Baker Street tube station

Location

The station has entrances on Baker Street, Chiltern Street (ticket holders only) and Marylebone Road. Nearby attractions include Regent's Park, Lord's Cricket Ground, the Sherlock Holmes Museum and Madame Tussauds.

The station today

Of the MR's original stations, the sub-surface Circle and Hammersmith & City line platforms are the best preserved. Plaques along the platform show old plans and photographs of the station.

The station layout is rather complex. The sub-surface station is connected to the open-air Metropolitan line station. This is a terminus for some Metropolitan line trains, but there is also a connecting curve that joins to the Circle line just beyond the platforms, allowing Metropolitan line trains to run to Aldgate in the City of London. Below this is a deep-level tube station for the Bakerloo and Jubilee lines. These are arranged in a cross-platform interchange layout and there are connections between the two lines just to the north of the station. Access to the Bakerloo and Jubilee lines is only via escalators.

With ten platforms overall, Baker Street has the most London Underground platforms of any station on the network. Since Swiss Cottage and St. John's Wood have replaced the former three stations between Finchley Road and Baker Street on the Metropolitan line, it takes an average of five and a half minutes to travel between them.

Restoration work in the 1980s on the oldest portion of the Baker Street station brought it back to something similar to its 1863 appearance.

Step-free access project

In 2008 TfL proposed a project to provide step-free access to the sub-surface platforms. The project was a TfL-funded Games-enabling project in its investment programme (and not a project specifically funded as a result of the success of the London 2012 Games bid). The project was included in the strategy on accessible transport published by the London 2012 Olympic Delivery Authority and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Access to the Metropolitan line platforms 1–4 (serving trains to and from Finchley Road) would be provided by a bridge from the Bakerloo and Jubilee line ticket hall, with a lift from the bridge to each island platform. Through a passage from platforms 1–2, this would also give step-free access to platform 5 (Circle and Hammersmith & City line eastbound trains). Access to platform 6 (Circle and Hammersmith & City line westbound trains) would be provided by demolishing the triangular building outside the station, on the north side of Marylebone Road, and taking over the public pedestrian subway under Marylebone Road to provide a link between a lift up from platform 5 to the subway and a lift at the other end of the subway down to platform 6. The replacement for the triangular building would also act as an emergency exit for the station.

TfL applied for planning permission and listed building consent for providing access to platforms 5 and 6 on 1 October 2008, but the application was subsequently withdrawn. (The part of the proposed scheme to provide step-free access to platforms 1–4 is within TfL's permitted development rights, and so does not require planning permission.) TfL announced on 31 March 2009 that because of budgetary constraints the step-free scheme would be deferred.

Platform lengthening

In order to accommodate the new, longer S stock trains, which started operating Metropolitan line services in August 2010, platforms 1 and 4 have been extended. However, the Circle and Hammersmith & City line platforms 5 and 6 have not been extended to accommodate their new S7 Stock trains, due to the enclosed nature of the platforms. Instead selective door operation is employed.

Bakerloo line

On this line, it is between Regent's Park and Marylebone. Trains can terminate at Queen's Park, Stonebridge Park, or Harrow and Wealdstone to the north, and Piccadilly Circus, Lambeth North or Elephant & Castle to the south.

The typical service pattern in trains per hour (tph) is:

Circle line

The station is between Great Portland Street and Edgware Road on this line as well on the Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines. The typical off-peak service in trains per hour (tph) is:

Hammersmith & City line

Between 1 October 1877 and 31 December 1906 some services on the H&CR were extended to Richmond over the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) via its station at Hammersmith (Grove Road).

The station is between Great Portland Street and Edgware Road on this line, as with the Circle and Metropolitan lines. The typical off-peak service in trains per hour (tph) is:

Connections

The station is served by London Bus routes 2, 13, 18, 27, 30, 74, 82, 113, 139, 189, 205, 274 and 453, and also by night routes N13, N18, N74, N113 and N205. In addition, bus routes 27, 139, 189 and 453 have a 24-hour service.

Metropolitan line

In the first half of the 19th century, the population and physical extent of London grew greatly. The congested streets and the distance to the City from the stations to the north and west prompted many attempts to get parliamentary approval to build new railway lines into the City. In 1852, Charles Pearson planned a railway from Farringdon to King's Cross. Although the plan was supported by the City, the railway companies were not interested and the company struggled to proceed. The Bayswater, Paddington, and Holborn Bridge Railway Company was established to connect the Great Western Railway's (GWR) Paddington station to Pearson's route at King's Cross. A bill was published in November 1852 and in January 1853 the directors held their first meeting and appointed John Fowler as its engineer. Several bills were submitted for a route between Paddington and Farringdon. The company's name was also to be changed again, to Metropolitan Railway and the route was approved on 7 August 1854.

