed first stage was quietly demolished – although in aerial photographs taken during construction of the original Wembley Stadium you can clearly see where one of the footings of the tower had been.

I leave the Metropolitan behind for a while at Finchley Road. The current station building was built as part of a parade of shops in 1914, and while the block is not as grand as you’d normally expect from the decade or so leading up to the First World War, there’s no mistaking that it’s very much of its time. Google throws up this wee gobbet, that it was during excavation for the deep level Bakerloo – now Jubilee – line tunnels close to the station that it was discovered that this was the southern limit of an ice age glacier. Although if you’ve stood on the platform of Hillingdon station in the winter for any length of time it feels as if said glacier never quite got round to melting.

The Metropolitan line goes non stop to Baker Street, but I’m in no mood to pass up the chance of mopping up a couple of Jubilee line stations, and a disused station by walking between them. It’s a walk of slightly less than 10 minutes to Swiss Cottage

station. Which is just as well, since if it had taken any longer I would feel very hard done by when I catch sight of the station. I haven’t ever been to Switzerland, but anything less like a cottage is difficult to imagine. Granted, the station has a subterranean ticket hall so I certainly don’t expect an ornate surface building, but I honestly think that a plain unadorned set of steps would be better than what’s here, a straight, blocky pillar of the dreaded grey bricks, the only relief on its sides being an information poster at ground level, and the roundel at the top. Who was it, I can’t help wondering, who first looked at a red brick and thought “Yeah, it’s okay, but it’d look nicer in grey.”? And more to the point, why? Part of me feels relieved that at least I won’t have to look at this again on my Jubilee line trip. This is another station whose name, ultimately, derives from a pub. The Swiss Cottage area takes its name from the 1804 Swiss Tavern, which was built in the style of a Swiss chalet. There you go.

One of the appeals of doing this section on foot is that the route is easy. I stay on the A41, and I’d say a good fifteen minutes later I’m passing the former Marlborough Road station. Mind you, I only know that it’s a former station due to the little bit of research I did prior to commencing this trip. It’s quite an appealing little building too, single storey, with two arched windows reaching all the way to the ground on either side of the slightly larger arched doorway. Style wise it doesn’t really seem all that similar to any of the other station buildings that are still standing that I’ve seen. I’d venture to say Victorian, and may even be the original station building from 1868. Up until about 10 years ago it was a restaurant, but now it houses a substation, sadly. I say sadly, but if it means that the building’s exterior is left untouched and unmessed about with then I won’t complain. Does the paint have to be so dull, though?

Another couple of minutes along the Finchley Road is St. John’s Wood station.  My first thought when I see the brown bricks, curved frontage and glazed screen is that it’s a Charles Holden, but a quick google reveals that this is in fact a Stanley Heaps station from 1939, during his late, Holdenesque period. St. John’s Wood is the answer to a trivia quiz question which has done the rounds over the years – which is the only tube station which does not contain any of the same letters as the word Mackerel. Mind you, as Wikipedia rather sniffily points out, this is only because the Saint is abbreviated to St. I do wonder sometimes whether there is a wayward genius sitting in bare, unfurnished loft or basement somewhere, carefully crafting these trivia questions, then releasing them onto the net to cause mayhem. Me, I’m lucky if I come up with something like ‘which line on the London tube map is coloured red? (no looking in your diaries)

I could get back on the train and take the Jubilee into Baker Street, but stuff it. I am steeped in blood so far that go back were as tedious as go o’er, or something like that. Besides, the walk to Baker Street tube, takes me past Lords Cricket Ground, (which once had its own station but lost it, unlike the Oval), and Regents Park. Also, being a huge Beatles fan, I know that with a little judicious juggling of my route I can cross the famous Abbey Road zebra. All in all , what with detours and lingering in various spots it takes me slightly more than half an hour before I reach Baker Street, but I can’t help feeling it’s worth it.

