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.

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