History
The station was opened by the steam-operated Metropolitan Railway (MR) (now the Metropolitan line) on 1 October 1868, as part of the railway's southern extension to South Kensington where it connected to the Metropolitan District Railway (MDR). Construction of the railway line, through the already developed Bayswater area required the excavation of a tunnel using the cut and cover method: a trench 42 feet (13 m) deep was excavated between brick retaining walls which was then roofed-over with brick arches to allow building work above. Large compensation payments were made to landowners affected by the excavations and, in Leinster Gardens to the east, the frontages of two houses demolished to make way for the line were reconstructed to restore the appearance of a terrace of houses.
The platforms of Bayswater station were constructed in the trench and provided with a glazed roof. A short section of the trench was left unroofed to the west of the station to allow smoke and steam from the trains to escape from the tunnels. Even before the completion in 1884 of the continuous circuit of tracks which are now the Circle line, the MR and MDR operated services through Bayswater as the Inner Circle. The MR originally provided all of the trains, but from 1871, each company operated half of the service.
In 1905, to improve the conditions in the tunnels and stations and increase service frequencies, the MR electrified the tracks through Bayswater and, in conjunction with the MDR, around the whole of the Inner Circle and across most of their routes. Electric trains began running on 1 July 1905, but the MR's poor coordination of the installation work with the MDR's led to disruption for several months.
On 1 November 1926 the District line began a service between Edgware Road and Putney Bridge. From this date the MR operated all Inner Circle services apart from a few District line operated Sunday services. In 1949, the service was separately identified on the tube map as the Circle line for the first time.
Read more about this topic: Bayswater Tube Station
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