A few years ago I visited Budapest. Budapest’s metro is the second oldest metro system in the world, and the oldest in continental Europe. Third oldest in Europe? Glasgow, thanks for playing anyway. Although perfectly efficient, I wasn’t impressed with the stations, poorly decorated and dimly lit for the most part. However, in the centre of the city I kept noticing signs for the metro which looked far nicer, and more deliberately old fashioned, than the others. These, it transpired, belong to the historic Line 1, which was the original metro line in Budapest. I don’t know if this is the case for all stations on line 1, but the two I visited were decorated in period fashion, and my first thought emerging on the platform was that they reminded me a bit of the original platforms at Baker Street.

Not the exterior, mind you. This, as far as I have been able to ascertain, is another Charles Clark building. Nothing wrong with that, either. In some ways it’s just a little reminiscent of the station he built at Paddington which we visited on the District line trip, although that station doesn’t have a 1920s residential building on top of it like Baker Street does.

Baker Street is a major station on the oldest part of the Underground network, and it really doesn’t want you to forget it, nor should it, in my opinion. Nor does it want you to forget Baker Street’s most famous, albeit fictional, resident, with Sherlock Holmes’ profile prominently displayed on tiles on the platform. There’s enough period ambience when you’re waiting for the Hammersmith and City line, for example, that you can almost believe that at any minute a steam train might come along, pulling what looks like a coal truck with William Gladstone sitting in the front amongst others. Doesn’t happen, though. Humming Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street brings nothing but a funny look from a fellow passenger, and I cut my losses to head off to Great Portland Street.

Strictly speaking I could take the Circle line or the Hammersmith and City and it wouldn’t make a lot of difference. Thankfully, though, I don’t have to work my way through any ethical dilemma about the purity of the challenge, since there’s a Metropolitan line train ready when I’m ready to go. Emerging from the station building I take a good look, and decide that old Charlie C must have really decided to go wild with the design, since it’s built in what appears to be the shape of an elongated letter O, standing quite apart from all of the other buildings all around it. There must have been something in the air around this particular area of Central London, since it’s not at all far from the BBC’s iconic Broadcasting House, the original building of which is a wonderful, mad, curving wedding cake of a building, and the inspired silliness of All Souls Church in the shadow of Broadcasting House. My feet might be hurting a bit, but I am sorely tempted to go for a wander. However as we all know, in our tube rhyming slang, Great Portland Street – aching feet, and since there’s still 4 stations to stop at, and 3 more to pass through on the way I hop back onto the train.

I have an instant flashback when I stand back and take a good look at the entrance to Euston Square station. While Baker Street memories were inspired by a visit to Budapest, the entrance to Euston Square, is slightly reminiscent of stations I’ve used on the Prague Metro, where large shiny glass and chrome or stainless steel booths house lifts which whisk you down to the ticket halls. It’s a bit more to do with the colours and the overall aesthetic than anything else, but based on my travels on the Prague and Budapest metros, the Berlin U Bahn, and the Stockholm T Bana, I think I can say that this is one of the stations closest to the ‘contemporary north-European Metro station design’ ethic that I’ve yet seen on the network. I can’t say that I dislike it, but somehow it’s just not the Tube. Because, although I love metros, subways and all underground railways, there’s only one Tube, and the Tube is not like any other network. Sometimes in a bad way, sure, but I’m afraid that I cherish the Tube for its individuality.

I pass through Kings Cross on what I think is the third occasion during the challenge, and alight at Farringdon. Its best known claim to fame is that it was the eastern terminus of the world’s first underground railway, of course. That original station only lasted a couple of years. In 1865, when the extension to Moorgate was built, it was necessary to relocate the station. Newspaper engravings of this second station show a rather grand building, reminiscent of a much larger version of the disused station at Marlborough Road, lending credence to my belief that this may be the original building. The 1866 building was replaced in the 1920s with an even grander Charles Clark building, which incorporated some rather modern bays with rounded corners jutting out alongside the station entrance, with the rather more traditional stonework of the second storey. This building is still here, I’m happy to say, however there is also an entrance to the underground through the rather new National Rail building opposite the old one. In style I suppose that I’d say it is closest to Tottenham Court Road, although the similarity is by no means marked, since the front of Tottenham Court road is somewhat wedged shape, with the roof sloping gently, compared to the flat roofs and flat frontage here. It still looks impressive, but then it’s not ten years old yet. Time will tell if it retains its appeal.

