The last of the great London termini. Mind you, some would say it isn't great at all. Decide for yourself... Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/jago... Patreon: / jagohazzard
Keep buying Marylebone Station! It is a lovely little station. For many years I worked in the The Landmark Hotel opposite the station (originally the Grand Central Hotel. The Bakerloo Line partly transported me daily to and from work. The black cab taxi rank was always reliable for a quick trip. The mainline station took me to many places in the Chilterns and Midlands on business and leisure trips. The station was busy at a leisurely pace (excluding peak hour traffic). Be assured you have a winner when you buy Marylebone Station. Hmm…I might just head off for quick trip down memory Lane!
@@Bdsteck Like in the US, there was one version for many years, with London place names. Like in the US I've memorised every one! Then they made lots of silly versions from the 1990s onwards.
One thing in Marylebone's favour was the creation of Chiltern Railways - arguably the most inventive of the privatised railway operators, who promoted, amongst other things, the use of higher specification trains and the use of Birmingham Moor Street as a better value competitor to the established services to Birmingham New Street.
Whilst I agree they are probably the best TOC. They still were part of the premature axing of the W&S just to take its well liked train sets for itself.
The Chiltern was downgraded to a commuter line, with passing sections removed, etc. Chiltern thought otherwise then upped line speed on stretches reintroducing a London-Birmingham service. All London-Birmingham services ran on this line until 1967 when they moved to the WCML. The commuter line was converted back to a mainline with the Birmingham service reintroduced after around 20-25 years or so. There is still a lot of work to do to get it right. The station passing sections need fully doing with some 4 tracking, and of course electrification.
@@johnburns4017 At Denham the embankment the westbound platform was built on started to subside, so the platform was removed and rebuilt on the opposite side of the running line - in the space previously occupied by one of the fast lines. That was in about 2008 so I don't know if Chiltern's ambitions for quad-tracking have changed since then.
The first time I went to London on my own was August 1983 for a 2000AD annual signing at Forbidden Planet. I travelled from High Wycombe to Marylebone (about £3 return, no tube included). Getting of at platform 1, wandering through the station and walking down Gloucester Place and Oxford Street was the most exciting thing I could imagine. For years after, Marylebone was the gateway concerts, films, comics and the greatest city in the world.
@@MOMGEN1 Which one was it, the St. Giles Street one or the original shop on Denmark St? As I recall, the latter was a tiny affair, and very underlit within. But what a treasure trove to us comic hunters!
@@1800astra - I never went to the St Giles store, it was in Denmark Street. Its a guitar shop now, which always makes me slightly depressed when I go past it. Same as the old Comic Showcase shop in Neal Street and GOSH by the British Museum. I suppose I'm just old now...
@@MOMGEN1 In fairness, it was a recording studio before it was a comic shop, as it's situated on 'London's Tin Pan Alley'. That whole area has been changed by redevelopment in recent years, being depressed is a natural response. Another long-gone place was to be found down a narrow alley at the top of a flight of stairs. LTS I believe it was called, aka Paradise Alley. There's an interesting blog here that mentions it: londonlovescomics.blogspot.com/2007/06/west-end-comic-shops-living-and-dead.html
"It looks like a branch public library in a Manchester suburb", was how John Betjeman described it (approvingly). And now probably busier than it's ever been, with proper main line trains once again!
This reminds me of a comment Sir Thomas Beecham made that bit him on the arse. He made a rude comment about St Pancras Station (well, it was actually about one of Elgar's Symphonies!) and Beecham, who had traveled by GCR from Manchester to London whenever he needed to commute between the two, suddenly had to use the Midland instead, to appease the St Pancras lovers who were mortally offended. And he absolutely HATED it.
Jago, you forgot to mention the most interesting fact about Marylebone and a good pub quiz question. It is the only London terminal whose platforms are built at street level. All other London termini are either built above street level or below street level because parliament then dictated that steam trains should not be on a level with horse drawn transport for fear it would scare the horses. Marylebone being the last to be built came after this law was repelled.
When I studied abroad in the UK we were near Banbury so this was our terminus. I actually quite liked Marylebone because it’s rather easy to use. It’s a miracle it survived!
Super video! :D Travelling down from Birmingham to London, Marylebone was always my port of call on Chiltern's loco-hauled express, far more comfortable and much less hassle than on Virgin's Pendolinos, great for when you're not in a rush. :)
As a nerdy teenager in the early 60s I remember travelling to Marylebone on the South Yorkshireman, all the way from Bradford. It was fascinating as the line morphed from a rural main line into part of the Underground, the great steam engine looking quite out of place amid the myriad red electric trains at Harrow on the Hill. I don't suppose there were more than a couple of dozen passengers the whole way. A pity though that you didn't mention the larger than usual (for the UK) loading gauge which would have assisted Watkin in his plan to build a direct line to Paris.
I find Marylebone quite a charming little station due to the fact that it always had to face adversity from its bigger siblings all its life. The Great Central is honestly quite an interesting railway due to its styles of design and operations, having some of the fastest trains in the country at one point. Its a shame that it was closed though, would have made for a nice alternate route to the Midlands. I am interested to what Marylebone would have ended up looking like had the full 10 platform design been implemented.
One of the reasons the GCR was cash strapped, is they couldn't simply demolish property in their way, as generally happened in the mid-C19th. Instead they were forced to build over the top, with expensive viaducts and other infrastructure. This gave the Great Central an unusually flat route profile, and because Watkin's aim was to reach Paris via a channel tunnel, construction to a continental gauge. Internal BR politics eventually saw the mainline absorbed by the Midland Region, who had never been keen on their competitor who saw themselves as LNER in all ways that mattered.
