Ruislip Garden station, Central line, London Underground - first day of tube services, 21 November 1948

            It had been a long wait in west London for the Central line to arrive on the West Ruislip extension. Work had commenced in the late 1930s as part of London Transport's "New Works Programme 1935 - 40" that saw the Central line extended both east and west, the former in partnership with the then London & North Eastern Railway and the latter with the Great Western Railway. However the outbreak of the Second World War soon halted work on these projects and indeed they went backwards on this section of the line as the widened lines provided to allow the electric tube trains to run parallel to existing GWR tracks saw track lifted for use elsewhere.

The stations - well, it seemed to be the case in 'austerity' that if you got  a platform structure you didn't get a completed station building and vice versa! Ruislip Gardens was, as a 'joint' station so to speak, designed by the GWR's architects rather than LT's as were several others. They followed the same modernist design favoured by LT and some, such as West Acton or Perivale, are commendable structures to this day and now Listed buildings. Ruislip Gardens had to wait for the 1960s to 'get' a station building but these fine, gull-wing cantilevered concrete platform structures (with echoes of the LNER's design for Loughton on the Eastern Extension) were a pattern for other Western extension stations. Sadly they were allowed to detriorate badly and much to my chagrin, just before my time at LU, they were all demolished and so sadly none survive.

As can be seen under post-war pressure to get the line up and running some permanent fixtures were not ready and so here we see temporary versions of the LT combined roundel and lighting structures with what were I'm sure signwritten rather than v/e roundels. Train 30 has either just set off from the terminus at West Ruislip (not the pre-war intended Denham that was cutback largely due to Green Belt planning) or has just entered service from Ruislip Depot. It is heading off on the long schlep to Hainault and consists of the refurbished 1920s "Standard Stock", much of which had spent the war in storage at the partially completed western depot at Hainault and so required an awful lot of refurbishment work at London Transport's then mighty works at Acton. By the time this photo was taken neither company that had started this scheme, the LPTB nor the GWR, existed as both had been nationalised and formed part of the British Transport Commission. Odd to think that adjacent to this platform work is about to start on another great scheme as the new HS2 line follows this formation.

Not sure who this picture, scanned form a magazine, is by - possibly LT or possibly C Coles? Apologies to them anyhow.

Taken on: February 12, 2020

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21 November 1948

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