It’s probably my age – in fact it’s definitely my age – but every time I hear or read the name Barbican, I have a flashback to Lawrie McMenemy, former Southampton FC manager, advertising Barbican Alcohol Free Lager on television (“Barbican – it’s brewed like a true lager, man, but then some silly bugger takes all the alcohol oot.”) The station is the nearest to the wonderful Museum of London. The last time I was here was in 2007. I was in the grand final of a well known television quiz show, answering questions on London Bridge. As part of the show, the BBC wanted to make a filmed insert with each of the finalists. One of the others got to go to Venice. Me? London Bridge itself, then the Museum of London, after closing hours, to view some of the artifacts from the bridge that are not on show to the public. And I absolutely loved it. I do not, however, love the entrance to the station through a typical early 80s block. In fact, if you love early 80s architecture, then the Barbican is the place for you. But not for me, and I’m back onto the train as soon as propriety – and the timetable – allow.

I visited Moorgate on the Northern Line, so I stay on the train, which I also do through Liverpool Street. Although I can’t help noting that one fact I failed to report when I stopped at Liverpool Street with the Central line is that the main line station is twinned with Amsterdam Central Station, which is a gorgeous building that I painted in October 2018. (Two coats of whitewash, and one topcoat, Aye thenk yow.)  The next stop is our last unbagged Metropolitan Line station, Aldgate.

In case you’re wondering, the ‘gate’ in the name refers to one of the ancient gates in the medieval city of London, these being Aldgate (Old Gate), Newgate, Ludgate, Bishopsgate and Cripplegate, which had their origins in the gates to the roman settlement of Londinium. Aldergate was a late roman addition, and Moorgate in the 15^th century. As for the station, this is a nice slice of Central London Charles Clarkery, although I don’t believe that this one is listed. I’m intrigued when Wikipedia informs me that construction of the original Aldgate Station was made more complicated since the site chosen was on top of a plague pit containing a good 1000 bodies. This station apparently was mentioned in “The Bruce Partington Plans”, one of Conan-Doyles last Sherlock Holmes stories.

All of which neatly wraps up the Metropolitan Line, the last line which will require more than a single trip. Somehow there’s not quite the sense of achievement that I felt on completing the Northern line, rather just a sense of fatigue. The challenge has gained what I think of as terminal velocity now, though. Having come so far, and being comfortably over ¾ of the way complete I don’t see any way in which I won’t find the necessary oomph to finish. The idea of completing the Bakerloo line in a single day, which is next, is certainly appealing.

Metropolitan Line Section 1

The Metropolitan Line has three arms branching off in the west, and if accommodating the Northern Line’s loops and branches had been a headache to work out, then this would have been a migraine. I say would have been, because the fact is that all bar one of the stations on the Uxbridge branch have already been visited on the Piccadilly Line. This at least renders the task feasible. My selected route involves starting at Chesham Station, and then walking to Amersham station, which by all accounts should take between three quarters of an hour and an hour. From Amersham by train to Rickmansworth, and a 30 minute bus ride and walk to Watford station. By train from Watford to Harrow on the Hill, and then a fifteen minute or so walk from Harrow on the Hill station to West Harrow Station. 14 stations in total, no station passed more than once in the day, leaving a nice straight west – east run of 10 stations from Northwick Park to Aldgate for the second trip. That’s the theory anyway.

As this promises to be a long day I make an early start outside Chesham. What I’d expected was a countryfied station. I didn’t actually expect the station to have been built inside a little dairyman’s cottage, though. At least that’s how it appears to me. Google quickly informs me that this is both the westernmost and northernmost of all London Underground stations, and immediately if rather unfairly the T.S. Eliot line about ending not with a bang, but a whimper comes to mind. A bit harsh that, since the station is the original building opened in 1889, and it wasn’t originally going to be the terminus, since the proposal was to extend the line to Tring. That didn’t happen, but the branch was at least retained.