And by 2050, albeit by a different route, passengers may have a continental gauge express route from Manchester to Paris via London (albeit for budgetary reasons and objections from the local council, the London to Manchester via Solihull line won't be connected to the London to Paris via Folkestone and Calais line).
The GCR continental loading gauge is a myth as it didn’t start to 1914. The GCR demolished many houses in Nottingham to build the Victoria station. Another reason why it was cash strapped is that it didn’t serve any decent population centres south of Rugby. Great if you want to run fast trains but not so great if you want to get bums on seats.
@@andrewlong6438 Nottingham Central was mostly underground. Regardless of what it was called then, the GCR used the wider loading gauge that had become the continental standard for new construction. I think the lack of patronage was more to do with not having the frequency and feeder trains network to compete with the Midland Railways.
@@stephenarbon2227 Agreed, GCR used cut and cover techniques to avoid paying compensation wherever possible. The reasons for its eventual failure are various, politics, urban duplication, a Pennine crossing bottleneck (not fixed until BR days, and then with an outmoded electrification standard), lack of direct holiday traffic, etc. On the other hand it had fast coal and fish traffic to what was then an important London market.
I'm a little bit disappointed Jago. You never once dropped that regular name, Charles Tyson Yerkes, in your latest tale of London's transport. He obviously never had his fingers in the Great Central pie 🤣🤣
@@AndreiTupolev After the Bullhouse Bridge disaster when a train tumbled down an embankment killing 24 passengers, Edward Watkin said words to the effect that he'd rather have a Bullhouse every week than be forced to fit continuous brakes to his trains. A barrel of laughs was Watkin.
Marylebone is probably my favourite London terminus - it is small, easily navigable, and how it has the look and feel of a station serving an affluent market town...
Discovering that there were cheap trains from Marylebone to Birmingham was certainly handy when I used to travel reasonably frequently between the two cities. Of course they don't go to New Street, which could be either a plus or a minus, depending.
It's also quite a pretty route, albeit somewhat slower than the alternatives. There is, of course, no question about the merits of not arriving at the reinforced concrete Stygian gloom that was New Street.
@@TheEulerID The new New Street is a bit lighter and more open, but there's no longer a central linear concourse - changing platforms may involve going through a gateline, working out which colour "lounge" covers the platform you need, then going through another gateline. It doesn't help that the shopping centre above it is now called "Grand Central" and the Metro (tram) stop opposite carries that name...
@@johnm2012 Agree - Moor Street is lovely. I used this service quite a bit a few years back, slower but cheaper than the Euston service to Birmingham, great scenery, less busy and much preferred by me (just leave a little earlier).
If I can’t get a cheap ticket on the Fast trains on the WCML, my next option is the chiltern line - especially if you get on a comfortable loco hauled refurbished mk3 set.
Another great video Jago. I've always liked Marylebone - for its strangely small and 'human' scale, its cosy and modest (but very fetching) Queen Anne architecture and the lingering sense of Victorian hubris given from the GCR roundels, the massive wedding cake of a hotel across the road and the weird L-shaped layout caused by the frontage and concours 'overreaching' the existing platforms because they were built to accommodate so many more. I like that, given it spent so much of its existence as something of a backwater, it has never been properly modernised or redeveloped, but various owners have left their mark. It's still pretty much as the GCR built it, but there are little elements of BR-era fittings, a few left-over NSE emblems and of course the modern Chiltern stuff. And it's the only London terminus which (waist-high ticket barriers aside) is still directly open from the road to the platforms - you can walk up Great Central Street and see right through the arch in the frontage to the trains and out through the end of the train shed. While it's good to see the place well-used and cared for now, I hope in a way that it never becomes too busy or too grand. When there was talk of HS2 reusing much of the GC main line and Marylebone being the UK's high-speed rail hub I was torn between it being the century-overdue fulfilment of Watkin's visions and it being the end of so much of what makes Marylebone special.
As with most decisions that the government are involved in was very shortsighted to close rather than rationalise the GC mainline as even if HS2 wasn't necessary it would have been a useful secondary route today given that the WCML the Midland mainline and the ECML are all running at near capacity and how much cheaper would it be to upgrade to a high speed mainline than to build a whole new one as we are currently doing. It would have accommodated a wider loading gauge as it was built with expansion to four tracks in mind therefore enough land was acquired to expand of course the traffic never materialised and the expansion never happened. It is always easy to be wise with hindsight and say that this line or that line should not have closed because it would be useful and possibly profitable today but how long could you reasonably keep a loss making line open because it might be useful one day, there's no point in spending £10 now to save £5 later on.
