Edgware Road is a station that catches people out in Zone 1. Mainly because there are actually two completely separate stations with exactly the same name!
In this particular visit with Tube Stop Baby we went to the original Edgware Road station that is on the Circle, District and Hammersmith & City lines and that formed part of the original Metropolitan Railway. Confusingly, about 150m away, on the opposite side of the Marylebone Road, is a separate Edgware Road station serving the Bakerloo line. There have been various campaigns to change the name of the Bakerloo line station to avoid confusion, but nothing has ever come from these proposals.
Edgware Road (the one we visited here!) is a busy station with four platforms serving the three lines that it is on – Circle, Hammersmith & City and District. It used to be that it was the northern terminus of the District line and Circle and Hammersmith and City line trains would both pass through before diverging as they headed towards Paddington. All that changed though in December 2009 when the circle line stopped being a circle!
In 2009 the Circle line was extended to include the section from Edgware Road to Hammersmith, where just the Hammersmith & City line had served before. This means that trains now start at Hammersmith, go up to Edgware Road, pass through the station heading East towards Kings Cross and then continue around the old circle line loop before terminating when they reach Edgware Road for the second time. And then they do the whole thing in reverse!
It’s as confusing as anything, especially when you try to explain to a tourist that doesn’t speak good English that the circle line is no longer a circle, but the whole thing was done to try to regulate the service more. Never mind anyone that is confused in the process!
Also worth a look whilst you’re visiting Edgware Road is the cladding on the London Underground building next door. Called Wrapper it was commissioned as part of Art on the Underground and certainly brightens up the previously grey view as you was for a train.
Our visit to Edgware Road was only brief with us only staying long enough for a couple of photographs on the platforms. When I was a student in London this was my local station for a year and I remember it fondly. Situated in a cutting rather than a tunnel it always felt a bit like you were tucked away down there and coming out onto the street always felt so in credibly busy and a big contrast to being down at platform level. A second visit to the main part of the station is very likely to happen.
Tube Stop Baby Facts – Edgware Road (Circle, District and Hammersmith & City)
Date of visit: 10 January 2019
Underground Line(s) – Circle, Hammersmith & City and District
Zone: 1
If you want to know more about our Tube Stop Baby Challenge then pop over here and have a read.