Since Time’s winged chariot is busily hurrying near, I strike out for Amersham. While doing so, I make the decision that today’s tube mind game will be tube rhyming slang. It does exactly what it says on the tin, that is, you take the name of a station, and find an appropriate word or phrase which rhymes with it. Some station names lend themselves to this rather better than others. Chesham and Amersham, for example are better used for definitions. Chesham: (noun) Edible plastic from which the filling of all British rail inter-city buffet car sandwiches was made from February 1971 – August 2002. Amersham: (noun) Any member of an Amateur Dramatic Society who claims to have been a member of the National Youth Theatre, and turned down a scholarship at RADA.

Stations like Chorleywood and Chalfont and Latimer work much better for rhyming slang, as in Chorleywood – Not much good – Chalfont and Latimer – Whitbread, Fatima. It’s all in the rhythm of the syllables, you see.

Once upon a time Amersham was not actually the end of the Metropolitan line, as it stretched its way to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. It looks like another original station building, but this one is much longer than Chesham. The canopies over the platforms have a series of triangular roofs which look like the kind you see in old photographs above the terraces of football grounds in the 1930s. I’ve rarely seen these on station canopies. The whole thing looks just a little heavy, but it’s interesting, and at least gives the station a distinctive quality.

While I’m waiting for the train to the next station, Chalfont and Latimer, it occurs to me, that this name would also work for the definition game. Chalfont and Latimer: (proper noun) Music Hall double act: aka “The Twin Titians of Tomfoolery”. Chalfont and Latimer were very much a second division music hall act, best appreciated by drunken audiences. Their stage act consisted of cross talk and smutty jokes, including their little remembered “Don’t tread on me dahlias, guv’nor” routine. However they rarely failed to please with the finale of their act, a rousing chorus of the popular song “If you pay me fare, you can take me up the Arsenal”’. Not knowing the area, I wonder if it is close to Chalfont St. Giles. Google informs me that it is, as well as Chalfont St. Peters. Since we’ve been talking about rhyming slang, I understand why the station was never actually called Chalfont St. Giles, bearing in mind the Cockney rhyming slang associations. The station itself looks to be contemporary with Amersham, and I don’t doubt that it’s stood here since the Metropolitan line first stretched this far. On a grey day the one storey building looks a little dark and sombre, but it really wouldn’t take much to give it the same Victorian country charm as other stations of the same vintage – bright fresh paint around the windows and on the frames, a couple of troughs full of flowers, some hanging baskets and a little bit of sunshine would work wonders. The wooden posts supporting the porch above the entrance are very nice, redolent of a Victorian vicarage for some reason.

Chorleywood is another station with the unusual triangular vaulted roofs over the white canopies. I wonder if this was something which was installed by the original national rail lines. The appearance of the exterior of the station is pretty similar to Chalfont and Latimer, and it’s difficult to find too much to say about it that I haven’t already said for the previous station. It suffers a little by comparison with the posts holding up the porch. They’re just not quite as nice – maybe not the original ones.

With my opinions on the station itself quickly exhausted, I think about the line as a whole. With its 34 stations it is a shadow of its former self. Since I first moved away from London in the mid 80s, a section of what was the Metropolitan declared UDI, or had UDI declared for it, to be rebranded as the Hammersmith and City Line. I’ll maybe say more about that when we do part of the original Metropolitan Railway which ran between Paddington and Farringdon from 1863, on the next trip.

Bring a lover of Douglas Adams’ writing, the name Rickmansworth is immovably bracketed with the words ‘a small café in’. If you’ve never read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series, well, basically in the opening to the first novel, it is in a small café in Rickmansworth that a girl suddenly realises how to sort out all the problems with life we poor humans face, but is wiped out along with the rest of the Earth before she can tell anyone what it is. In layout the station is pretty similar to Chorleywood and Amersham, although the porch is a little more interesting, with its ornamental iron work. You can’t really see it from the sketch, but there’s a watertower tacked onto the right side of the station which backs onto the platform, and I guess it’s been cleaned up recently, since it has beautiful brickwork.

