West London Line

The West London Line is a short railway in inner West London which links lines at Clapham Junction in the south to lines near Willesden Junction in the north. It has always been an important cross-London link especially for freight services. Regular passenger services on it, detailed below, are provided by Southern and by London Overground on whose network it is the shortest line.

History
The Birmingham, Bristol & Thames Junction Railway was authorised in 1836 to run from a point on the London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR), near the present Willesden Junction station, across the proposed route of the Great Western (GWR) on the level, to the Kensington Canal Basin. Construction was delayed by engineering and financial problems. Renamed the West London Railway (WLR) the line officially opened on 27 May 1844, and regular services began on 10 June, but before that trials to demonstrate the potential of the atmospheric railway system had been held from 1840 to 1843 on a half-mile section of track adjacent to Wormwood Scrubs, leased to that system's promoters; The WLR itself used conventional power but was not a commercial success. The low number of passengers became such a regular target of Punch magazine that the line was called Punch's Railway. After only six months it closed entirely on 30 November 1844.

An Act of 1845 authorised the GWR and the L&BR (which became part of the London and North Western Railway [LNWR] in 1846) to take a joint lease of the WLR. The line was used only to carry coal, passenger service was not re-introduced. A further Act in 1859 granted those two companies with two others, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) and the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR), power to construct the West London Extension Joint Railway on the filled-in canal south from the Kensington Basin to the bridge under the Kings Road, to bridge the Thames and to connect near Clapham Junction to railways south of the river. The track of the existing line was doubled, and the flat crossing of the GWR main line, where a number of collisions had occurred, was replaced by a flyover. The new line opened on 2 March 1863 with a passenger station at Addison Road (now Kensington (Olympia)) slightly north of the original WLR Kensington station, and was then well used by various inner London services for the remainder of the nineteenth century.

The northern section of the line, from Willesden Junction to Kensington Olympia and on to Earls Court, was electrified by the LNWR in 1915, but passenger use of the line dwindled under competition from road transport and the lines which were to become the Underground network, and passenger services were discontinued after bomb damage in 1940.

One or two trains each working morning ran to carry workers at the Post Office Savings Office near Olympia from Clapham Junction and back in the evening. Normal passenger services were resumed by 1994. Channel Tunnel infrastructure work in 1993 electrified the line at 750 V DC third rail from the south to the North Pole depot. The line is electrified with 25 kV AC overhead wires from Westway (near the overbridge carrying the Hammersmith and City Line) to Willesden and the north. Platforms were reinstated at West Brompton in 1999. New stations opened at Shepherd's Bush in 2008, and Imperial Wharf in 2009, bringing main line rail services to a large catchment area in West London.

Train services
London Overground runs a half hourly off-peak service between Clapham Junction and Willesden Junction and three peak hour trains running though Willesden Junction on the North London Line to and from Stratford. Southern runs hourly trains between East Croydon and Milton Keynes. The service previously ran from Brighton to Watford Junction. Southern services cannot call at Willesden Junction as the mainline platforms were removed. A twice-daily Crosscountry service by Virgin CrossCountry from Brighton via Reading and Kensington (Olympia) station to Birmingham New Street was discontinued in December 2008. Until the High Speed 1 railway line from St Pancras opened in November 2007, Eurostar trains from Waterloo International moved on the West London Line to their North Pole depot.

The route
From north to south, former and current details including links with all the constituent railways: WLL trains use the high level station on the North London Line. There is interchange with the Bakerloo Line and Watford DC Line The line separates from the North London Line End-on junction; connection to former Eurostar North Pole depot, which is parallel to the GWR main line. The WLJR proper starts here. A limited CrossCountry service between Reading and Brighton used the unelectrified connection with the Great Western Main Line until December 2008 Electric trains stop between stations to switch power supply: 25kV AC overhead to the north, 750V DC third-rail to the south Interchange with the District line End-on junction connecting the two parts of the Line; here also were extensive goods yards owned by LNWR and GWR Interchange with District line Here was a goods line to Chelsea Basin Here the Line crosses the River Thames With connections to the L&SWR and LB&SCR Interchange with other National Rail lines and the future western extension of the East London Line
 * Willesden Junction
 * West London Junction
 * North Pole Junction
 * St. Quintin Park and Wormwood Scrubs (closed)
 * Westway AC/DC changeover point
 * Shepherd's Bush opened September 2008 on the site of the former Uxbridge Road station. Interchange with Central line
 * Kensington (Olympia) (formerly "Addison Road")
 * West London Extension Junction''
 * West Brompton
 * Chelsea & Fulham (closed)
 * Imperial Wharf
 * Battersea Railway Bridge/Cremorne Bridge
 * Battersea (closed)
 * Latchmere Junctions
 * Clapham Junction

The West Cross Route, one side of the Ringway 1 inner ring road, would have paralleled the West London Line.