We have a really handy bus service at the end of the road. It’s not like our old bus route, the W3 which took us everywhere, but it’ll do. Since moving house we’ve always taken the 331 to Ruislip High Street but today we thought we’d take it the other direction. The toddler loves to travel, fortunately he’s not fussy if it’s bus, car or train so we hopped on the bus to Northwood and 10 minutes later we were there.
Our first stop was Northwood Station and I have to say it was a bit of an eye sore. Northwood is a station on the Watford branch of the Metropolitan Line, in Travelcard Zone 6. Strangely, if we wanted to get there by train we would have to take the train from Ruislip to Harrow-on-the-Hill and change to a Watford train, making sure the train stopped at Northwood (I haven’t figured out the whole stopping/non-stopping thing yet). This would take a whopping 28 minutes, so I was happy to take the bus today.
Back to the station. According to Wikipedia the station was opened on 1 September 1887 on the Metropolitan Railway’s extension from the previous terminus at Pinner, en route to Rickmansworth.
The station was rebuilt in the late 1950s and early 1960s to include platforms on the newly quadrupled Watford slow lines rather than the Amersham fast lines. Such a shame they didn’t try to make it look something more than functional.
Northwood itself is a lovely place and we had a nice walk in the sunshine before stopping for a cup of tea. Then it was a quick run around Waitrose, which looks over the train track, before heading back home.
The station does look a bit functional, but that was the 1950s/60s for you. Little Man doesn’t look as though he minds, though. Another one to cross off the list of 250…………xxxx