Marlborough Road (former) Underground Station

Marlborough Road (former) Underground station building.

If you travel on the Metropolitan line, between Finchley Road and Baker Street, you will pass through three closed stations. Although difficult to see and with much of the infrastructure now removed, they are Lord's, Swiss Cottage and Marlborough Road. The latter is the easiest to see and is used to evacuate the Metropolitan line, should the need arise.

Marlborough Road is in an open section of the line, which was built using the cut-and-cover method, with the station building still surviving.

Marlborough Road Southbound platform (taken from a Metropolitan line train).

Located at the junction of Finchley Road and Queen's Grove, Marlborough Road station opened on April 13, 1868 as part of the first northward extension, from Baker Street, of the Metropolitan Railway.

The Metropolitan began to suffer from passenger congestion, at its southern end, resulting in new deep-level tunnels being constructed between Baker Street's Bakerloo line tunnels and Finchley Road.

RATs on the London Underground

A C69/77 stock train converted to be a Rail Adhesion Train (RAT) on the Metropolitan line.

Every now and again I see these Rail Adhesion Trains, usually in the Autumn/Winter months and usually at Watford Metropolitan line station, but I never understood what they did.

Coming back from London, last Sunday evening, a Rail Adhesion Train was in the sidings, so I took a photograph and decided to do so some research to find out what this train actually does.