Ealing Broadway Station
The Great Western Railway (GWR) opened its pioneering broad gauge tracks through Ealing Broadway between Paddington and Taplow on 6 April 1838, although Ealing Broadway station did not open until the following 1 December. As the only station in the area when it opened, it was initially named 'Ealing'.
Metropolitan District Railway (MDR, now the District Line) services commenced on 1 July 1879, when the MDR opened a branch from Turnham Green on its Richmond line. The MDR built its own three-platform station to the north of the GWR one, although, following the installation of a connection between the two railways to the east of the stations, MDR trains also served the GWR station from 1 March 1883, on a short-lived service running to Windsor and Eton Central station, which was withdrawn as unremunerative on 30 September 1885. It was also intended to use the connection for a service to Uxbridge Vine Street station (via West Drayton), but this was never introduced.
Following electrification of the main District line route through Ealing Common to South Harrow in 1903, the section to Ealing Broadway was electrified in 1905, and the first electric trains ran to Ealing Broadway on 1 July 1905. The original brick-built MDR station was replaced with a stone-faced building sometime between 1907 and 1916.
Prior to World War I, plans were made by the GWR to construct a new, mainly freight, line between Ealing and Shepherd's Bush, to connect west-to-south with the West London Railway. The Central London Railway (CLR, now the Central Line) would use the line by extending its tracks the short distance north from its terminus at Wood Lane (now closed), to meet the new GWR tracks. CLR services to two new platforms at Ealing Broadway, built between the GWR and MDR stations, started on 3 August 1920, with, initially, just one intermediate stop at East Acton. The line also carried GWR steam freight trains until 1938, when the links at Ealing Broadway and west of North Acton were removed, and the line was fully transferred to London Underground.
Originally separate companies, by 1920 the MDR (by then known as the District Railway) and the CLR were both owned by the Underground Electric Railways Company of London Despite this, the CLR services operated via the GWR station building, not the Underground one.
The GWR-built station was demolished in the 1970s and replaced by a low concrete structure containing shops and a ticket hall, with a high-rise office building above. The new station building serves all the lines, and the separate District Line station ticket hall was closed, although the building remains, and the original station entrance is now a shop.
The Cache is located in an area which is dedicated to the locomotive Iron Duke. This train ran between London Paddington and the West Country. The sculpture located near by was unveiled by Mayor Boris Johnson in November 2013.