Construction began in March 1860 with works mostly using the "cut-and-cover" method from Paddington to King's Cross; east of there it continued in a short tunnel then followed the culverted River Fleet in an open cutting to near the new Smithfield meat market. Delayed by several accidents during construction, work was complete by the end of 1862 at a cost of £1.3 million. The railway opened to the public on Saturday 10 January 1863. The Met was granted permission for two additional tracks (the City Widened Lines) from King's Cross to Farringdon Street in 1861, and a four-track eastward extension to Moorgate in 1864. The extension to Aldersgate Street and Moorgate Street (now Barbican and Moorgate) opened on 23 December 1865. On 13 April 1868, the MR opened the first section of Metropolitan and St John's Wood Railway as a branch from its existing route. This line, serving the open-air platforms, was steadily extended to Willesden Green and northwards, finally reaching Aylesbury Town and Verney Junction (some 50 miles/80 km from Baker Street) in 1892. The MR station mainly competed for traffic with Euston, where the LNWR provided local services to Middlesex and Watford, and later with Marylebone, where the GCR provided expresses to Aylesbury and beyond on the same line.

Over the next few decades this section of the station was extensively rebuilt to provide four platforms. The current Metropolitan line layout largely dates from 1925, and the bulk of the surface buildings, designed by architect Charles Walter Clark, also date from this period.

As part of the Transported by Design programme of activities, in 15 October 2015, after two months of public voting, Baker Street underground station's platforms were elected by Londoners as one of the 10 favourite transport design icons.

Hammersmith & City line

In November 1860, a bill was presented to Parliament for a railway from the GWR's main line west of Paddington to Shepherd's Bush and Hammersmith. Authorised on 22 July 1861 as the Hammersmith and City Railway (H&CR), the line constructed opened on 13 June 1864. In 1871, two additional tracks parallel to the GWR between Westbourne Park and Paddington were brought into use for the H&CR.

Circle line

Proposals from the Met to extend south from Paddington to South Kensington and east from Moorgate to Tower Hill were granted on 29 July 1864. Starting as a branch from Praed Street junction, a short distance east of the Met's Paddington station, the western extension opened to Brompton (Gloucester Road) (now Gloucester Road) on 1 October 1868. Three months later, on 24 December 1868, the Met extended eastwards to South Kensington.

The two companies started operating a joint Inner Circle service between Mansion House and Moorgate Street via South Kensington and Edgware Road every ten minutes, supplemented by a District service every ten minutes between Mansion House and West Brompton and H&CR and GWR suburban services between Edgware Road and Moorgate Street. At the other end of the line, the District part of South Kensington station opened on 10 July 1871 and Earl's Court station opened on the West Brompton extension on 30 October 1871.

Bakerloo line and Jubilee line

In November 1891, a private bill was presented to Parliament for the construction of the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway (BS&WR). The railway was planned to run entirely underground from Marylebone to Elephant & Castle via Baker Street and Waterloo and was approved in 1900. Construction commenced in August 1898 under the direction of Sir Benjamin Baker, W.R. Galbraith and R.F. Church with building work by Perry & Company of Tredegar Works, Bow. Test trains began running in 1905. The official opening of the BS&WR by Sir Edwin Cornwall took place on 10 March 1906. The first section of the BS&WR was between Baker Street and Lambeth North. Baker Street was the temporary northern terminus of the line until it was extended to Marylebone on 27 March 1907, a year after the rest of the line. The original station building stood on Baker Street and served the tube platforms with lifts, but these were supplemented with escalators in 1914, linking the Metropolitan line and the Bakerloo line platforms by a new concourse excavated under the Metropolitan line.

On 20 November 1939, following the construction of an additional southbound platform and connecting tube tunnels between Baker Street and Finchley Road stations, the Bakerloo line took over the Metropolitan line's stopping services between Finchley Road and Wembley Park and its Stanmore branch. The current Bakerloo ticket hall and escalators to the lower concourse were provided in conjunction with the new service. The Jubilee line added an extra northbound platform and replaced the Bakerloo line service to Stanmore from its opening on 1 May 1979.

Incidents

On 18 June 1925, electric locomotive No.4 collided with a passenger train when a signal was changed from green to red just as the locomotive was passing it. Six people were injured.

On 23 August 1973, a bomb was found in a carrier bag in the ticket hall. The bomb was defused by the bomb squad. A week later, on 30 August, a member of staff found another bomb left on the overbridge. Again, it was defused without any injury.

Points of interest

In popular culture

The excavation of Baker Street for the Underground can be seen in a scene of the 2011 film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, set in 1891.