Wood Lane tube station

Wood Lane
Wood Lane Location of Wood Lane in Greater London
Location	Wood Lane
Local authority	Hammersmith and Fulham
Managed by	London Underground
Number of platforms	2
Accessible	Yes [1]
Fare zone	2
OSI	White City [2]
London Underground annual entry and exit
2011	3.44 million[3]
2012	3.65 million[3]
2013	3.44 million[3]
2014	3.98 million[3]
Railway companies
Original company	Transport for London
Key dates
13 June 1864	Line opened
12 October 2008	Station opened
13 December 2009	Circle line services started
Other information
Lists of stations	DLR Underground National Rail Tramlink
London Transport portalCoordinates: 51°30′35″N 0°13′27″W / 51.5098°N 0.2242°W

Wood Lane is a London Underground station in the White City area of west London, United Kingdom. It is on the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines, between Latimer Road and Shepherd's Bush Market stations, in Travelcard Zone 2.

Although it is on a line which has been in operation since 1864, the station is new, having opened in 2008. It is near the site of a station of the same name that closed in 1959.

History

Stations old and new in the Shepherd's Bush area

The Hammersmith and City line was opened on 13 June 1864 by the Metropolitan Railway (MR) as the Hammersmith branch line. The railway became part of London Underground in 1933 and the took on a separate identity as the Hammersmith and City line in 1988.

In 1908 the Franco-British Exhibition and the 1908 Summer Olympics came to London, the first of a number of major events in White City that attracted infrastructural investment by railway companies. Among others, the MR opened its Wood Lane station on the Hammersmith branch to serve the event. The station opened and closed intermittently, and was renamed twice, to Wood Lane (White City) in 1920 and White City in 1947, before it closed in 1959 following fire damage. For the next 49 years, the Wood Lane area was served only by White City tube station on the Central line; Hammersmith line trains passed over the lane without stopping, the nearest station on that line approximately 1 km (0.62 mi) away at Shepherd's Bush.

In 2005 work commenced on the large-scale Westfield Shopping Centre. As part of the work, improvements were made to public transport including rebuilding Shepherd's Bush Central line station, a new Shepherd's Bush railway station and two bus interchanges. It was decided to build a new station on the Hammersmith & City line, just south-west of the old Metropolitan station on Wood Lane. In 2006 Transport for London decided on the name Wood Lane, reviving a historical name. This was the first time that a new station on the Tube had been given the name of a former station.^[4]

The station opened on 12 October 2008.^[5] In December 2009 Wood Lane was added to the Circle line when the line was extended to Hammersmith.^[6]

Design and construction

The station under construction, 2008

Construction was carried out by Costain. The station building occupies an irregularly-shaped site between Wood Lane and the railway viaduct, and presented particular challenges as it lies across the Central line. The lines remained operational during construction, which mostly took place at night. It was designed by Ian Ritchie Architects and it is clad in shot-peened stainless steel, gold anodised aluminium and granite with a 25-metre-high glass screen façade.^[7]

The structure encases the railway viaduct and platforms are accessed via stairs and lifts either side of the brick arches. During construction the bridge of the Hammersmith & City line over Wood Lane had to be widened to accommodate a new track on the Central line, providing access to the new depot below the Westfield site. A bridge pier was removed and a new steel bridge structure slid into place over a new pier.^[8]

Location

Stations in Shepherd's Bush (present)
Legend Central line to East Acton to Willesden Junction right-hand running starts Westway (A40) White City Wood Lane to Latimer Road Shepherd's Bush Market right-hand running ends White City depot Shepherd's Bush  Central |  National Rail Goldhawk Road to Holland Park to Hammersmith to Kensington (Olympia) Hammersmith & City, Circle lines West London Line

The station is on Wood Lane, which runs north from Shepherd's Bush in the White City area. It serves the Westfield shopping centre and BBC Television Centre and Loftus Road stadium, the home of Queen's Park Rangers FC, is a short distance away.

Due to the heavy use of Oyster cards across the Underground network and the proximity of the ticket office at White City, there is no ticket office, although there are ticket machines.

See also

• Shepherd's Bush stations – other stations in the Shepherd's Bush area.
• Wood Lane – a closed station on the Central line
• Wood Lane – a closed station on the Metropolitan line

References

1. "Step free Tube Guide" (PDF). Transport for London. Archived (PDF) from the original on 3 June 2015.
2. "Out of Station Interchanges" (XLS). Transport for London. May 2011. Archived from the original on 20 October 2012.
3. "Multi-year station entry-and-exit figures" (XLS). London Underground station passenger usage data. Transport for London. June 2015. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
4. "Wood Lane and Shepherd's Bush Market to join Tube map" (Press release). Transport for London. 20 November 2006. Retrieved 2007-08-26.
5. "Transport for London New Wood Lane Underground station opens". Transport for London. 14 October 2008. Retrieved 8 December 2012.
6. "Circle Line extended to the west". BBC News. 5 March 2009. Retrieved 16 February 2010.
7. "Wood Lane Station". Ian Ritchie Architects. Retrieved 16 February 2010.
8. "White City Development – 1900 to 2010" (PDF). London Underground Railway Society. November 2006. Retrieved 16 February 2010.

External links

• Details of new transport infrastructure
• Tfl.gov.uk - Underground map of future developments to 2010 showing Wood Lane station