West London Line

Not to be confused with West London Orbital.

West London Line London Overground service at Imperial Wharf Overview Type Commuter rail Freight rail System National Rail Status Operational Locale Greater London Termini Willesden Junction 51.5324°N 0.2446°W / 51.5324; -0.2446 (West London Line, Willesden Junction terminus) Clapham Junction 51.4642°N 0.1703°W / 51.4642; -0.1703 (West London Line, Clapham Junction terminus) Stations 6 Operation Owner Network Rail Operator(s) London Overground Southern Rolling stock Class 377 "Electrostar" Class 378 "Capitalstar" Technical No. of tracks Two Track gauge Standard gauge Electrification 750 V DC third rail 25kV 50hz AC OHLE West London Line Legend North London Line to Stratford Willesden Junction Down ◄ Watford DC Line ► Euston  Watford DC Line tracks shared with Bakerloo line 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 Circle and Hammersmith & City lines Link to Hammersmith & City line closed 1940 Uxbridge Road (1869-1940) Shepherds Bush OSI Shepherds Bush  Central line OSI L&SWR to Richmond via H'smith (G. Rd). Link closed 1916 Kensington (Olympia) Connection to District line closed 1992 Warwick Road goods yard West ◄ District line ► Earl's Court West ◄ Piccadilly 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) Latchmere SW Junc South Western Main Line to Waterloo South London Lines to Victoria Inner South London Line to London Bridge For track detail at CJn see here Clapham Junction Outer South London Line and Brighton Main Line South Western Main Line to the South-West Waterloo to Reading Line Southern services operate along the WLL Line map of the West London Line, showing connections and travelcard zones

The West London Line is a short railway in inner West London which links lines at Clapham Junction in the south to lines near Willesden Junction in the north. It has always been an important cross-London link especially for freight services. Regular passenger services on it, detailed below, are provided by Southern and by London Overground on whose network it is the shortest line.

History

A 1911 map of the WLL and junctions

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 that system's promoters; 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 was called Punch's Railway. 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 [LNWR] in 1846) to take a joint lease of the WLR. The line was used only to carry coal, passenger service was not re-introduced.

A further Act in 1859 granted those two companies with two others, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) and the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR), power to construct the West London Extension Joint Railway on the filled-in canal south from the Kensington Basin to the bridge under the Kings Road, to bridge the Thames and to connect near Clapham Junction to railways south of the river. The track of the existing line was doubled, and the flat crossing of the GWR main line, where a number of collisions had occurred, was replaced by a flyover. The new line opened on 2 March 1863 with a passenger station at Addison Road (now Kensington (Olympia)) slightly north of the original WLR Kensington station, and was then well used by various inner London services for the remainder of the nineteenth century.

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.

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 1994. Channel Tunnel infrastructure work in 1993 electrified the line at 750 V DC third rail from the south to the North Pole depot. The line is electrified with 25 kV AC overhead wires from Westway (near the overbridge carrying the Hammersmith and City Line) to Willesden and the north.

Platforms were reinstated at West Brompton in 1999. New stations 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.

Train services

On Mondays to Saturdays London Overground runs four trains per hour on the line: a half-hourly service between Clapham Junction and Willesden Junction, alternating with a half-hourly through service on the North London Line to and from Stratford. On Sundays, only the Clapham Junction-Willesden Junction service operates.

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 shortly after services to them ceased in 1962.

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

Until the High Speed 1 railway line from St Pancras opened in November 2007, Eurostar trains from Waterloo International used the West London Line to access their North Pole depot.

The route

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
• Mitre Bridge Junction
  Connection to the West Coast Main Line. Installed to allow switching of services from the former Southern Railway to gain access to the West Coast Main Line, and vice versa for the London Midland and Scottish Railway which in summer would send sleeper services from as far north as Glasgow to the South Coast. Through trains operating in the steam railway era would swap locomotives here to allow through passage. From the 1920s there was a United Dairies depot on the site of a former dairy farm here, which up until the late 1970s had regular milk train deliveries. Today used by Southern services to Milton Keynes Central
• 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)
• Westway ----AC/DC changeover point
  Electric trains stop between stations to switch power supply: 25kV AC overhead to the north, 750V DC third-rail to the south
• Shepherd's Bush opened September 2008 on the site of the former Uxbridge Road station. 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 opened 2009
• 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 future 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.

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).