Willesden Junction Station - History

History

The station developed on three contiguous sites:

• The West Coast Main Line (WCML) station was opened by the London & North Western Railway on 1 September 1866 to replace the London and Birmingham Railway's Willesden station of 1841 which was half a mile to the northwest. Passenger services ended in 1962 when the platforms were removed during electrification of the WCML to allow easing the curvature of the tracks. Later the bridges for the North London Line (NLL) were rebuilt but it might be possible to re-instate the WCML platforms should a new service pattern require them.

• The High-Level station on the NLL was opened by the North London Railway in 1869 on a track crossing the WCML roughly at right angles.

• The 'Willesden New Station' or Low-Level station on the "New Line" was opened in 1910 to the north of the main line with two outer through platforms and two inner bay platforms at the London end. The bay platforms were originally long enough for four-coach Bakerloo trains when such trains ran outside peak times, but were shortened in the 1960s when a new toilet block was installed.

The main-line platforms were numbered from the south side (including one or two on the Kensington route) followed by the high level platforms and then the DC line platforms which thus had the highest numbers. Later the surviving platforms were re-numbered.

Willesden Junction was depicted as 'Tenway Junction' the site of the suicide of Ferdinand Lopez in Anthony Trollope's novel The Prime Minister.