Swiss Cottage (Metropolitan Line) is a disused London Underground station. It was opened in 1868 as the northern terminus of the Metropolitan and St John's Wood Railway, the first northward branch extension from Baker Street of the Metropolitan Railway (now the Metropolitan line). From here (starting in 1879) the line was later extended north into Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire reaching Watford, Aylesbury, Chesham and Uxbridge.
In the mid 1930s the Metropolitan line was suffering congestion at the south end of its main route where trains from its many branches were struggling to share the limited capacity of its tracks between Finchley Road and Baker Street stations. To ease this congestion a new section of deep-level tunnel was constructed between Finchley Road and the Bakerloo line tunnels at Baker Street station. The Metropolitan line's Stanmore branch services were then transferred to the Bakerloo line on 20 November 1939 and diverted to run into Baker Street in the new tunnels, thus reducing the number of trains using the Metropolitan line's tracks.
With the new deep tunnel route, a new Swiss Cottage Bakerloo line station was opened adjacent to the existing Metropolitan line's station and, for a time, these operated as a single station (platforms 1 and 2 were Metropolitan line, platforms 3 and 4 were Bakerloo line). This arrangement was short-lived, however, and the Metropolitan Line station was closed on 17 August 1940 as a wartime economy. With the opening of the Jubilee line in 1979, the Stanmore branch of the Bakerloo line, including the replacement Swiss Cottage station, was transferred to be part of the new Jubilee line.
Famous quotes containing the words swiss, cottage, tube and/or station:
“You know there’s only two things more beautiful than a good gun—a Swiss watch or a woman from anywhere.”
—Borden Chase [Frank Fowler] (1900–1971)
“It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Even crushed against his brother in the Tube the average Englishman pretends desperately that he is alone.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“[T]here is no situation so deplorable ... as that of a gentlewoman in real poverty.... Birth, family, and education become misfortunes when we cannot attain some means of supporting ourselves in the station they throw us into. Our friends and former acquaintances look on it as a disgrace to own us.... If we were to attempt getting our living by any trade, people in that station would think we were endeavoring to take their bread out of their mouths.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)