Greenford is a

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The ...

and

National Rail National Rail (NR) is the trading name licensed for use by the Rail Delivery Group, an unincorporated association whose membership consists of the passenger train operating companies (TOCs) of England, Scotland, and Wales. The TOCs run the ...

station in

Greenford Greenford () is a suburb in the London Borough of Ealing in west London, England, lying west from Charing Cross. It has a population of 46,787 inhabitants, or 62,126 with the inclusion of Perivale. Greenford is served by Greenford Station (L ...

, Greater London, and is owned and managed by London Underground. It is the terminus of the National Rail Greenford branch line, down the line from and measured from . On the Central line, it is between

Perivale Perivale () is an area of Greater London, west of Charing Cross. It is the smallest of the seven towns which make up the London Borough of Ealing. Perivale is mostly residential, with a library, community centre, a number of parks and open ...

and

Northolt Northolt is a town in West London, England, spread across both sides of the A40 trunk road. It is west-northwest of Charing Cross and is one of the seven major towns that make up the London Borough of Ealing. It had a population of 30,304 at ...

stations while on National Rail, the next station to the south on the branch is . Greenford station is in

Travelcard Zone 4 Fare zone 4 is an outer zone of Transport for London's zonal fare system used for calculating the price of tickets for travel on the London Underground, London Overground, Docklands Light Railway and, since 2007, on National Rail services. It ...

History

Harrow, Neasden, Northholt & Northholt Road RJD 145

The original Greenford station was opened by the

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835 and ran ...

on 1 October 1904 on the joint "New North Main Line" (present-day

Acton–Northolt line The Acton–Northolt line (ANL), historically known as the New North main line (NNML), is a railway line in West London, England. Built between 1903 and 1906, it runs from the Great Western Main Line at Old Oak Common TMD to the Chiltern Mai ...

). The present station, adjacent to the original, was designed by Brian Lewis and built in the Central line extension of the 1935-40 New Works Programme of the

London Passenger Transport Board The London Passenger Transport Board was the organisation responsible for local public transport in London and its environs from 1933 to 1948. In common with all London transport authorities from 1933 to 2000, the public name and brand was Lond ...

. It was completed by

Frederick Francis Charles Curtis Frederick Francis Charles Curtis FRIBA (9 August 1903 – 16 June 1975) was the first chief architect for British Railways from 1948. Career Curtis was born on 9th August, 1903, at Frankfurt-on-Main. His father, Francis Curtis, was a lecturer ...

and opened on 30 June 1947 after delay due to

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. Service at the original ("main-line") station was gradually reduced and it was closed in 1963. Operational responsibility for the station transferred from

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most of the overground rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the Big Four (British ra ...

to London Transport with effect from 13 November 1967. The site of the old station for the New North Main Line can still be seen from inside Central line trains.

The station today

Greenford station is above ground level with an island platform for the Central line. A

bay platform In the United Kingdom and in Australia, a bay platform is a dead-end railway platform at a railway station that has through lines. It is normal for bay platforms to be shorter than their associated through platforms. Overview Bay and isl ...

facing south-east between the Underground platforms serves the Greenford branch service operated by

. The branch line then continues south and joins the

Great Western Main Line The Great Western Main Line (GWML) is a main line railway in England that runs westwards from London Paddington to . It connects to other main lines such as those from Reading to Penzance and Swindon to Swansea. Opened in 1841, it was the o ...

at . Platform 1 is for westbound Central line trains, and platform 3 for eastbound trains. The access to the platform via escalators takes passengers to the front of the train for westbound service, and the rear for eastbound service. Going up wooden escalator at Greenford 16-06-06

Going up wooden escalator at Greenford 16-06-06

Greenford was the first London Underground station to have an escalator up to platforms above street level. Until 2014 it remained the final London Underground station with a wooden-treaded escalator in service; all other such escalators were previously converted to fully metal treads, or removed altogether from sub-surface Underground stations in the wake of the fatal 1987 King's Cross fire. In addition to the shuttle train, the line between Greenford and West Ealing carries freight services including containerised domestic waste from near Brentford, sand and gravel traffic as well as occasional special passenger services and a daily Chiltern Railways "parliamentary ghost train" from West Ruislip to West Ealing that returns non-stop to High Wycombe. In 2009, because of financial constraints, TfL decided to stop work on a project to provide step-free access at Greenford and five other stations, on the grounds that these were relatively quiet stations and some were already one or two stops away from an existing step-free station. £3.9 million was spent on Greenford before the project was halted. The step-free access project, consisting of a glass

incline lift An inclined elevator or inclined lift is a form of cable railway that hauls rail cars up a steep gradient. Introduction An inclined elevator consists of one or two inclined tracks on a slope with a single car on each carrying payload. In t ...

, was later restarted, opening on 20 October 2015.UK’s First Incline Lift Coming To Improve Disabled Access At Greenford Underground… But 8 Crossrail Stations Won’t Have Step-Free Access
/ref>

Services

London Underground

The typical off-peak service in trains per hour (tph) is: *9 tph westbound to

West Ruislip West Ruislip is a station on Ickenham High Road on the borders of Ickenham and western Ruislip in the London Borough of Hillingdon in Greater London, formerly in Middlesex. It is served by London Underground (LU) and National Rail trains on ...

*3 tph westbound to

*9 tph eastbound to Epping *3 tph eastbound to

Loughton Loughton () is a town and civil parish in the Epping Forest District of Essex. Part of the metropolitan and urban area of London, the town borders Chingford, Waltham Abbey, Theydon Bois, Chigwell and Buckhurst Hill, and is northeast of Chari ...

National Rail

Great Western Railway operates a shuttle service to West Ealing every 30 minutes except on Sundays. Services call at , , and and the journey time is just over 10 minutes. The final service of the day runs through to

London Paddington Paddington, also known as London Paddington, is a Central London railway terminus and London Underground station complex, located on Praed Street in the Paddington area. The site has been the London terminus of services provided by the Great We ...

, as well as the first terminating service. Until January 2017, all services used to run to and from , however, after the construction of a new bay platform at West Ealing and the introduction of

Elizabeth line The Elizabeth line is a high-frequency hybrid urban–suburban rail service in London and its suburbs. It runs services on dedicated infrastructure in central London from the Great Western Main Line west of Paddington to and via Whitechapel ...

services from London Paddington to , it was then reduced to a shuttle running to and from West Ealing.

Connections

London Buses London Buses is the subsidiary of Transport for London (TfL) that manages most bus services in London, England. It was formed following the Greater London Authority Act 1999 that transferred control of London Regional Transport (LRT) bus s ...

routes 92, 105,

395 __NOTOC__ Year 395 ( CCCXCV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Olybrius and Probinus (or, less frequently, year 1148 ...

and E6 serve the station.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Greenford Station Central line (London Underground) stations Railway stations in the London Borough of Ealing Tube stations in the London Borough of Ealing London Underground stations located above ground Former Great Western Railway stations Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1904 Railway stations served by Great Western Railway