Two new Tube Stations? Well one new station and one new name. Shepherd’s Bush, on the Hammersmith and City line is to be renamed Shepherd’s Bush Market, one assumes for the sensible reason that the Piccadilly line Shepherd’s Bush station is about a mile away and causes a bit of confusion. All well and good.
But what’s this. Also on the Hammersmith and City line, a new spanking station called Wood Lane. A beloved address of old Swap Shop viewers, this station will seem to serve the BBC Television Centre in its entirety and nobody else. No wonder the BBC are reporting it. Note, this is the first time they’ve slipped a new station in for seventy years after the great rationalisation and ghosting of lots of existing stations in the twenties (British Museum, Dover Street and everywhere else on the Ghost Tube Station map…)
But wait, what is this we see. Wood Lane is NOT a new statation at all. There used to be a Wood Lane Station, on the Central Line (a mere hop and skip from White City). Here have a looksee at its building and everything. It only got knocked down three years ago, and now the new station will be plumped on the Hammersmith & City. See what a little bit of research can do. I guess this is because Hammersmith & City are the young tube trains on Underground Ernie (young and strangely a conjoined twins too – which I guess is a first for kids TV).
Alas, the new station is actually being built for (and part funded by) the grotesquely huge new (Australian) shopping mall that will bridge the Bush and White City ( http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/press-centre/press-releases/press-releases-content.asp?prID=896 ). This is oddly omitted from that BBC report…
White City station itself is an odd thing: it’s the only place in London where I’ve ever had that real company town experience (like Dagenham or somewhere in the old days): hundreds of people emptying a tube train, all off to work for the same organisation.
I wondered why, given the proximity of this crossing to White City that they did not just add and interchange, but this suddenly makes more sense.
Piccadilly line Shepherd’s Bush station
Central line, innit. [/tube pedant]
I wonder if they’re ever going to sort out the twisty track round White City/Wood Lane at the same time. It curves round in a big arc where the old depot used to be. Hence bumpy journeys between WC and SB on Central line.
I also hope the White City complex will help sort the area out a bit. It has got to be one of the least pleasant parts of London.
Read the bit about that loop on the link above. Is quite interesting.
Oh yes, of course the Bush is on the stinky Central line. More reasons to hate it.
shut up yous. i remember seeing the old wood lane front.
central line between SB and acton thingy is RIGHT RUNNING! eeeeee *screams*
It’s not the Hammersmith and City, it’s the HAMMERCHAPEL! Call it by its name!
I’m also not entirely sure why you are mentioning the Central Line station when there was another Wood Lane station on the same line as the new one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_Lane_%28Metropolitan_Line%29_tube_station .
Oh its all far too confusing. Basically they are building a new station when a perfectly servicable old station was knocked down three years ago and there is probably easy access platform and calling it a PR coup. A PR mess more like.
Much as it would suit my gloomy London romanticism, I can’t go along with Pete’s underlying claim. The station demolished in 2003 was the (long defunct) Central Line station. The new station is on H&C, close to, but the other side of Wood Lane from, the old (long gone) Metropolitan line station.
If any non-Tube maniacs happen to be reading this, the H&C is just a renamed bit of the old Metropolitan Line.
Yes, I realise that now. Good lord, what a can of worms I have uncovered here.
So it goes something like this:
Wood Lane Metropolitan Line Station: opens 1908 closes 1914 reopens 1920, renamed White City in 1947, closes in 1959.
Wood Lane Central Line opens 1908 closes 1947. Building knocked down in 2003.
White City Central Line opens in 1947.
New Wood Lane station (very close to White City) on Hammersmith & City – indeed close enoguh to make interchange not only possible by desirable? So why call it Wood Lane and not, as previously assumed, White City?
warhammerchapel
have you seen the site of the white city development pete, it’s a MONSTER. and the old site was far from serviceable 3 years ago – that was merely a front (literally) – and is lost under the development going on there.
This must mean they are closing the existing shep bush H&C line which is not many yards away. the gap between it and and goldhawk road was never that much either.
No. It is in West London. I hate West London. With a passion.
I am surprised you only hate it with one passion.
According to the BBC story, the renamed Shepherds Bush Market stays – another very short gap between stations in a line full of them. Looking at my big London map, it’s easy to see that the new shopping centre will have a tube station at each end: Wood Lane to the north, and SB (Central) to the south.
I would’ve gone with Shepherds Bush West and Shepherds Bush East myself.
I used to work on the Wood Lane site where the new shopping centre now is. Our derelict ‘offices’ back then had been used before by LU and backed on to a room with an actual tunnel built into it with rails for some sort of testing. We were right above the Central Line just as it goes into the tunnel between White City and Shepherds Bush.
Presumably this new Wood Lane station will be classed as an interchange stop with White City?
Are they not building a station for the Silverlink line at Shepherds Bush also (interchanging with the Central Line tube station)? Pity.
People who say they “hate West London” are STUPID and they SMELL bad.
New SB (overground) rail station: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepherd%27s_Bush_railway_station