History
Perivale Alperton station was opened on 28 June 1903 by the Metropolitan District Railway (MDR, now the District Line) on its new extension to South Harrow from Park Royal & Twyford Abbey. Park Royal & Twyford Abbey had itself opened five days earlier.
This new extension was, together with the existing tracks back to Acton Town, the first section of the Underground's surface lines to be electrified and operate electric instead of steam trains. The Deep level tube lines open at that time (City & South London Railway, Waterloo & City Railway and Central London Railway) had been electrically powered from the start.
The station was subsequently renamed Alperton on 7 October 1910.
The original station building was a modest timber framed structure and in 1930 and 1931 this was demolished and replaced by a new station in preparation for the handover of the branch from the District Line to the Piccadilly Line. The new station was designed by Charles Holden in a modern European style using brick, reinforced concrete and glass. Like the stations at Sudbury Town and Sudbury Hill to the north and others that Holden designed elsewhere for the east and west Piccadilly Line extensions such as Acton Town and Oakwood, Alperton station features a tall block-like ticket hall rising above a low horizontal structure that contains station offices and shops. The brick walls of the ticket hall are punctuated with panels of clerestory windows and the structure is capped with a flat concrete slab roof. Alperton shared with Greenford (on the Central Line) the distinction of being one of the only two stations to have an escalator going up to a platform. The escalator served the eastbound platform and had originally been used at the South Bank exhibition of the Festival of Britain. Now out of use, the escalator remains in place behind a wall.
On 4 July 1932, the Piccadilly Line was extended to run west of its original terminus at Hammersmith sharing the route with the District Line to Ealing Common. From Ealing Common to South Harrow, the District Line was replaced by the Piccadilly Line.
Read more about this topic: Alperton Tube Station
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