To be fair, I only have to wait about 10 minutes for the number 724 to Harlow which will drop me about 15 minutes walk from Watford tube station. I have considered walking the whole way, but that would take me a good hour, and at this stage of the game banking half an hour seems a pretty good idea, especially since it’s another grey and overcast day in Metroland. Once I get off the bus, a rather pleasant thought occurs that despite the fact that the Metropolitan now languishes well behind 4 other lines in terms of the number its number of stations, the fact is that for all of that, not only was the Metropolitan Railway the first ever underground railway, but the fact is that the word ‘metro’, used for many underground railway systems throughout the world, is derived from the Metropolitan railway, via the French Metropolitain system. Maybe, I muse, maybe this is why the line is coloured an imperial purple on the map.

Watford tube station was built in 1925, and to me is very, very Metroland. The idea of Metro-Land, the move to entice people to move out of central London to settle in Middlesex and Buckinghamshire along the western arms of the Metropolitan Railway (later Line) was first dreamed up in 1915.  Having retained surplus land along the route from the building of the lines, once the small issue of World War One had been resolved they were able to go ahead developing housing. The Metropolitan was unique in this respect, since other companies had not been allowed to retain their surplus land. Metroland developments are characterised, and sometimes satirised, for the tudor revival style of much of their original architecture, and Watford station displays several of the characteristics of this style. Wikipedia actually describes its style as “Arts and Crafts”, which is fair enough, and I won’t argue against it. The architect was Charles Clark, who was the Metropolitan Railway’s chief architect at this point – remember, the Metropolitan Railway was still independent in 1925. It’s interesting to note that, what with its columns it is just slightly – only slightly mind you – reminiscent of some of the Stanley Heaps stations on the Edgware branch of the Northern Line.

Charles Clark designed 25 stations, of which a number remain. Watford is one of his listed buildings, as is our next station, Croxley. Although by no means identical to Watford, it’s pretty much in the same idiom. Croxley is so called after the local area, Croxley Green, and Wikipedia throws up this fact that John Betjeman, poet laureate at the time, featured the revels on the village green in his 1973 documentary on Metroland, called appropriately “Metro-land”, where he rather waspishly described them as a tradition dating back to 1952. Croxley, of course, is a prime candidate for the definition game, and while I’m waiting for the train to Moor Park I come up with this: ‘Croxley (plural noun) Technical term for the small pieces of polystyrene, shaped like (although sadly not tasting like) Cheesy Wotsits, which certain online retailers can’t make up their mind whether they wish to use as filler in packaging or not. Dame Vivienne Westwood was once wrongly reported as considering designing an Autumn collection manufactured from recycled Croxley. ‘

As the next train pulls into Moor Park station, I ransack my memory for any facts I already know about the place, and all I can come up with is that Moor Park is the home to a golf course which used to hold the Bob Hope pro-celebrity tournament. There’s another thing. Bob Hope. I had always thought that Bob Hope was born in Eltham. Then about 10 years ago I played in a quiz in Culverhouse Cross in Cardiff, and when asked the question, the question master swore blind he was born in a street in Barry. Gavin and Stacey and Bob? I think not. The station building itself is something of a departure from the late Victorian design ethic we’ve seen so far on this line. The current station was opened in 1961, and considering it dates back to that particular era, it really isn’t too offensive at all. I’m guessing that this one came off the drawing board before the clean, modernist lines of the best of 50s design were twisted into the ugly brutalism of the worst of the 60s and 70s. I like the vertical wood panelling cladding on the right hand side of the entrance.

Northwood station looks to have been built in the 60s as well, but there the similarity to Moor Park ends. I doubt that there can be more than a couple of years between them, but the appearance of Northwood suggests that the rot had well and truly set in to the London Transport architectural design department. Before this trip, I had no idea that this part of the Metropolitan Line runs an express service. So when you’re sitting on the platform on what is effectively the Metropolitan’s slow line, you have the unedifying experience of seeing the fast trains zipping past on the fast lines, hell bent on Harrow on the Hill. 