@@philnewstead5388 The 'case for the Great Central' benefits from hindsight. In the Beeching era rail traffic was in a tailspin and, apart from a few nostalgic stick-in-the-muds like John Betjeman, the prevailing opinion was that there was no significant long-term future for a general-purpose rail network. This was the time of 'managed decline', especially after BR had, with the utter failure of the Modernisation Plan, proven that it was not capable of reforming and rebuilding itself into prosperity. For all its magnificent engineering, the GCML was a complete white elephant. Even in the 1890s plenty of people questioned the need for a fourth north/south mainline to London, and especially the viability of such a line being built by a mid-tier company like the MS&LR. Watkin managed to annoy all the potential railway partners for his scheme, which as well as forcing the M&SLR/GCR to handle the whole thing alone meant that his new main line cut across the heart of England while also having absolutely terrible (or even non-existent) connections to virtually every other line that it encountered. Having to thread itself around and between the existing (already over-built) railway network left the Great Central with a route that missed most of the major population centres that could have generated on-line traffic. The financial industry was also sceptical of the GCR, with Watkin having to load up his company with expensive high-interest debt to get it built and even then the scheme went way over-budget. That debt was a massive burden for the GCR for the rest of its existence and weighed heavily on the LNER too, being a major reason for that company's perennially precarious finances. The GCML never came close to attracting enough traffic to pay its way, and the only reason the GCR's 'business expresses' to the north became so renowned for their high levels of customer service was because on many trains the stewards outnumbered the passengers. There was no real case for the GCML ever existing, and certainly no real case for its continued existence in the 1960s. The very best case scenario for then was that it would, like its trans-Pennine counterpart the Woodhead Line, lose its passenger services and be retained as a freight corridor. But Woodhead closed when the coal and steel traffic that it was built to carry disappeared in the 1980s and, had the GCML survived, it would have suffered the same fate. The real shame (which goes for so many of the Beeching closures that are now regretted) was that the formation wasn't protected, which would make rebuilding significantly easier and cheaper. Not every closed line should have been 'land banked' in this way, but a long-distance mainline trunk route through the middle of England should definitely have been treated as a strategic resource.
Jack Grover Many of the alignments were protected for a while after closures and it was largely still possible to reinstate the GCR mainline right up until the early nineties and even land given to Sustrans was given with the proviso that if the alignments were ever needed to return to rail trafic that would take priority but again many alignment weren't blocked until the early nineties nearly a quarter of a century after closure and even abandoned alignments still have bridges and earthworks that need maintaining so I totally agree you can't keep stuff forever in case it might be useful someday, nobody back in the early sixties which is when many of the decisions were made could have foreseen the explosion in personal transport particularly in the seventies and eighties or the fact that the railways would again become well patronised by passengers as they are today. I do however think that Beechings view that if it didn't make money simply close it was a little simplistic and at the very least the fact that the transport minister owned one of the largest road construction companies of the day in all but name certainly did not help the railways cause. I am certainly not a person that thinks that every mile of railway and every duplicated route should have remained open but I certainly think that a more measured approach to closures and modernisation would have left us with a far better system than we have today. Of course it's all very subjective now as it would be impossible to reinstate much of what was lost simply because of the amount of time that has elapsed.
I was so hoping you’d find a way to work the phrase “not cricket” into this one when I saw the title, and you did not disappoint. These are the little things that make this such a great channel, Jago.
Marylebone has, for the past few years, been my go-to for visiting friends in Birmingham. Cheaper than Virgin/Avanti, still quicker than LNWR. And then Moor St at the other end is another lovely station. The surviving Network SouthEast fittings and furniture at Marylebone are a fab nostalgic touch, too.
Great video, thanks. Nice to see my old flat at 1:47 and 6:30 in the video, we lived looking over platform 6 and my father drove out of Marylebone was also the Chairman of the staff railway club there for many years. He also drove many of the steam special’s out of there in the early 80’s including The Flying Scotsman and Sir Nigel Gresley among others. Thanks for the memories.
My immediate impression was that the station looks like an old fashioned cottage hospital, a bit "Carry on Nurse". I could imagine a 1950s ambulance pulling up under the canopy.
@@AtheistOrphan That's *Dame* Barbara Windsor to you. ... I was highly amused when she got a knighthood, it was like a glorious single digit in the air to all the snobs who sneered at the Carry On films and her other work which appealed to the masses.
One of the benefits of being late to the party was that our Eddie would have a sensible loading gauge and gradients on his railway. I like an island platform too. Not so much on the tube though. They ran quite a few steam specials from Marrowbone back in the 80/90s. Ta Jago.
@@paulhorton5612 Maybe we'd have US LG on the GCR by now. Imagine one of those US three story high freights on a windcutter thundering through Woodford Halse!
@@paulhorton5612 - there is a bit of an urban myth going around that the Great Central was built to a supposed 'European loading gauge'. It wasn't, being only slightly more generous than the GWR's existing loading gauge. The actual loading gauge is still there for all to see at Loughborough - it is still very small by European standards.
Marylebone is my favourite London terminus. A few years ago I needed to make regular journeys to Birmingham from London. Tried travelling from Euston on class 350's or Pendolino's, they were OK apart from the 350's not being too comfortable. Then I tried Marylebone to Moor Street. It was a revelation. A rake of nicely refurbished Mark 3 coaches hauled by a class 67 loco (soon to become a class 68). Sheer comfort. And considerably cheaper too.
I love the way that the long tunnel from Finchley Road to (almost) Marylebone comes out into the open very briefly as it crosses on a viaduct over the deep cutting containing South Hampstead on the WCML. I always used to look out for the brief flash of daylight.
One of my favourite memories is watching the "Master Cutler" at full steam om the Chiltern gradients just before Chorleywood Station. We would stand on the edge of Chorleywood Common with a clear view of the lines towards London, and the "Master Cutler" was a sight to delight the eyes of a 11-12 year old kid with a love of steam trains. I am talking about the late fifties - early sixties. Of course then the Metropolitan trains running to Aylesbury were also steam after Rickmansworth.
I remember that, too, watching it at Amersham station - also used to see the South Yorkshireman, another steam express of the day. At night, for a time, there was the Starlight Special. Those were the days!
I had a small part in the 1984 closure hearings. At the time, off-peak services consisted of just 1 tph to Aylesbury, 1 tph to High Wycombe and 1 every 2 hours to Banbury! It's so good to see how successful the station is now.
