St John's Wood station, London Underground, December 1939
An official photo this and showing the newly opened St John's Wood station on the Bakerloo line extension that had opened on 20 November 1939 under wartime conditions. This section of tube railway, from a new junction at Baker Street to Finchley Road, created the second northern branch of the Bakerloo and, at surface at Finchley Road, it took over the Stanmore branch of what had been the Metropolitan Railway/line that had itself come into use in 1932. This scheme had its origins in the desire of the Metropolitan to ease congestion on the sub-surface two-track section of railway between Finchley Rd and Baker St that a combination of new Met branches and electrufucation had helped to create. Following the effective merger of the Metropolitan Railway into the new London Transport in 1933 LT picked up the problem and under the 1935 - 40 New Works Programme (a vast series of schemes to improve London's transport) constructed this section of tube tunnel with two new stations (St. John's Wood and Swiss Cottage) and closed existing stations on the Met to help improve capacity.
The scheme did assist but it in turn, over time, caused huge overcrowding and operational problems on the Bakerloo south of Baker St (the joy of managing two branches into one rapid transit railway) and this eventually was solved by the Fleet/Jubilee line extension of 1979 that built a new tube south of Baker St and grafted the Stanmore branch on to it. So, the station here was on the Bakerloo and is now on the Jubilee line.
The platforms are very fine examples of the 'standard' LT tube platforms of the period, drawing on the work of the company's two architects - the 'consultant' Charles Holden and their 'own' Stanley Heaps. The tunnel walls are clad in a pale yellow, matt glazed ceramic tile made by Carter's of Poole and designed to be 'clean' under filament lighting - oh, how I struggled in my job 80 years later to 'manage' what appeared, visually, to be even grubbier tiling than use had created thanks to fluorescent lighting! This batch of stations iniated the use of the tiled upper name frieze, in Johnston typeface, and here all 18 of Harold Stabler's embossed "London's symbols" tiles.
Under PPP work with Tubelines Ltd a decade or so ago all this original tiling was tripped out due to water ingress and physical damage and, carefully, recreated with new tiles made to the original specification, albeit with a slightly different layout to allow for metric posters and frames rather than the original imperial dimensions. Everthing that could be was integrated and so all cabling, and what services existed at the time (no fire alarms or CCTV cameras then!) was in conduit. We managed to put a lot of 'new' requirements behind the scenes when we did the reconstruction but that is a continuing problem on existing stations.
One main feature were the recesses to allow for vending and other services "auto sales" and one of those little illuminated signs survives in the LTM Collections. Auto as in Automatic so there is the cigarette and chocolate vending, the integral litter bin and yes, behind its bronze frame and with the weighing plate just visible is the 'penny in the slot tell me my weight' machine! The remains of such integrated scales survive on a couple of station platforms.
The other signs are all bronze frame vitreous enamel and include the rare complement of miniature bronze frames on tracksde walls that only a handful of stations had. The trackside 'describer' sign is also showing the short lived "1938 Standard Signs Manual" tombstone top with another bronze framed miniature roundel in place. Plainer versions of such signs, the first to standardise line interchange colours as per the map and diagram, survive at one or two places.
The posters are of course period piece and include some LT ones by the entrance/egress passageways; "Open Again" referring to the temporary closure of the various under-Thames tube lines to allow flood gate and safety features due to the concern that bombing may have penetrated the running tunnels and flooded large areas of the central area of the tube.
St John's Wood station, London Underground, December 1939
An official photo this and showing the newly opened St John's Wood station on the Bakerloo line extension that had opened on 20 November 1939 under wartime conditions. This section of tube railway, from a new junction at Baker Street to Finchley Road, created the second northern branch of the Bakerloo and, at surface at Finchley Road, it took over the Stanmore branch of what had been the Metropolitan Railway/line that had itself come into use in 1932. This scheme had its origins in the desire of the Metropolitan to ease congestion on the sub-surface two-track section of railway between Finchley Rd and Baker St that a combination of new Met branches and electrufucation had helped to create. Following the effective merger of the Metropolitan Railway into the new London Transport in 1933 LT picked up the problem and under the 1935 - 40 New Works Programme (a vast series of schemes to improve London's transport) constructed this section of tube tunnel with two new stations (St. John's Wood and Swiss Cottage) and closed existing stations on the Met to help improve capacity.
The scheme did assist but it in turn, over time, caused huge overcrowding and operational problems on the Bakerloo south of Baker St (the joy of managing two branches into one rapid transit railway) and this eventually was solved by the Fleet/Jubilee line extension of 1979 that built a new tube south of Baker St and grafted the Stanmore branch on to it. So, the station here was on the Bakerloo and is now on the Jubilee line.
The platforms are very fine examples of the 'standard' LT tube platforms of the period, drawing on the work of the company's two architects - the 'consultant' Charles Holden and their 'own' Stanley Heaps. The tunnel walls are clad in a pale yellow, matt glazed ceramic tile made by Carter's of Poole and designed to be 'clean' under filament lighting - oh, how I struggled in my job 80 years later to 'manage' what appeared, visually, to be even grubbier tiling than use had created thanks to fluorescent lighting! This batch of stations iniated the use of the tiled upper name frieze, in Johnston typeface, and here all 18 of Harold Stabler's embossed "London's symbols" tiles.
Under PPP work with Tubelines Ltd a decade or so ago all this original tiling was tripped out due to water ingress and physical damage and, carefully, recreated with new tiles made to the original specification, albeit with a slightly different layout to allow for metric posters and frames rather than the original imperial dimensions. Everthing that could be was integrated and so all cabling, and what services existed at the time (no fire alarms or CCTV cameras then!) was in conduit. We managed to put a lot of 'new' requirements behind the scenes when we did the reconstruction but that is a continuing problem on existing stations.
One main feature were the recesses to allow for vending and other services "auto sales" and one of those little illuminated signs survives in the LTM Collections. Auto as in Automatic so there is the cigarette and chocolate vending, the integral litter bin and yes, behind its bronze frame and with the weighing plate just visible is the 'penny in the slot tell me my weight' machine! The remains of such integrated scales survive on a couple of station platforms.
The other signs are all bronze frame vitreous enamel and include the rare complement of miniature bronze frames on tracksde walls that only a handful of stations had. The trackside 'describer' sign is also showing the short lived "1938 Standard Signs Manual" tombstone top with another bronze framed miniature roundel in place. Plainer versions of such signs, the first to standardise line interchange colours as per the map and diagram, survive at one or two places.
The posters are of course period piece and include some LT ones by the entrance/egress passageways; "Open Again" referring to the temporary closure of the various under-Thames tube lines to allow flood gate and safety features due to the concern that bombing may have penetrated the running tunnels and flooded large areas of the central area of the tube.