Origins The
Great Western Railway (GWR) opened the Hammersmith & City Railway (H&CR) on 13 June 1864, and from 1 July 1864 carriages from Kensington (Addison Road) (now
Kensington [Olympia]) were attached and detached from trains at Notting Hill; through services between Kensington and the
City of London beginning in April 1865. A station had been built on the chord linking the H&CR and
West London Railway, but this never opened due to GWR objections. Following an agreement between the
Metropolitan Railway and GWR in August 1868, Uxbridge Road station, designed by the
London & North Western Railway (L&NWR), opened on the West London Railway on 1 November 1869.
Middle Circle The Middle Circle service started on 1 August 1872 when the GWR extended this service from Addison Road over the
District Railway to Earl's Court and onto
Mansion House. The GWR provided most of the locomotives and carriages for the service. When the Metropolitan extended the north side of its railway eastward from Moorgate, the Middle Circle followed suit and Bishopsgate (now
Liverpool Street) became the terminus on 12 July 1875 and then
Aldgate took the role from 4 December 1876. Trains ran once every 30 minutes. From 1 July 1900, the service was cut back to run from Earl's Court to Aldgate, and the Middle Circle service ended on 31 January 1905.
Metropolitan Railway From 1 February 1905 the service was temporarily replaced by a shuttle from Addison Road to Hammersmith & City stations, until 5 November 1906, when four electric trains an hour began running from Addison Road to Aldgate, one continuing to Whitechapel. This service appears on the 1908 'London Underground' map as a Metropolitan Railway service. Passenger services on the West London Railway were ended on 19 October 1940 following bomb damage to the line, and the link between Latimer Road and the WLR closed. The curve was demolished in the 1960s to make way for the construction of the
West Cross Route motorway. With the exception of the Uxbridge Road, today the stations are served by the
Circle,
District and
Hammersmith & City lines. Uxbridge Road station closed with the line in 1940 and opened on the same site in 2008. ==List of stations==