Yes, and that 1 train every 2 hours only went as far as Banbury, so you had to change onto a Paddington-Oxford-Birmingham train if you want to get to Birmingham - and I seem to remember there was always a long wait at Banbury in either direction: perish the thought that they tried to integrate the times of the trains. Princes Risborough to Aynho Junction (just south of Banbury) was singled as a result of Beeching, and this was only reversed, as part of Project Evergreen, in the 1990s after Chiltern took over. Normally I only ever used the train from Stoke Mandeville via Amersham to Marylebone, but occasionally that line would be closed for engineering works, so the route would be much longer: train to Aylesbury, train from there to Princes Risborough, maybe another train from Risborough to London if the one from Aylesbury wasn't going right through. I think there was a time when the Aylesbury-Risborough train was peak hours only - for commuters and schoolchildren - with no service in between. Hard to believe that BR wanted to close Marylebone, downgrade the Aylesbury-Amersham service to a shuttle (change to the Met line into Baker Street); and the Wycombe line was to go into Paddington via the original GWR route that had been downgraded to to occasional freight and one "parliamentary" passenger train a day. But common sense prevailed. Both the Aylesbury and Wycombe trains were operated by 1st Generation (Class 115) DMUs which had lovely comfy, bouncy seats, but suffered from several big problems: they were separate compartments of 4 rows of seats, with a gap in the middle back-to-back row, with no corridor connection allong the train, so no access to a toilet; they were boiling hot in summer and freezing cold, with condensation pouring down the windows, in winter; they had to be driven in that peculiar style of 1st Gen DMUs: the driver changed gear manually, but had to let the engine return to idle for several seconds during each gearchange and then reapply power, so acceleration was very jerky - that was to allow time for the gearboxes in all the motor carriages to complete their simultaneous gearchanges. No-one shed a tear when the 1st Gen DMUs were replaced by the modern (at the time) Class 165 with corridor connection, air conditioning and smooth diesel-hydraulic transmission. The change of rolling stock corresponded with the change to 2 trains per hour on the Aylesbury route and similar improvement on the Wycombe route.
@@Mortimer50145 Oh hell, I'd forgotten about those trains and the way they drove! They were still better than the trains that I encountered a decade or two later on WAGN though...
I love this corner of London. Marylebone has a very unique atmosphere and I implore anyone with an interest in railways to spend an hour or more there taking it all in...
Blimey. You went from my favourite Underground line to my favourite London terminus in less than a week !! Even my oo gauge railway is a scale model of Marylebone (circa 1960). As always Jago, brilliant work.
I worked there as a driver in the 80s it was very rundown,the maintenance staff did a great job keeping the DMUs going.It was interesting though as a number of steam locos were based there for the sunday specials to stratford upon avon.And there was i think an old class 15 that was used for trainheating ,and i think 40106 in green livery was there for sometime.And the colour light signalling between marylebone and neasden jct dated from the 1930s.Its very different today,with all the investment that has taken place.
This is my primary station whilst in England, my family resides outside London so all journeys begin at High Wycombe on the Chiltern into Marlybone, as I taught my niece her American English, and you always either just missed the train home or are running to track 6! We were here Friday, over to Kings X for Edinburgh! Underdog of no, I feel this is my station.
The train times are the same as ever and the platform managers delight in giving passengers 2 minutes notice to get to the far end of platform 6, not forgetting that everyone running past platforms 1-4 could marvel at how empty they were while doing so...
Before it got busier Marylebone was also a great station for steam specials to leave from. I have film I took of one, I thin on a Sunday, in the days when BT Police would allow people to walk off the end of the platforms and gather round the turntable to watch the engine being turned. I shudder to think of the response to that nowadays!!!
Passed through Marylebone couple of times to reach RAF Halton via Wendover, both times for a Pre-Recruit Training Course but last minute issues ultimately saw me not going onto recruit training proper. Third time round, skipping the Pre-RTC and going straight to basic training in March next year (admittedly taking the car this time as I ran afoul of a train strike on the Great Eastern main line trying to get back home from the Pre-RTC one time). Granted, on the way back I always changed at Harrow-on-the-Hill for the Met to Liverpool Street and thus skipping a couple of extra changes.
i love Marylebone - admittedly i'm biased because i live in the Chilterns. it's a friendly little station sat right on the Bakerloo Line. if you fancy a walk it's also within easy distance to Oxford Street and Westminster. much nicer than Paddington.
Marra-luh-bn, if you please! Growing up with mobility problems in Haddenham ('Adnum), the line to Marylebone was a life saver. I still remember the day they opened the new station. I wouldn't have been able to work without it.
Marylebone was my first destination as a child on the ancient class 115 DMUs from Princes Risborough. I vaguely remember Marylebone being a bit of a state back then and it’s transformation under Chris Green’s tenure with NSE following the introduction of the 165s. Now the “Chiltern Turbos” are feeling their age but to me they’re still the new, modern trains that saved the Chiltern line. Great video as always. Many thanks for sharing.
Usually one can get cheaper tickets to Oxford from Marylebone than from Paddington, but there is rarely first class available. My favorite way to kill a little pre-departure time at Marylebone, pre-pandemic, was to watch confused tourists trying to find their train to Bicester Village. “Is this the whole station? It’s so…small.”
