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:
““Which is more important to you, your field or your children?” the department head asked. She replied, “That’s like asking me if I could walk better if you amputated my right leg or my left leg.””
—Anonymous Parent. As quoted in Women and the Work Family Dilemma, by Deborah J. Swiss and Judith P. Walker, ch. 2 (1993)
“After the planet becomes theirs, many millions of years will have to pass before a beetle particularly loved by God, at the end of its calculations will find written on a sheet of paper in letters of fire that energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light. The new kings of the world will live tranquilly for a long time, confining themselves to devouring each other and being parasites among each other on a cottage industry scale.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)
“The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie “answers” questions on TV while the press, resolutely irrelevant as ever, asks politicians if they have committed adultery. From V-J Day 1945 to this has been, my fellow countrymen, a perfect nightmare.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)