Second life for make-do Marylebone

Marylebone station is the smallest of the London termini and it was also the last to be built. In fact, questions have many times been raised as to whether it should have been built at all.

Its origins date back to 1864 when Sir Edward Watkin took over directorship of the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway, and decided to up the stakes dramatically.

Watkin saw much of the MSLR’s traffic going to bigger companies with access to London, in particular the Great Northern Railway, and so he decided that his company should have its own route to the capital to compete with them.

At first he tried unsuccessfully to negotiate with the other companies to enter into a partnership to build such a line, but when he exhausted those avenues, he decided that his company should go it alone.

Many of his contemporaries questioned the wisdom of building the line, as not only was the great age of Victorian railway building over by then, but all the major centres of a population centres through which it would pass were already on main lines.

Watkin argued that there was a strong business case for the MSLR to have its own line to London, and also harboured thoughts of international trade. In 1882, he had begun a