@@AaronOfMpls Of Course its one of the Four London and North Eastern Stations on The Monopoly Board, its smallness though had a problem with an overspill of the florist's stall creating a trip and slip hazzard for concourse passengers, particulary if trying to get to the stairs down to the tube station
@@highpath4776 Good to know; I'm not familiar with the UK Monopoly board. (I mainly know the US one with all the Atlantic City NJ street names. Its railroads are 3 major ones in that part of the US at the time (1930s) -- Pennsylvania, B&O, and Reading RRs -- plus a "Short Line" RR to round it out.)
No long-distance trains to Aberystwyth I'm afraid Jago, but certainly to Wrexham and Shrewsbury, In fact, the short-lived Wrexham, Shropshire and Marylebone Railway Company would be a great subject for one of your splendid videos. Another reason to loathe Richard Branson.
I enjoy ALL OF YOUR VIDEOS. Don't you just love the quirky pronunciations of certain words in the English language? As an American, New Englander specifically, we have plenty on this side of the pond to drive anyone crazy. Keep up the good work
@@andrewgwilliam4831 I think it is the way our brains are trained by all the other words. That “yle” cluster is somewhat odd. Aside from argyle where else does it show up? “Ley” though is a bit more common. So I think our brain just switches it up which led to people saying it Marleybone in the past instead or Marylebone, and then everyone learned to say it that way from people older than them.
It's only 'crazy' if people assume they are right, and this (with apologies, Ronald -) especially applies to those in (good ol') the US of A. I born in Scotland, lived most of my live in England (irrelevant, but), and know the hostility that *some* Scots will offer when they hear 'Edinburgh' used with the same ending as "Pittsburgh". Sure - they are spelled the same way, but I used when I used the reverse pronunciation just outside a certain South-Western Pennsylvanian city to get to the airport, I was met with a blank face and "where you wanna go?" Ditto "Leicester" (Less-ter. not Lie-cess-ter). Gloucester (Gloss-ter, not Gloww-cess-ter) etc ... I'm sure there are millions of places in the USA that us Brits will mispronounce (forgive us), but it's our language, and we'll have the final say (as we're still the little green island next to France - that gave the world the language in the first place!! 😉) M. (and having lived very close to the terminal station in question for years, my fiver is on "Marr-le-bon" or "Marry-le-bon" - certainly not "-le-BONE").
@@MattForbes every country in the anglophonic world has quirks. I had no intention of offending anyone anywhere. My point was and is, don't you just love the English language. These things, among others, make it a difficult language for others to learn. We, Britain and America are separated by a common language, or something to that effect
Back in the 70s Marylebone was one of my favourite London stations too, it was certainly pretty quiet outside the rush hours. You had to be fairly inventive to find an excuse to use it for a day trip out. Still, walking in the Chilterns from, say, Wendover, made a nice change from my more regular treks in the North Downs near Dorking.
As a student in Birmingham I once decided to take the Chiltern line down to London instead of the usual WCML route and it was easily one of my favourite rail journeys I've ever taken - and arriving into Marylebone was the icing on the cake. The atmosphere of a grand London terminus in its heyday, without the packed crowds I've been part of at Euston. Now if only the Tube station had step-free access...
I love the small-station charm of Marylebone. Punches far above its weight in terms of the scope of the network that extends from it. Maybe it's a bit like Cannon Street or Blackfriars?
It’s probably my favourite terminus even though I’ve never taken a main line train from there! (I’ve taken the tube many times as I used to work next door in Dorset Square.) The sports bar shown at around 0:25 used to be a Chinese restaurant that used to have an insane buy one get one free happy hour on any alcohol - fun times!
This is my favourite terminus, not least because it's the first one I got to know after my parents moved down south to Aylesbury in the 1970s. It used to be tatty, bleak and grim - the former underground Gents toilets used to give me the creeps - and it stank of idling diesel engines. But once Chiltern took over and the 1st Generation DMUs were replaced by Class 165s, it went up in the world and became a vibrant and yet homely station. It's a shame that the wood-panelled ticket office was closed, but it's become part of the station bar so it's not been lost. At first I always used to turn right after getting off the train, and go down into the underground with its *very* long winding corridors to the platforms, until someone told me that it was almost always quicker to go out of the station and walk a couple of hundred yards to Baker Street - especially for anywhere that wasn't on the Bakerloo line that was served by Marylebone underground.
Surprised by your comment about the Tube being a long way from the main station. It could hardly be closer, especially by the standards of Tube stations generally.
@@oldman1734 Are you talking about the ticket office/machines on the surface, or the platforms underground? My memory is that after you went down the escalator, there then seemed to be a very long walk below ground along "endless" passageways before you got to the platforms. Has anything about the layout underground changed since the 1970s and 80s when I used to use Marylebone?
The escalators to the tube platforms are right by the ticket office, and the passageways to and from the platforms are short. Baker street is more like half a kilometre away, not 200 yards!
@@Mortimer50145. My original reply seems to be deleted. Can’t think why. I just mentioned that my memory often plays tricks on me and I think you might have the same problem. It’s very common. Or perhaps you are generally unfamiliar with the Tube. Long walks to and from the platform is normal but at Marylebone it’s shorter than most.
@@JohnLeeming23 Maybe I'm misremembering it or maybe the corridors have been shortened so they emerge on a different place on the platforms. I have memories of sprinting from a tube train along the (seemingly) very long corridors and leaping up the escalator, and *just* managing to catch an Aylesbury train, in the days when they were only hourly.
Back in the 80's/90's I remember a steam train would run past Wembley Stadium on a Sunday evening around 6pm probably from Marylebone and heading to destinations unknown. I've never quite looked into what that steam train was but I do wonder if you know about it and if it still runs. I've not seen it in over 20-years and this video reminded me that it is something I'd like to know more about. Maybe enough content for a future video?
