Alperton tube station

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Alperton
Location
Place	Alperton
Local authority	London Borough of Brent
Operations
Managed by	London Underground
Platforms in use	2
Transport for London
Zone	4
Annual entry/exit	2.419 million †
History
1903 1932	Opened (MDR) Start (Piccadilly Line) End (District Line)
Transport for London List of London stations: Underground \| National Rail
† Data from Transport for London [1]
Tube Portal

Alperton is a London Underground station on the Uxbridge branch of the Piccadilly Line. The station is between Sudbury Town and Park Royal. It is located on Ealing Road (A4089) a short distance from the junction with Bridgewater Road (A4005) and is close to Alperton Bus Garage and the Paddington branch of the Grand Union Canal. The station is in Travelcard Zone 4

[edit] History

Perivale Alperton station was opened on 28 June 1903 by the Metropolitan District Railway (MDR, now the District Line) on its new extension to South Harrow from Park Royal & Twyford Abbey. Park Royal & Twyford Abbey had itself opened five days earlier.

This new extension was, together with the existing tracks back to Acton Town, the first section of the Underground's surface lines to be electrified and operate electric instead of steam trains. The Deep level tube lines open at that time (City & South London Railway, Waterloo & City Railway and Central London Railway) had been electrically powered from the start.

The station was subsequently renamed as Alperton on 28 June 1906.

The original station building was a modest timber framed structure and in 1930 and 1931 this was demolished and replaced by a new station in preparation for the handover of the branch from the District Line to the Piccadilly Line. The new station was designed by Charles Holden in a modern European style using brick, reinforced concrete and glass. Like the stations at Sudbury Town and Sudbury Hill to the north and others that Holden designed elsewhere for the east and west Piccadilly Line extensions such as Acton Town and Oakwood, Alperton station features a tall block-like ticket hall rising above a low horizontal structure that contains station offices and shops. The brick walls of the ticket hall are punctuated with panels of clerestory windows and the structure is capped with a flat concrete slab roof. Alperton shared with Greenford (on the Central Line) the distinction of being one of the only two stations to have an escalator going up to a platform. The escalator at Alperton (which remains in situ, though walled up and out of use) had an interesting history, having originally been used at the South Bank exhibition of the Festival of Britain

On 4 July 1932 the Piccadilly Line was extended to run west of its original terminus at Hammersmith sharing the route with the District Line to Ealing Common. From Ealing Common to South Harrow, the District Line was replaced by the Piccadilly Line.

[edit] Services

The typical off-peak service is a train in each direction every ten minutes. Half of northbound trains terminate at Rayners Lane tube station and the other half continue to the terminus of the line at Uxbridge.