This page provides a short history of the two principal lines which connect London to Aylesbury, North West of London. In so doing, the lines also serve the towns and villages of Buckinghamshire many of which were immortalised by the poet John Betjaman as Metro Land after the Metropolitan Railway which served them. Today the Metropolitan still operates out as far as Amersham with both lines also being served by Chiltern Railways.

Aylesbury via Amersham

The history of this route is tied to two railway companies and one man - Sir Edward Watkin who became chairman of the Metropolitan Railway in 1872, adding to his interests in the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MSLR).

The Metropolitan had begun a process of expansion out of Central London into the suburbs in 1880 when it extended its branch line to Willesden Green out into Harrow. Further expansion followed throughout the 1880's, the Metropolitan reaching Chalfont and Chesham in 1889. All this expansion was designed to tap the potentially rich commuter traffic, which the Metropolitan thought (rightly) would develop from the towns along the way. However, the expansion was also part of Watkin's great scheme to build a new trunk railway line from the north to London and beyond. (He also had interests in the East London Line and the South Eastern Railway and hoped to link all these together to connect with a tunnel under the English Channel).

To complete the link between the Metropolitan and the MSLR, the former bought the Aylesbury & Buckingham Railway in 1891 and connected Chalfont to Aylesbury the following year. The Aylesbury and Buckingham operated north as far as Quainton Road where, in 1898, the MSLR (which had become the Great Central Railway the previous year) opened its connection from the North. Now the GCR had a through route to London over a combination of its own tracks and those jointly administered with the Metropolitan. The GCR completed its own London terminus - Marylebone - in 1899.

While the Metropolitan had a monopoly on local traffic south of Harrow, the joint Metropolitan/GCR line committee administered services from further north. So commuters from towns like Rickmansworth had the choice of fast services to Marylebone or slower services which ran right into the heart of the City of London on the Metropolitan. However Watkins had to resign his chairmanship of the Metropolitan and GCR in 1894 through ill health and the relationship between the companies progressively deteriorated. Although the two companies continued to cooperate on services through Rickmansworth and Harrow, the lack of capacity into London and the sharp curves and steep gradient of the Met line was an induced the Great Central to look for a second route into its new London terminus (see below).

Meantime, anxious to build its services in what was a rural landscape, the Metropolitan promoted the area to both prospective commuters into London and to the growing weekend excursion business. Using the term "Metro-land" it described Buckinghamshire as "... beautiful unknown country ... the rural arcadia ... close to London" and published an annual guide throughout the early 20th Century which advertised and promoted properties to potential house buyers eager to escape London.

Unlike most other railway companies, the Metropolitan had direct interests in many of the estates that were built and their success can be seen in many of the estates built before and after World War One in Willesden, Wembley, Eastcote, Pinner, Rickmansworth and Amersham. They also benefited as the new home owners became new customers of the railway. For example, season ticket sales at Wembley Park increased four fold in the early 1920's as use of the Metropolitan's electric services increased.

Improvements to services were also introduced during the 1920s with electric services extended north from Wembley Park to Rickmansworth and the introduction of morning and afternoon Pullman cars on certain trains. Although electric, the services to the outer suburbs were locomotive hauled, with a steam locomotive being substituted at Rickmansworth for the journey onwards to Amersham and Aylesbury.

When London Transport took over services in 1933, the promotional activities ceased and services remained largely unchanged until the present day. However, in the early 1960s, London Underground extended their electric service further north into Amersham (including the small branch to Chesham), and introduced new electric multiple units to replace the loco hauled and elderly multiple-units then in use. With the full introduction of these trains, LU withdrew services beyond Amersham to Aylesbury with the consequence that the last steam hauled passenger train operated by LU ran in September 1961.

All services north of Amersham are today operated by Chiltern Railways using modern turbo-diesel trains while the Metropolitan continues to use the 1960's stock (classified A60), which have recently been updated and refurbished, on their services to Baker Street, Moorgate and Aldgate.

Aylesbury via High Wycombe

The bad relations between the Great Central Railway (GCR) and the Metropolitan which started to develop after Watkin's retirement from both companies became further exacerbated as increasing volumes of Metropolitan traffic south of Harrow led to congestion of their joint line into London. As a consequence, the GCR started to look for a second route into its new London terminal at Marylebone and quickly found an alliance with the Great Western Railway (GWR).

The GWR itself was suffering from growing competition on a number of its routes, especially that to Birmingham where it competed with the London North Western Railway's route out of London Euston. In the 19th century, the GWR's route to Birmingham was via Oxford and, as a consequence, was much slower than the rival LNWR's. The GWR realised that a new line, incorporating parts of the GWR system in Buckinghamshire, could be laid which would significantly reduce the journey time to Birmingham and potentially attract additional traffic. For its part, the the GCR saw that, by linking this projected line to its own system at each end, they could obtain the second route into the capital which they needed.

In 1899 the two companies joined forces and the GWR/GCR joint line through High Wycombe was born. The GWR laid a new line from Old Oak (just outside its own Paddington terminus) North westwards towards Northolt, where it connected with a new branch of the GCR which left the existing their existing line at Neasden. It was built on the grand scale in attempt to attract commuter traffic from the growing suburbs, with palatial stations at Wembley, Sudbury, and Northolt.

Having joined forces at Northolt, the line travelled north west through the villages of Ruislip, Denham, Gerrards Cross, and Beaconsfield before reaching High Wycombe where it joined the GWR's existing branch line from Slough. Mindful that the new line was to provide main-line connections to the Midlands and the North as well as commuter services into London, the stations were laid out in the grand scale with through roads for the expresses. At High Wycombe this caused problems because of station's location and new platforms had to be built on the upside, off set from the downside main building.

Beyond High Wycombe, the GWR's line need to be upgraded for its new role and stations at West Wycombe, Saunderton and Princes Risborough all were remodelled and upgraded. At Princes Risborough, the branch to Aylesbury and the GCR curved away to the East, while the mainline moved forward to Bicester to join the GWR's Oxford to Birmingham line at Aynho. At Ashendon the GCR built a short connection to its mainline, thus giving direct connection from the north.

Construction started in 1901 and most of the line was available from 1906. Many of the GCR express trains were re-routed over the new route and both companies enjoyed increased patronage as the suburbs started to grow immediately before and after World War 2.

However with the coming of British Railways the original Great Central route to the Midlands and the North started to decline, eventually closing over much of its route in the 1960s. Much of the inner commuter business disappeared to the Underground as the Piccadilly and the Central both offered frequent services through the same inner London areas.

There was even a plan to close Marylebone altogether and convert the inner London section to a bus-way, a plan which fortunately was quashed. Since then, commuter services have again started to flourish and Chiltern Railways has seen substantial increases in its business since taking over the line as the first privatisation company to operate rail services on the national network since privatisation.

If you interested in railways in the Buckinghamshire area, please support the following steam railways. Both offer a wonderful day out and times of operation etc. can be obtained from their web sites:-

The Chinnor & Princes Risborough Railway Steam rides from Chinnor on this old GWR branch line - see their web site for timetable details	Buckinghamshire Railway Centre, Quainton Road, Quainton, Bucks. This museum at the former Quainton Road station of the Metropolitan Railway includes many exhibits of interest to followers of LT railways, not the least of which is the ex-Metropolitan 0-4-4T of 1898 and an ex-GWR, ex-LT 0-6-0PT dating from 1930.

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