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:
“Nothing sets a person up more than having something turn out just the way it’s supposed to be, like falling into a Swiss snowdrift and seeing a big dog come up with a little cask of brandy round its neck.”
—Claud Cockburn (1904–1981)
“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)
“One of the great natural phenomena is the way in which a tube of toothpaste suddenly empties itself when it hears that you are planning a trip, so that when you come to pack it is just a twisted shell of its former self, with not even a cubic millimeter left to be squeezed out.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“...I believe it is now the duty of the slaves of the South to rebuke their masters for their robbery, oppression and crime.... No station or character can destroy individual responsibility, in the matter of reproving sin.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)