That'd be the Shakespeare Limited, was it called, that ran regularly to Stratford-on-Avon. They regularly used Sir Nigel Gresley and Flying Scotsman, among others
As a youngster in the early1960s, I remember the steam trains passing through Amersham on their way to Aylesbury - we used to stand on the low bridges and let the train smoke wash over us - a memorable smell of the old days.
It was the increase in sales of season tickets (called the capitalcard launched in 1985) that gave Marylebone the kick up the backside and turned the stations fortunes around Network southeast took up the yoke and 5 years later modernized the whole route
TRM replaced the semaphore signals, installed ATP and removed the station loops, raising the speed. It was a start but Evergreen made the service what it is today.
@@johnm2012 As mentioned in the video, by 1985 the station really was on death row - Chris Green's Network South East vision and their TRM investment (as part of BR) and the late 1980s order for new class 165 networkers is what saved the route, years before railway privatisation. Adrian Shooter lead the M40trains consortium in the mid 1990s that won the Chiltern Franchise, and set to work creating the Chiltern Main Line. Both men deserve plaudits!
This station has always been my entry and exit to London so has always featured in the happy memories spent there. Shocking to hear that they almost closed it down
So pleased that Marylebone has survived, although I barely use it, it is always a joy to use as everything is quieter and more gentile, and even the entrance/exit is more pleasant. It is also a reminder to those who look back on British Rail as a kind of 'golden age' of railways, it was anything but, British Rail were constantly looking to sell their assets to raise capital and many stations that we take for granted would have disappeared had they continued in operation.
One of my favourite London Stations in the area and I have seen a lot of films on Marylebone over the years, including clips of Marylebone in Steam Days and when they used to run Steam Trains in the 1980’s, and I think it is a lovely station and even though I love Victoria station as my favourite London Terminus Station, Marylebone is still one of my favourites out there.
What really bugs me with the often beautiful Victorian and Edwardian Termini is when a modernisation programme takes place most of the beautiful internal decoration is covered by laminate sheeting or rows of ticket machines. There are some beautiful ceramic tiled pictorial maps on the walls of one entrance to Victoria, out of date but pleasing to the eye, now covered with laminate and ticket machines. Ceramic tiles are just as easy to clean as laminates and much tougher. Ticket machines can't answer questions like ticket office staff could. The intercom on some never work. Not all of us have a smart phone or walk around with a tablet or laptop under one's arm. Even if online info is found it is often misleading or just out of date. Talking face to face with a fellow human is far better.
Very glad it got a repreive from closure as my local London terminus. I remember well how poor the rolling stock and Station looked back in the late 80's. I believe Chiltern Railways are actually one of the better franchises. There certainly seem to have been plenty of improvements since they took over. Plus they also seem to continue to expand. Upgrading/reinstating the link to Oxford via the 'infamous' Bicester Village, plus working on East West rail and in effect resurrection of a significant portion of the old varsity line.
I like Marylebone too- if you have time to wait, it's a pleasant change from the Met between London & Harrow-on-the-Hill, and it's a nice station to wait for a train in. Marylebone High Street is also worth a visit.
I'm from the Midlands, and I always use Chiltern instead of Avanti to get to London, so I always end up at Marylebone. A much nicer station than Euston IMHO.
I'm from Banbury so for all of my childhood/teens this was the only National Rail station I ever went to in London, always will have a soft spot for it just like you.
My Father worked for LNER/British Rail so we got a Pass or Privilege Tickets . We lived in Nottingham and joined the Master Cutler to Marylebone on its inaugural run with the Master Cutler of the year on board and briefly on the Footplate in his regalia and Top Hat Alan Spencer
Very interesting. I live near Dunstable, the largest town in England not to be served by a railway (I believe it lost its station under the Beeching axe). Dunstable is now nearly constantly gridlocked, hugely car-dependent and very hard to get in, out of, or through. I wonder how different things might be now had it kept its rail line and station.
Skelmersdale and Leigh in Lancashire (not to be confused with Leigh on Sea in Essex) are also minus any railway connection, the population of both is similar to Dunstable Leigh's station closed in 1954, predating Beeching by a decade or so, and in the case of Skem, it never had a station in the first place, being a 1960s New Town Lancashire is quite a densely populated county, but parts of it are hard to get to
Without doubt, Marylebone is my favourite London terminus. It’s calm , compact and elegant, and I’ve embarked on some lovely journeys from there, mostly on the old Chiltern turbot 🐟 (as I dubbed it). The ‘Get Carter’ connection is just the cherry on the cake!
Ah Jago, this is a piece that suffers from being a tad London centric. Let me explain briefly. I am proudly a W Londoner, but now patrol the S Midlands (m'duck). That short walk from Euston to Marylebone turns into a huge chasm by the time you reach MK, Oxford, Northampton etc. The Great Central was the infrastructure glue in the middle of these wildernesses and its Beeching closure also prompted the end of so many Oxford / Bletchley / N'pton branch lines, and the Varsity Line. In time, it was the prime factor in allowing the construction of the M40. And now, guess what? The £1bn+ "new" East-West Rail will reinvent a big chunk of the Varsity Line. And of course, The Chiltern Line is /was v profitable. There's a huge issue out here in the long grass of east/west and southwest/northeast connectivity. Trying to jump from WCML to ECML to the Western Corridor is almost impossible unless you first reverse into Lunnen or jump up to Birmingham. I could wax forever on the lost opportunity of the GCR, but Deo Gratias for Marylebone!
