Willesden Junction Station - The Station Today

The Station Today

There are no platforms on the West Coast Main Line, which is separated from the low level station by the approach road to Willesden Depot which lies immediately south-east of the station.

The high-level station consists of an island platform rebuilt in 1956, with faces as platforms 4 and 5, which are at street level of the area to the north of the station, serving the NLL and the West London Line; some trains on the latter reverse in a central turnback siding on the NLL, to the east of the station, which opened in 2011. There is another turnback siding further east which was previously used; it was laid in the late 1990s to allow Royal Mail trains to reach the Royal Mail depot at Stonebridge Park.

The low-level station, at the level of the area to the south, is an Edwardian island platform, with outer faces as platforms 1 and 3 and one face of the east-facing two-platform bay as platform 2, the other face of the bay now has no track. Platforms 1 and 3 are used by the Bakerloo line services, which began on 10 May 1915. and London Overground services between Euston and Watford Junction. Until May 2008 north-bound Bakerloo line trains which were to reverse at Stonebridge Park depot (two stations further north) ran empty from Willesden Junction although the southbound service began at Stonebridge Park. This imbalance was as there were no London Underground staff beyond Willesden Junction to oversee passenger detrainment, but this changed after London Underground took over the staffing of stations on the line, including Stonebridge Park, from Silverlink in November 2007, and trains bound for Stonebridge Park depot now terminate at Stonebridge Park station. Normally only the first and last NLL trains of the day, which start or terminate here, use the bay platform, though it is used for empty stock transfers between the depot and the North London and Gospel Oak to Barking lines.