Marylebone: The Underdog Terminus

The last of the great London termini. Mind you, some would say it isn't great at all. Decide for yourself...

[BigCar]

I've bought it many times on the Monopoly board. Nice to finally see what I'd bought. Not sure it's worth the £200.

[bishwat]

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.

[AndreiTupolev]

"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!

[MOMGEN]

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.

[ayindestevens]

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!

[julianaylor]

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. ❤️

[BibtheBoulder]

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...

[borderlands]

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.

[hyperdistortion]

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.

[Mr---mrll]

I worked in Marylebone for 9 yrs. many happy memories, a few sad ones. That little area will live with me forever

[Mortimer]

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.

[thomasllewelynjones]

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...

[eceldran]

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.

[davidemmott]

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.

[ordinaldragoon]

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.

[opiejaye]

Ah, Marylebone. I grew up near High Wycombe so this was my way into London for many years. Nice to see the place again.

[peterbrown]

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.

[callumk]

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.

[jozg]

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.

[andrewgwilliam]

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.