46 seconds in to the show and already in my brain I can hear a certain persons name haunting me. But I was wrong, not a word of him. But surely a name is missing, the great Chris Green who came up with total route modernisation, new trains, new signalling. Perhaps his name will feature in forthcoming videos it deserves to be.
Yes, undoubtedly Chris Green was the saviour of Marylebone. Another name not to be forgotten, is Adrian Shooter. As boss of M40 trains/Chiltern, he developed the outer suburban operation into a full main line company.
I love Marylebone, having commuted through it for several years. I even got to know the staff and the shop workers in M&S! On a few occasions, I took the train to Marylebone, had a fry-up in the Italian cafe opposite, and then came back home to Princes Risborough!
Marylebone is my favourite terminus in London, although when it comes to underdogs, the title surely belongs to Fenchurch Street. Interestingly both appear on the Monopoly board where they are dwarfed by Kings Cross and Liverpool Street, but are valued the same. I wonder what that all means? nb. whilst on the subject of lines out of Marylebone, perhaps JH might consider a trip out to Gerrards Cross to deal with the bizarre occurrence in 2005 when, what was to be the car park of a new branch of Tesco built over a cutting, collapsed onto the railway line narrowly avoiding a disaster. Almost none of the wealthy residents of Gerrards Cross (avg house price £964,728) actually wanted something as plebeian as a branch of Tesco, but John Prescott overruled local objections. Rumours that he took pleasure in annoying the Conservative dominated Chiltern town are, of course, completely wrong. As a bonus, there are almost no RU-vid videos about this bizarre event where modern engineering failed what was a routine Victorian process; that is the completion of a cut-and-cover tunnel.
This was locally described as a relatively early "Tesco on-line" experiment... :) The nobs of GX are welcome to have the Tesco and it's better than the local sewage plant...
@@nickryan3417 I think the sewage plant ois near Denham, so I doubt it worries the residents of Gerrards Cross very muc. However, the Tesco branch did, and here's a quote from the Evening Standard. Maybe the opposition isn't so much NIMBY as NOMLR. "The scheme was first put forward in the early 1990s and residents fought a long campaign against it, gaining the support of 93% of local people. The plan was turned down at every level of local government, from parish to the county, on the basis that the town could not cope with the traffic Tesco would generate and, most important, existing retailers would be driven out of business."
As a child in the 50's, I traveled with my parents from Chatham, Dad in the RN, through London and up the Great Central line to Manchester. An annual event at Christmas to Grandparents. It is a great shame all the tracks have been removed as the cuttings could have been reused today. If only they could have seen into the future instead of embracing Dr Beeching's radical cost cutting exercise that in the end didn't save much money at all.
Our family Monopoly set was from the early 1940's. All the railway stations are identified on the board as being LNER. I wonder why Waddingtons chose only LNER stations for the British version of the game?
I think that Moorgate is the underdog terminal then you have Marylebone,Cannon Street and Fenchurch Street.Many people don't even know that Moorgate is a mainline terminal, sadly it lost the Thameslink Barbican branch and just has the Great Northern now.I think that the longest distance done from Marylebone,in recent (ish)years has been Wrexham,Wales on the Wrexham and Shropshire as was obviously excluding diversions and rail tours.Guessing,if Chiltern still go there?, it's Kidderminster at present?
Marylebone became the first station in the UK to feature announcements in Mandarin about 5 years ago because of the number of Chinese tourists using it to travel to Bicester Village. As far as I know, it is still the one one.
Sadly the proposed Arriva Trains Wales services to Aberystwyth (which would have been operated by Class 158s attaching and detaching at Birmingham International) never materialised, but Marylebone did have direct services to Shrewsbury and onwards to Wrexham General between April 2008 and January 2011. Since the end of Wrexham & Shropshire, the Mark 3 coaches that were extensively refurbished for use on those services have been used by Chiltern for services between Kidderminster and Marylebone, though the current timetable only sees them doing two trains a day each way, at 0716 from Stourbridge Junction to Marylebone, 1110 from Marylebone to Birmingham Moor Street, 1355 from Birmingham Moor Street to Marylebone and 1714 from Marylebone to Kidderminster.
A lot of people claimed when it was being built that the Great Central was unnecessary. Now we have a lot of people saying the same about HS2, and many of them are the same people that lament the closure of lines such as the GC!
I lived at High Wycombe in the mid-80s when the axe was 'poised' to be swung and travelled into Marylebone frequently. The best part of Marylebone - the pub on the station sold the finest pint of Ruddles County to be had anywhere!
Marylebone is probably my favourite terminus in London (Waterloo being a close second) What I love is the compactness, it has a relaxed friendly feel to it. So glad it didn't close. Great video as ever. Love your commentary style!
You might want to turn the sound down, as the music is a ropey cover version (to avoid copyright strikes I assume), but this is the opening section of the Beatles film A Hard Day's Night, filmed at Marylebone ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4cbKMXLzUqA.html
7 years ago I travelled from Marylebone to Aberystwyth for half the cost of going from Euston to Aberystwyth. Admittedly I had to bail out at Birmingham Moor St & do a 20 mins pootle to Birmingham New St, but it was worth it. Also, to save the "route march" from a far away parked train from Harrow-the-Hill, you just have to whistle up 1 of Marylebone's golf buggy gizmos to deliver you & your luggage to the outside taxi rank. Simples!
