Wood Lane tube station

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.

This article is about the current Wood Lane station on the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines. For the closed station that was on the Metropolitan line, see Wood Lane tube station (Metropolitan line). For the closed station that was on the Central line, see Wood Lane tube station (Central line).
See also: Stations around Shepherd's Bush

Wood Lane
Wood Lane
Location of Wood Lane in Greater London
LocationWood Lane
Local authorityHammersmith and Fulham
Managed byLondon Underground
Number of platforms2
AccessibleYes[1]
Fare zone2
OSIWhite City [2]
London Underground annual entry and exit
2014 3.98 million[3]
2015 3.70 million[3]
2016 3.68 million[3]
2017 4.00 million[3]
2018 4.11 million[4]
Railway companies
Original companyTransport for London
Key dates
13 June 1864Line opened
12 October 2008Station opened
13 December 2009Circle line services started
Other information
External links
WGS8451.5097972°N 0.22417°W / 51.5097972; -0.22417
London transport portal
Wood Lane tube station eastbound platform looking west

Although it is on a line which has been in operation since 1864, the station is new, having opened on 12 October 2008 - the first station to be built on an existing Tube line for over 70 years.[5] 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 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. From 1927 it was used to transport the public to and from the greyhound racing at White City Stadium.[6] 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 on the Central line; Hammersmith line trains passed through the area 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, £200m of transport improvements were made including rebuilding Shepherd's Bush Central line station, a new Shepherd's Bush railway station and two bus interchanges.[5] It was decided to build a new station on the Hammersmith & City line, just north-east of the old Metropolitan station on Wood Lane. In 2006 Transport for London decided on the name Wood Lane, reviving an historical name. This was the first time that a new station on the Tube had been given the name of a former station that had been closed for several years.[7]

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.[8]

Design and construction
The station under construction, 2008

Wood Lane Underground Station 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.[9]

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.

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.[10] As with all new Underground stations since the 1990s, the station is fully accessible.[5]

Location

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 Television Centre (formerly occupied by the BBC) and Loftus Road stadium, the home of Queen's Park Rangers FC, is a short distance away.

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. March 2019. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 June 2019.
  2. "Out of Station Interchanges" (XLS). Transport for London. 19 February 2019.
  3. "Multi-year station entry-and-exit figures (2007-2017)" (XLSX). London Underground station passenger usage data. Transport for London. January 2018. Retrieved 22 July 2018.
  4. "Station Usage Data" (CSV). Usage Statistics for London Stations, 2018. Transport for London. 21 August 2019. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  5. "New Wood Lane Underground station opens". Transport for London. October 2008. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
  6. "Sports in Brief". London Times. 25 May 1927 – via Gale Group.
  7. "Wood Lane and Shepherds Bush Market to join Tube map". Transport for London. 20 November 2006. Retrieved 29 May 2020.
  8. "Circle Line extended to the west". BBC News. 5 March 2009. Retrieved 16 February 2010.
  9. "Wood Lane Station". Ian Ritchie Architects. Retrieved 16 February 2010.
  10. "White City Development – 1900 to 2010" (PDF). London Underground Railway Society. November 2006. Retrieved 16 February 2010.
Preceding station   London Underground   Following station
towards Hammersmith
Circle line
towards Edgware Road (via Aldgate)
Hammersmith & City line
towards Barking
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