Ready for the off at Rayners Lane station

Image: © Marathon Taken: 23 Dec 2015

Metropolitan trains started running between Harrow-on-the-Hill and Uxbridge on 4th July 1904. Traffic was at first extremely disappointing. Rayners Lane station was opened on 26th May 1906. The District Railway opened its new extension from north of Ealing Common to Park Royal & Twyford Abbey on 23rd June 1903. The line was opened fully to South Harrow on 28th June 1903. District line trains started to run beyond South Harrow on 1st March 1910 to meet the Metropolitan Railway at Rayners Lane and continue on to Uxbridge, but they were only hourly for much of the day, increasing to a 20 minute service the following year. This new extension was, together with the existing tracks between Ealing Common and Acton Town, the first section of the Underground's surface lines to be electrified and operate electric instead of steam trains. In the early 1930s, Government money was on offer to combat unemployment and using some of this the Piccadilly line was extended to run west of its original terminus at Hammersmith sharing the route with the District line to Ealing Common. This change took place in two stages. From 4th July 1932 between Ealing Common and South Harrow, the District line was replaced by the Piccadilly line. On 23rd October 1933 Piccadilly line trains continued from South Harrow to Uxbridge and District line trains to Uxbridge ceased on the same date. When Rayners Lane halt was opened in 1906 it had served nothing more than two or three well spaced houses, a sewage farm and a rifle range. The 213 acre Harrow Garden Village around the once isolated Rayners Lane station was begun in May 1929 by the Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Ltd. At Rayners Lane traffic jumped from 22,000 in 1930 to 4 million in 1937 showing the change from a country lane to a busy suburb within a large shopping centre and with a super cinema. Here a Metropolitan line train bound for Aldgate is ready to leave from the up platform.

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