H&C - a apt name for the line

There's nothing patronising about providing information.

People can read it or not depending on their prior knowledge.

There may be underground neophytes coming here who would find the above very interesting.

It would be a pity if people were put off passing on interesting information they have read in case those with foreknowledge accused them of being 'patronising'.


Thanks maxym; despite a long interest in the underground there were snippets in your post of which I was either not previously aware or had forgotten.

By your own standards, aren't you being patronising towards me?

Well don't assume that I assume that everyone here is an ignoramus (like me, it would appear to you).

No. I simply credited the forum readers with a lot more knowledge than you.

It was interesting, and told me one thing I didn't know or had forgotten - how early the subway was built.

One anomaly is that it is the H&C, and not the current Metropolitan Line, that follows the entire 1863 length of the original Metropolitan Railway, which ran to Bishops Road. The line through Swiss Cottage was known as the "branch" until quite recently - and indeed the present "District" line from Edgware Road to High St Ken was originally Met too.

According to CULG, the section from Paddington to Hammersmith was built by the GWR although the Metropolitan bought a share in 1867 and it was transferred outright in 1950 (although this was simply a transfer from one part of the state-owned BTC to another) The joint ownership with the GWR means that apart form the LSWR's "Drain", Paddington was the first main line terminus in London to operate electric trains. (There were earlier electric services on the Mersey, Lancashire & Yorkshire and North Eastern Railways). This is surprising, given the GWR's later reputation as the only one of the Big Four to be entirely non-electric: it sold its H&C stock to the Met in 1923, and saw no other electric trains until Heathrow Express in the 1990s, except for the Southern electric units that sneaked apologetically into the bay platforms tacked on to an unregarded corner of Reading General after Reading South closed.

Heading west out of Hammersmith (District and Piccadilly Lines) there's what looks like an abandoned track bed on an arched structure falling to grade level with the main tracks. Is this the remnants of the old connection between Hammersmith Metroplitan Line and the District Line?

If so where did the connection leave the Metroplitan Line? Was it at the station itself or prior to it near the depot?

Rich'

Go to the "Disused Stations" web site, and look up 'Hammersmith Grove Road) plenty of info and pictures

This presumably accounts for the very large bump in the Shepherd's Bush Road, near the Goldhawke Road end that is effectively a bridge over nothing in particular - but the 'nothing' looks very much as if it was once a railway line!

Not really.

It was only then that the original name for part of the line was resurrected and applied to the section that now bears its name (excluding, obviously, the circle line element that was added later and lead to a slight name change).

Finding out stuff like this is what make this sort of thread so good and why such threads should never be discouraged.

That's right; Grampians on one side and the other you can look down onto what looks like a section of road at the side of a three pointed tower block. Maybe I'll amble down there one day and have a look for evidence of an abandoned line. There was evidence of old Central line artefacts right up until they built Westfields.

You can easily see evidence of the old spur from Latimer Road on Google Maps at Bard Road

For those interested in a map of how things were, the 1914 RCH junction diagram is here

The NLS has recently added scans of historic (various vintages) OS 1 inch, 6 inch and 60 inch to the mile maps - see here, while some are explorable as historic maps as overlays on a modern map base here - select category "England and Wales", then a map group and zoom in...

The Met service to Richmond (which used the connection from the H&C onto the LSWR at Hammersmith) was withdrawn in 1906 - it was the last Met normally steam passenger service south of Harrow.

Thanks guys. This has turned into a really interesting thread - for me at least - and especially regarding the LSWR connection at Hammersmith which I knew a little about and had intended to research a bit more. Job done!

Yes the LSWR route did go under the h&c not over it. The section of road by the tower block was where Shepherds bush LSWR station was sited just to the west of the humped bridge.