LONDON TO AYLESBURY LINE

The 'London to Aylesbury Line' is the main railway line between London Marylebone and Aylesbury. It shares track with the London Underground Metropolitan Line from Harrow to Amersham, and serves 3 further stops before terminating at Aylesbury.

Contents

History

Stations

Operation

Future

See Also

History

The route towards Aylesbury opened in stages between 1868 and 1899:

★ 1. The Metropolitan & St. John’s Wood Railway (later the Metropolitan Railway) opened a branch from Baker Street to Swiss Cottage in 1868.

★ 2. The Aylesbury & Buckingham Railway connected Verney Junction with Aylesbury in 1868. The route would be part of the Met in 1891.

★ 3. In 1879 connected to Willesden Green from Swiss Cottage.

★ 4. In 1880 to Harrow.

★ 5. In 1885 to Pinner.

★ 6. In 1887 to Rickmansworth.

★ 7. In 1889 to Chesham.

★ 8. Then in September 1892 the Metropolitan connected to Aylesbury via Amersham making the Chesham route a branch line.
The Great Central Railway decided to build a mainline called 'The London Extension' from Annesley Junction north of Nottingham to London (Marylebone) via the Metropolitan Railway. It was the last mainline to be built in Britain until the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. The line was completed in 1899. In 1903 the line between Harrow and Canfield Place (near Finchley Road) was built, thus bypassing the Met. The route was a major trunk route and many prestigious trains ran such as ''The Master Cutler'' and ''The South Yorkshireman''. Locomotives such as ''The Mallard'' and ''The Flying Scotsman'' also were frequent visitors the route.
The line beyond Aylesbury is now closed to almost all passenger services: The service to Verney Junction was withdrawn in 1936 as London Transport wanted to focus more closely to London. The permanent way is now lost. In 1961 LT withdrew the Metropolitan Line from Aylesbury and now it goes as far as Amersham. The Mainline services to the North were withdrawn in 1966 as the Great Central Main Line was seen as a duplicate of the Midland Main Line by Dr Beeching. Now only freight services to Calvert and specials to and from Quainton now run (the specials only run on certain Bank Holidays). The track remains in situ from Calvert west to Bicester Town and intermittently east to Bletchley.

Stations

The line serves the following stations:

★ London Marylebone

★ Harrow

★ Rickmansworth

★ Chorleywood

★ Chalfont and Latimer

★ Amersham

★ Great Missenden

★ Wendover

★ Stoke Mandeville

★ Aylesbury

★ (Quainton)

Operation

Passenger services are provided by Chiltern Railways. From Marylebone to Neasden Junction the track is shared with the Chiltern Main Line, and from Harrow to Amersham the track is shared with London Underground's Metropolitan Line, and is used by their "fast" services. As a result, all Chiltern trains must be fitted with the tripcock braking system to run on the underground lines. The maximum speed is 75mph between Marylebone and Harrow and between Amersham and Aylesbury. Between Harrow and Amersham, it is 50mph. Due to historic reasons, Marylebone is able to control all the signals on the line to Aylesbury. However, the signals on the Met section are operated by Baker Street unless there is a problem.

Future

★ Following completion of a major track work project in December 2006, journey times on the line were cut by about 10 minutes. Currently major track replacement work is underway on the London Underground parts of the line. The goal of this project is to increase the maximum speed limit on that part of the line.

★ In the long term, it is hoped to reopen the line beyond Aylesbury to allow passenger services to reach Milton Keynes via the Varsity Line. This is under consideration as a result of expected heavy growth of the Aylesbury Vale area. The opening of the Aylesbury Vale Parkway station in 2009 has already been agreed.

★ The reopening of the Great Central Main Line towards Rugby and Leicester may happen as a result of high passenger growth on the West Coast Main Line and Midland Main Line. The West Coast Main Line is expected to be at full capacity by 2015.

★ There are plans to build a high speed line (HS2) via the Chiltern Main Line to the North. If this is undertaken, Aylesbury will also be connected as a branch line of the HS2.

See Also

★ Great Central Main Line

★ Metropolitan Line

★ Varsity Line

★ Chiltern Main Line

★ Chiltern Railways