Its only a 5 minute walk between Moor Street and New Street however you could have taken a local train from Moor Street to Smethwick Galton Bridge and caught your Welsh train there
Sign me up to the "Marylebone is my favourite London Terminus" club. One minor correction - it was "The Ipcress File" not "Get Carter" Marylebone is now important as the start of the rail link to Bicester Retail Village, much loved by Chinese tourists, hence the signs in Mandarin on the station. And it may be an urban myth, but I have heard that the left luggage office is full of discarded clothes left by people changing into their new purchases on the way back from Bicester and leaving their old clothes on the train.
Often used to substitute for other London termini in films of the 1980's and 1990's "4:50 from Paddington" with Joan Hiickson as Miss Marple for example, as it was "quieter" and there was an availability of steam engines from those stabled for charter work in the diesel servicing depot at Rossmore Road, (now replaced by new housing). I worked as part of the support crew on 34092 "City of Wells" and remember shovelling 5+tons of coal up into the tender off the adjacent Milk Dock by hand on a grim, wet November Friday afternoon (because BR's petrol-driven conveyor had broken down) before working the inaugural "South Yorkshireman" excursion, and weekends in the hot summer of 1988 toiling inside the depot with only basic tools and equipment in a filthy, slippery environment of spilled diesel and hydraulic fluid to remove the middle piston and replace the piston rings, to prepare for working the "Blackmore Vale" programme of excursions from Salisbury. The station's fortunes have risen with the introduction of Chiltern Railways' services to Birmingham Moor Street and Oxford as alternatives to the more established routes. As the Great Central's main line and the last one into London, it was a well engineered railway running through attractive countryside, though it suffered from being remote from centres of population and the "second on the scene" at many of the larger towns and cities on its route north.
You lost me at the name of the station. So I know it is not pronounced "Mary-Lee-Bone" (as it is spelled), but I have always heard it as "mar-lee-bone" But then you kept saying "mar-lee-bun." I looked it up, and it is pronounced both ways ("bun" and "bone"). No wonder it took the American Yerkes to start electrifying the underground. I've lived in the U.K., so I know Marleybone is one of those funny words where all rules of English phonetics are thrown out the window like Leicester. My first lesson was in 1979 when trying to get to Saint. Pancras Station, with is pronounced "san-pan-Chris."
Having read the other comments I appear to be the only person who is a fan of railways and The Beatles. The station was used for A Hard Day's Night. The bar shown in the film is now an M&S Food shop. There are many other films and television programs, that have used the station as a location. There is still an expensive hotel outside the station. I'm glad this station has survived, because it's a beautiful building, like St Pancras. The huge and expensive building that belongs to one of the older railways unions, can be found on the main road, away from the station. Love this video. ❤️
I'd always wondered why relations between the GCR and the Met were so abysmal and vindictive when Sir Edward Watkin was head of both companies. I hadn't realised that he had resigned (because of a stroke) only just after the GCR opened. Shame that before he went he didn't (in his capacity of joint chairman) write a few rules about the GCR having access to the Met lines, and requiring the Met to allow either four tracks (express and stopping in each direction) or else platform loops at all stations: either would have allowed GCR expresses to overtake Met stoppers. But we wouldn't have got the GCR/GWR links and so the GWR line wouldn't have had its present access to Marylebone. I see at 9:55 that Marylebone was being used as a filming location when you shot your footage. The lurid pink signs "LOC" and "TECH" are the ones used to direct film crews to the location and the technical base. I've followed a good few of those as I've been out and about, to see what was being filmed.
For some reason.... Marylebone reminds me of.... Dublin Heuston.... The layout of the platforms.... How it is a bit TARDIS like ie bigger on the inside than on the outside... And the concourse...
I like Marylebone too. Network Southeast and then Chiltern Railways certainly did a good job, but it also benefited from the growth in the towns along the route, creating more traffic from wealthy commuters. Even though it's busier now, it still feels odd as the only non electrified London terminus.
Definitely my favourite London Terminus. Still use it regularly to commute between Brum and London and much prefer it to Euston despite the longer journey times. Will be interesting to see what happens when the Chiltern franchise expires at the end of the year...
Rando (bottom-left) @1:11 dropped whatever he was reading with real gusto!!! 🤣 Love your videos and your channel, don't have an underground in my part of TX, but did when I lived in Toronto! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
I feel bad for the Great Central Railway. It had its headquarters outside of London and most of their lines were already covered by other railways. Despite this, they did produce some really nice locos like the 11F and 9N, most of which haven’t been preserved.
Network Southeast was a British Rail success story which the government has yet to reproduce with its unloved franchising system. Weirdly, the most successful franchise is arguably Chiltern Railways, which has Marylebone as its London terminus. Maybe it is surfing on NSE's success.
The last of the great London termini. Mind you, some would say it isn't great at all. Decide for yourself...? It must be great! It is one of the four stations on the Monopoly Board!!
Nice to see some love for Marylebone! I use that line when I travel into London, as it's more convenient than fighting my way into New Street in Birmingham. Marylebone is just a much nicer station than the bigger and more soulless London termini. Its not perfect, but it does what it does well.
Another non fiction triumph Jago . Though please try not to pronounce Marylebone like a south Londoner or Chiltern Railways mechanical announcement . I was born in the old Borough of St Marylebone in the now demolished Middlesex.hospital . We pronounce it Mara'b'n , up in " it's tough in North London" forget the LE in the middle.😁
Engineers CAN design interesting railway stations. My 3xgreat uncle was William Roberts[on] the younger, the Engineer in Chief of the Highland Railway (for which position he was poached from his former post as H.M. Surveyor of Roads for Inverness-shire). He designed, among other stations, lines and buildings, the rather charming station at Aviemore.