Still, I don’t grieve over this, because if I’m to visit the next station, Northwood Hills, then I’m in the right place. Thankfully this is a 1933 original building, although this one doesn’t look so much like a large Metroland house. When I google for some background information, I’m very interested to see that the name was suggested by a member of the public as a winning entry to a competition. This despite the area actually being at a lower elevation than Northwood itself. I can understand the appeal of finding a name through a competition. For one thing it’s a sight cheaper than giving a commercial company a million quid to come up with a name like Consignia. Remember that? No, and that’s part of the problem. Still, I just imagine what the public would come up with now? Top entry would probably be Stationy McStationface, with Suburban Craphole a close second.

I have to wait for another slow train to take me to Pinner, but I don’t mind so much, since to me, Pinner is undoubtedly London, while the other stations I’ve so far visited today feel outside of London. The station itself is far closer in layout to Chorleywood, although the chimneys may well have been later additions since they’re much plainer. I can’t really put my finger on this, put the station reminds me of a terrace of single storey former miner’s houses on the road between Crynant and Seven Sisters in the South Wales Neath Valley, which I used to pass when driving for quiz league matches against the Seven Sisters Workingmen’s Club. The great Sir Elton John was born and grew up in Pinner. I wonder if there is any kind of acknowledgement to the great man in the station, but can’t see any. Maybe that’s an honour which is only granted to people once they’ve passed on. Google confirms that this is in fact the original station building from the 1880s.

The sun is well and truly over the yardarm now, so I eat my lunch and contemplate the fact that there’s just the three Harrow stations to go to complete this trip. First of these is North Harrow. The station building is another Charles Clark station, but this is one of his stations that isn’t currently a listed building, and you have to think that there’s a good reason for this. It’s not served by building onto the side of a viaduct – and to be fair tube stations are rarely improved by this. The square stone columns and cornice just don’t work alongside he cast iron bridge structure. I’ll be honest, it’s one of those stations which just doesn’t seem to offer much for you to get your teeth into. Even the name which offers us the rhyming slang, North Harrow – Giant Marrow/ the late Paul Darrow – doesn’t offer you that much.

Harrow on the Hill – Viagra pill, I find slightly more amusing. Originally the station was just called Harrow, which is fair enough considering that it was the only Harrow station at the time. Echoing slightly the situation with Northwood Hills, the station isn’t actually on Harrow Hill. One source I read suggests that it was the headmaster of world famous Harrow School, which counts luminaries such as Sir Winston Churchill among its distinguished former pupils, who successfully protested against the station being sited closer to the original centre of the town. Another old boy, who was also a day boy, was Anthony Trollope. In his autobiography he tells of walking from Harrow into the centre of London as quite a commonplace thing, a foot journey which would at the least raise eyebrows today, not least because of the convenient Metropolitan Line. The entrance is part of a modern parade of shops. Research didn’t reveal exactly when it was built, but late 70s/80s would seem a decent bet bearing in mind the appearance of the shops and the office block adjoining.

For the third time on this single trip I strike out across country again now, but it’s a mere step of 15 minutes to our final station of the day, West Harrow. All the stations to Uxbridge which follow it are also on the Piccadilly Line, and have already been bagged. It’s another of those stations which yields very little from an internet search. So all I can rely on is my own impression. From two thirds of the way down the orange and black brickwork, although not at all fussy or ornate, looks authentically old, rather than the kind of brickwork which just tries to look old. However from about two thirds of the way up to the top of the gently sloping roof it looks like a much later addition. In particular the central glazed section, though which the roof beams can be seen, which at least has the function of breaking up the featureless nature of the rest of the top of the building. I do rather like the look of the canopies over the platforms, which slant gently upwards and are a little like the canopy outside West Ruislip. Very 1950s.

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So, 14 stations on this trip means that we’re over halfway through the once-mighty Metropolitan line. 14 stations is by no means the greatest number I’ve bagged in one trip, but then considering the distances, the fact that I had three cross country sections, and the relatively long intervals between trains stopping at the stations I wanted to stop at, it’s certainly felt like one of the most strenuous trips I’ve had to make in the whole challenge. The reward for all this effort, mind you, is that there’s only 13 stations left between Northwick Park and Aldgate, and the bonus is that I’ve already sketched three of them – Kings Cross, Moorgate and Liverpool Street. The cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake is that from Baker Street to Farringdon I’ll be riding the world’s first underground line, part of the original line from Farringdon to Paddington