MARYLEBONE STATION

'Marylebone station' or 'London Marylebone station' is a National Rail and London Underground station in central London. The station is located midway between the mainline stations at Euston and Paddington, about 1 mile (1.6 km) from each. It is in Travelcard Zone 1.

Contents

National Rail

History

Great Central

Cuts

Recent history

Future

In Popular Culture

Services

London Underground

History

External links

See also

National Rail

The mainline station has six platforms. Following two new platforms being opened in September 2006, it is no longer the smallest of the railway terminals in London, although apart from Waterloo International it remains the newest. Marylebone is operated by Chiltern Railways.
Train services into the station are run by Chiltern Railways which serves the Chiltern Main Line and London to Aylesbury Line routes to High Wycombe, Aylesbury, Bicester, Banbury, Leamington Spa, Stratford-upon-Avon, Birmingham (Snow Hill), and Kidderminster.

History

Great Central

The station was opened in 1899 and was the terminus of the Great Central Railway's new London extension main line, which was the last major railway line to be built into London, until the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.
Originally Marylebone station was planned as a ten-platform station, but the cost of building the GCR was far higher than expected and nearly bankrupted the company. This forced the original plans for the station to be dramatically scaled back to just four platforms.
The Great Central Railway linked London to High Wycombe, Aylesbury, Rugby, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester.
Also, a number of local services from northwest London, Aylesbury and High Wycombe terminated at Marylebone.
Passenger traffic on the GCR was never heavy, largely because it was the last main line to be built, which meant it had difficulty competing against its well-established rivals for the lucrative intercity passenger business. However, the line was heavily used for freight, especially coal and trains ran from the North to the former Marylebone freight depot.

Cuts

Long-distance trains from Marylebone began to be scaled back from the late 1950s. By 1960 there were no daytime trains running to destinations north of Nottingham, although a few still ran at night. In 1966 a large part of the former Great Central Railway was closed north of Aylesbury as part of the Beeching axe. This meant that Marylebone was now the terminus for local services to Aylesbury and High Wycombe only. The GCR's closure was the single largest railway closure of the Beeching era.
After the 1960s, lack of investment meant that the local services and the station itself became increasingly run down. In the early 1980s there was a proposal to close Marylebone, divert its services into nearby Paddington station, and convert Marylebone into a coach station with the tracks converted to a road for coaches only. However these plans were deemed impractical and dropped.

Recent history

A major turnaround in the station's fortunes occurred in the late 1980s, when British Rail decided to divert many services from overcrowded Paddington station into Marylebone. The station was given a multi-million-pound facelift financed by selling off the redundant adjacent goods yard and some land previously used by two of the existing platforms. These two platforms were replaced by removing the existing taxi road and using that land for two replacement platforms. The ageing fleet of trains (Class 115) on the local services was replaced by a fleet of state-of-the-art trains.

In the 1990s, upon rail privatisation, the station was given an even bigger boost when Chiltern Railways took over the rail services. Chiltern trains made the station the terminus for a new intercity service to Birmingham's Snow Hill station. To cope with Chiltern Railways' success over the last ten years and to cope with increased passenger numbers, a new platform (platform 6) opened in May 2006. This was part of Chiltern's £70-million project Evergreen 2. Platform 5 and the shortened platform 4 opened in September 2006. Additionally, a new depot has recently opened near Wembley Stadium railway station to compensate for the closure of Marylebone's station sidings and to make way for the new platforms. To highlight Chiltern's success, some services from Marylebone have also now been extended beyond Birmingham to Kidderminster.

Future

In late January 2006, a new company called Wrexham Shropshire and Marylebone Railway (WSMR), was formed. The company proposes to operate services from Wrexham (in North Wales) to London via Shrewsbury, Telford and the West Midlands, with its southern terminus at Marylebone. This would restore direct services to London from Wrexham and Shropshire.

In Popular Culture

★ In 1964 several scenes in the Beatles film ''A Hard Day's Night'' were filmed at Marylebone station.

★ The station appeared in an episode of ''Magnum PI'' while the series was filmed around London.

★ The station appeared in ''The IPCRESS File''.

★ The station appeared in the BBC's spy drama ''Spooks'', season 4, episode 1. The script pretended that it was Paddington.

★ The station appeared in a BBC Comedy "Gavin & Stacy" recently branded as London Paddington.

★ The station appeared in the Dempsey and Makepeace episode 'Judgement'.

★ The station appeared in the final episode of series 2 of Green Wing.

★ The station also has a degree of fame because of its presence in the British version of ''Monopoly''.

★ The station was used as a location for an episode of Peep Show Series 4
- The station is used for filming as it is the cheapest major station in London to use for filming. Network Rail only charge £500 per hour for a TV production compared to £800 per hour to film at Paddington and £1000 per hour at Kings Cross.

Services

London Underground

The underground station is on the Bakerloo Line, between Baker Street and Edgware Road stations. Access to the underground station is via a set of escalators from the mainline station concourse, which also houses the underground station's ticket office.

History

The underground station opened on the 27 March 1907 under the name ''Great Central'', and was renamed ''Marylebone'' on the 15 April 1917. However the original name still appears in the platform tiling.
The present entrance opened in 1943 following the introduction of the escalators and wartime damage to the original station building that stood to the west, at the junction of Harewood Avenue and Harewood Row. This building, designed by the UERL's architect, Leslie Green, and which had used lifts to access the platforms was eventually demolished in 1971.

External links

★ Wrexham & Shropshire Railway

★ BBC Shropshire rail link announcement

★ Train times and station information for Marylebone railway station from National Rail (Station code: MYB)

See also

★ The Landmark London - the present name of the former Great Central Hotel