Willesden Junction Underground Station

Willesden Junction is a National Rail station in Harlesden, north-west London, UK. It is served by both London Overground and London Underground services.

History

Willesden Junction in 1903. The pre-1866 ''Willesden'' station (near the site of Harlesden station) was on the red line to the west, just beyond the green Midland Railway Dudding Hill Line Willesden Junction main line station - end of platform view in 1962 looking towards Euston A Class 501 awaits departure from the bay platforms, bound for Broad Street (which closed in 1986)

The station developed on three contiguous sites: the West Coast Main Line (WCML) station was opened by the London & North Western Railway on 1 September 1866 to replace the London and Birmingham Railway's Willesden station of 1841 which was 0.5 miles (0.80 km) to the northwest. Passenger services ended in 1962 when the platforms were removed during the electrification of the WCML to allow the curvature of the tracks to be eased. Later the bridges for the North London Line (NLL) were rebuilt.

The High-Level station on the NLL was opened by the North London Railway in 1869 for two Richmond tracks and later for two Shepherds Bush tracks, both crossing the WCML roughly at right angles. In 1894 a new, combined High-Level station was built, with an island platform plus a third shorter platform for Earls Court trains (which was later removed) together with a new station entrance building that still survives. By 1897 199 passengers and 47 goods trains passed through the High-Level station each day. The ''Willesden New Station'' or Low-Level station on the Watford DC Line was opened in 1910 to the north of the main line with two outer through platforms and two inner bay platforms at the London end. The bay platforms were originally long enough for four-coach Bakerloo trains when such trains ran outside peak times, but were shortened in the 1960s when a new toilet block was installed; in more recent times the platform buildings have been reconstructed and the bay length increased due to the addition of a fourth and then a fifth coach to class 378 trains.

In 1896 staff totalled 271, including 79 porters, 58 signalmen (in 14 signal boxes), and 58 shunters and yard foremen. They issued 1,006,886 tickets to passengers in 1896, up from 530,300 in 1886. Many of them were housed in what is now the Old Oak Lane conservation area, built by the LNWR in 1889 and which included an Institute, reading room, and church.

The main-line platforms were numbered from the south side (including one or two on the Kensington route) followed by the high-level platforms and then the DC line platforms which thus had the highest numbers. Later the surviving platforms were renumbered.

The station today

There are no platforms on the West Coast Main Line, which is separated from the low-level station by the approach road to Willesden Depot which lies immediately south-east of the station.

The high-level (HL) station consists of an island platform rebuilt in 1956, with faces as platforms 4 and 5, which are roughly at the level of Old Oak Lane to the west of the station, serving the NLL and the West London Line; some trains on the latter reverse in a central turnback siding on the NLL to the east of the station, this opened in 2011. Both platforms have been extended across the DC line to accommodate 4-coach class 378 trains. The HL station previously had a third platform on the eastern side which was used by services to/from Earls Court. There is another turnback siding further east which was previously used; it was laid in the late 1990s to allow Royal Mail trains to reach the Royal Mail depot at Stonebridge Park.

The low-level station, at the level of the area to the south, is an Edwardian island platform, with outer faces as platforms 1 and 3 and northern bay platform bay as platform 2, the southern bay now has no track. In October 2014 the DC line was closed temporarily between Wembley Central and Queens Park reportedly by Network Rail (London Overground) to allow platform 2 to be extended further west as a through platform. Most of the original and later platform buildings were demolished when platform 2 was extended in preparation for longer Class 378 trains and provision of a new footbridge and lift in 1999.

Platforms 1 and 3 are used by the Bakerloo line services, which began on 10 May 1915, and London Overground services between Euston and Watford Junction. Until May 2008 north-bound Bakerloo line trains which were to reverse at Stonebridge Park depot (two stations further north) ran empty from Willesden Junction although the southbound service began at Stonebridge Park. This imbalance arose as there were no London Underground staff beyond Willesden Junction to oversee passenger detrainment, but this changed after London Underground took over the staffing of stations on the line, including Stonebridge Park, from Silverlink in November 2007, and trains bound for Stonebridge Park depot now terminate at Stonebridge Park station. Normally only the first and last NLL trains of the day, which start or terminate here, use the bay platform, though it is used for empty stock transfers between the depot and the North London and Gospel Oak to Barking lines.

Motive power depot

The LNWR opened a large locomotive depot on a site on the south side of the main line to the west of the station, in 1873. This was enlarged in 1898. The London Midland and Scottish Railway opened an additional roundhouse on the site in 1929. Both buildings were demolished when the depot was closed in 1965 by British Railways and replaced by a Freightliner depot. (The servicing of locomotives and multiple units was then undertaken by the present Willesden TMD on the other side of the line.)

The steam depot had the shed code 1A and was a major depot for predominantly freight locomotives used on the West Coast Main Line and for suburban passenger services from Euston.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Willesden Junction station" and modified on April 20, 2020 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.