Marylebone station
Marylebone station or
London Marylebone station is a
National Rail and
London Underground station in central
London. The station is located midway between the mainline stations at
Euston and
Paddington, about 1 mile (1.6 km) from each. It is in
Travelcard Zone 1.
The mainline station has only four platforms (although this is due to be increased to six. Platform 6 has now been opened with platform 5 and the shortened platform 4 to follow soon) making it one of the smallest of the railway terminals in London, and apart from
Waterloo International it is the newest.
Train services into the station are run by
Chiltern Railways which serves routes to
Aylesbury,
High Wycombe,
Bicester,
Banbury,
Leamington Spa,
Stratford-upon-Avon,
Birmingham (
Snow Hill), and
KidderminsterHistory
Great Central
The station was opened in
1899 and was the terminus of the
Great Central Railway's new
London extension main line, which was the last major railway line to be built into London, prior to the
Channel Tunnel Rail Link.
Originally Marylebone station was planned as a ten-platform station, but the cost of building the GCR was far higher than expected and nearly bankrupted the company. This forced the original plans for the station to be dramatically scaled back to just four platforms.
The Great Central Railway linked London to
Aylesbury,
High Wycombe,
Rugby,
Leicester,
Nottingham,
Sheffield and
Manchester.Also, a number of local services from northwest London, Aylesbury and High Wycombe terminated at Marylebone.
Passenger traffic on the GCR was never heavy, due largely to its being the last main line to be built, which meant it had difficulty competing against its well-established rivals for the lucrative intercity passenger business.
Beeching cuts
Marylebone had a fairly quiet and uneventful existence until
1966, when the Great Central Railway was closed north of
Aylesbury as part of the
Beeching axe. The GCR's closure was the single largest railway closure of the Beeching era.
This meant that Marylebone was now the terminus for local services to Aylesbury and High Wycombe only. After the
1960s, lack of investment meant that the local services and the station itself became increasingly run down. In the early
1980s there was a proposal to close Marylebone, divert its services into nearby Paddington station, and convert Marylebone into a coach station with the tracks converted to a road for coaches only. These plans were deemed impractical and dropped.
Recent history
A major turn around in the station's fortunes occurred in the late 1980s, when
British Rail decided to divert many services from overcrowded Paddington station into Marylebone. The station was given a multi-million pound facelift financed by selling off the redundant adjacent goods yard and some land previously used by two of the existing platforms. These two platforms were replaced by removing the existing taxi road and using that land for two replacement platforms. The aging fleet of trains on the local services was replaced by a fleet of state-of-the-art trains.
In the
1990s, upon rail
privatisation, the station was given an even bigger boost when
Chiltern Railways took over the rail services.Chiltern trains made the station the terminus for a new intercity service to
Birmingham's
Snow Hill station. To cope with Chiltern Railways' success over the last ten years and to cope with increased passenger numbers, one new platform (platform 6) opened in May 2006. Another new platform remains under construction at Marylebone and should be completed by December 2006 (Platform 6 has now opened, platform 5 and the shotened platform 4 will open shortly). Additionally, a new depot has recently opened near
Wembley Stadium railway station to compensate for the closure of Marylebone's station sidings and to make way for the new platforms. To highlight Chiltern's success, some services from Marylebone have also now been extended beyond Birmingham to
Kidderminster.
Future
From 2007, all services to and from Birmingham Snow Hill may be operated from Marylebone and Chiltern services could also be extended further past Kidderminster to terminate at
Great Malvern.
In late January 2006, a new company called
Wrexham Shropshire and Marylebone Railway (WSMR), was formed. The company proposes to operate services from
Wrexham (in North
Wales) to London via
Shrewsbury,
Telford and the
West Midlands, with its southern terminus at Marylebone. This would restore direct services to London from Wrexham and
Shropshire.
Trivia
*In
1964 several scenes in the
Beatles film
A Hard Day's Night were filmed at Marylebone station.
*The station appeared in an episode of
Magnum PI while the series was filmed around London.
*The station also has a degree of fame because of its presence in the British version of
Monopoly.
The underground station is on the
Bakerloo Line, between
Baker Street and
Edgware Road stations. Access to the underground station is via a set of
escalators from the mainline station concourse, which also houses the underground station's ticket office.
History
The underground station opened on the
27th March 1907 under the name
Great Central, and was renamed
Marylebone on the
15th April 1917. However the original name still appears in the platform tiling.
The present entrance opened in 1943 following the introduction of the escalators and wartime damage to the original station building that stood to the west, at the junction of Harewood Avenue and Harewood Row. This building, designed by the
UERL's architect,
Leslie Green, and which had used lifts to access the platforms was eventually demolished in
1971.
*
BBC Shropshire rail link announcement*
Train times and
station information for Marylebone railway station from
National Rail (Station code: MYB)
*
The Landmark London - the present name of the former Great Central Hotel
