West London Line

West London Line
London Overground service at Imperial Wharf
Info
Type	Commuter rail
Termini	Willesden Junction Clapham Junction
Stations	6
Operation
Owner	Network Rail
Operator(s)	London Overground Southern
Rolling stock	British Rail Class 313 British Rail Class 377 British Rail Class 378
Technical
Electrification	750 V DC third rail

The West London Line is a short railway in inner West London which links Clapham Junction in the south to lines near Willesden Junction station in the north. It has always been an important cross-London link especially for freight services.

History

The Birmingham, Bristol & Thames Junction Railway was authorised in 1836 to run from a point on the London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR), near the present Willesden Junction station, across the proposed route of the Great Western (GWR) on the level, to the Kensington Canal Basin. Construction was delayed by engineering and financial problems. Renamed the West London Railway (WLR) the line officially opened on 27 May 1844, and regular services began on 10 June, but before that trials to demonstrate the potential of the atmospheric railway system had been held from 1840 to 1843 on a half-mile section of track adjacent to Wormwood Scrubs, leased to the system's promoters;^[1] The WLR itself used conventional power but was not a commercial success. The low number of passengers became such a regular target of Punch magazine that the line started being called Punch's Railway; and after only six months it closed entirely on 30 November 1844.

An Act of 1845 authorised the GWR and the L&BR (which became part of the London and North Western Railway in 1846) to take a joint lease of the WLR. Passenger services were not restarted and the line was used only to carry coal.

A further Act in 1859 granted those two companies with the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) and the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) companies power to fill in the canal south from the Kensington Basin to the bridge under the Kings Road, and to construct the West London Extension Joint Railway on the line of the canal to connect to railways south of the river at Clapham Junction.^[2] The line opened on 2 March 1863 with a new passenger station at Addison Road slightly north of the original WLR Kensington station, and was then well used by a variety of Middle Circle and other services for the remainder of the nineteenth century

v • d • e West London Line

Legend North London Line to Stratford Willesden Junction Down ◄ Watford DC Line ► Euston Down ◄ WCML ► Euston.  The junction is Willesden Jn North London Line to Richmond Mitre Bridge Junction Grand Union Canal The West ◄ Great Western Main Line ► Paddington North Pole depot. North Pole Junction St. Quintin Park and Wormwood Scrubs (1871-1940) GWR goods line to North Acton Hammersmith & City line Link to Hammersmith & City line closed 1940 Uxbridge Road (1869-1940) Shepherds Bush L&SWR to Richmond. Link closed 1916 Kensington (Olympia) Connection to District line closed 1992 Warwick Road goods yard West ◄ District line ► Earl's Court District line through Earl's Court West Brompton (WLL 1866-1940, re-opened 1999) District line to Wimbledon Chelsea & Fulham (1863-1940) Imperial Wharf Chelsea Basin goods yard Cremorne Bridge over River Thames Battersea (1863-1940) South Western Main Line to Waterloo South London Lines to Victoria Inner South London Line to London Bridge Clapham Junction Outer South London Line & Brighton Main Line South Western Main Line to the South-West Waterloo to Reading Line

The northern section of the line, from Willesden Junction to Kensington Olympia and on to Earls Court, was electrified by the LNWR in 1915, but passenger use of the line dwindled under competition from road transport and the lines which were to become the Underground network, and passenger services were discontinued after bomb damage in 1940.^[3]

One or two trains each working morning ran to carry workers at the Post Office Savings Office near Olympia from Clapham Junction and back in the evening. Normal passenger services were resumed by the mid-1990s. Channel Tunnel infrastructure work in 1993 electrified the line at 750 V DC third rail from the south to the North Pole depot and thence 25 kV AC overhead.

Platforms were reinstated at West Brompton in 1999, and new stations were opened at Shepherd's Bush in 2008 and Imperial Wharf in 2009, bringing main line rail services to a large catchment area in West London.

A 1914 map of the WLL and junctions

Train services

Southern services operate along the WLL

Local trains operated by London Overground run every half hour between Clapham and Willesden Junctions. Under recent timetable changes some London Overground peak hour trains now continue beyond Willesden Junction on to the North London Line to Stratford.

The train operating company Southern runs hourly trains between East Croydon and Milton Keynes. The service previously ran from Brighton to Watford Junction. Southern services cannot call at Willesden Junction as the mainline platforms were removed.

A twice-daily Crosscountry service operated by Virgin CrossCountry ran from Brighton via Reading and Kensington (Olympia) to Birmingham New Street, but was discontinued in December 2008.

Until the opening of the High Speed 1 railway line in November 2007, the West London Line was used to transfer Eurostar trains from Waterloo International to the depot at North Pole Junction.

The route

Line map of the West London Line, showing connections and travelcard zones

The retiring Class 313 trains in their previous Silverlink livery at Kensington (Olympia)

This description of the line gives, from north to south, former and current details including links with all the constituent railways:

• Willesden Junction
  WLL trains use the high level station on the North London Line. There is interchange with the Bakerloo Line and Watford DC Line.
• West London Junction
  The line separates from the North London Line.
• North Pole Junction
  End-on junction; connection to former Eurostar North Pole depot, which is parallel to the GWR main line. The WLJR proper starts here. A limited CrossCountry service between Reading and Brighton used the unelectrified connection with the Great Western Main Line until December 2008.
• St. Quintin Park and Wormwood Scrubs (closed)
• Shepherd's Bush New station on the site of the former Uxbridge Road station, opened September 2008. Interchange with Central Line.
• Kensington (Olympia) (formerly Addison Road)
  Interchange with the District Line
• West London Extension Junction
  End-on junction connecting the two parts of the Line; here also were extensive goods yards owned by LNWR and GWR
• West Brompton
  Interchange with District Line
• Chelsea & Fulham (closed)
  Here was a goods line to Chelsea Basin
• Imperial Wharf
• Battersea Railway Bridge/Cremorne Bridge
  Here the Line crosses the River Thames
• Battersea (closed)
• Latchmere Junctions
  With connections to the L&SWR and LB&SCR
• Clapham Junction
  Interchange with other National Rail lines and the western extension of the East London Line

............

The West Cross Route, one side of the Ringway 1 inner ring road, would have paralleled the West London Line ..........

References

Further reading

• Nisbet, A F. (2006), "Punch's Railway and the Winkle Railway", BackTrack 20 (2 Feb)): 117 to 121.
• Thomas Faulkner (1839), The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Hammersmith, pp 65–68.
• J.B. Atkinson "The West London Joint Railways" Ian Allan 1984.
• Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith "West London Line - Clapham Jn. to Willesden Jn." London Suburban Railways Series, Middleton Press 1996.

External links

• West London Line Group, representing the interests of users of the West London Line
• West London Line from abandonedstations.org.uk
• "Disused Stations". Subterranea Britannica. http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/stations/k/kensington_olympia/index2.shtml.  Detailed pages on the history of each station on the line (current and disused).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: West London Line

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