Baker Street tube station

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Baker Street tube station is a station on the London Underground located on Baker Street.

The station lies in Travelcard Zone 1 and is on five different lines. On the Circle Line and Hammersmith & City Line it is between Great Portland Street and Edgware Road. On the Metropolitan Line it is between Great Portland Street and Finchley Road. On the Bakerloo Line it is between Regent's Park and Marylebone, and on the Jubilee Line it is between Bond Street and St. John's Wood.

The sub-surface Circle Line platforms are part of the very oldest Underground line. Of the stations on this section of line they are perhaps the best-preserved. Plaques along the platform show old plans and photographs of the station.

The station layout is rather complex. The sub-surface station is connected to the open-air Metropolitan Line station. This is a terminus for most trains, but there is also a connecting curve that joins to the Circle Line just beyond the platforms that allows Metropolitan line trains to run to Aldgate in the City.

Unique tilework in this station, near where the fictional Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker St

Below this is a deep-level tube station for the Bakerloo and Jubilee Lines. These are arranged in a cross-platform interchange. With ten platforms overall, Baker Street has the most platforms of any Underground station on the network.

Outside the Marylebone Street exit, a large statue of Sherlock Holmes helps to memorialize the fictional sleuth of Baker Street. This statue was featured prominently as a landmark in the American television series The Amazing Race in 2005.

Baker Street opened on 10 January 1863, these platforms now forming the Circle and Hammersmith & City line platforms. On 13 April 1868 the adjacent open platforms, now serving the Metropolitan line, opened as part of a spur to Swiss Cottage (now closed) which was to be steadily extended out to Harrow-on-the-Hill and beyond. Over the next few decades this section of the station saw much rebuilding to provide 4 platforms. The current Metropolitan line layout largely dates from 1925 and the bulk of the surface buildings, designed by the architect Charles Clark, also date from this period.

The Bakerloo line, which takes the first part of its name from the station, started serving Baker Street on 10 March 1906 as part of the line running to Paddington and beyond. The Bakerloo was to provide additional services at Baker Street when it took over the Stanmore branch of the Metropolitan Line (including stopping services between Finchley Road and Wembley Park) on 20 November 1939 following the construction of a connecting tube tunnel between Baker Street and Finchley Road. The Jubilee Line replaced the Bakerloo Line on the Stanmore branch from its opening on 1 May 1979.

"Changing at Baker Street" is a euphemism for anal sex, since Baker Street is one of only two stations on the London Underground (the other being Paddington) where you can change from the Hammersmith & City line (pink) to the Bakerloo Line (brown)[link].

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Baker Street tube station

See also