Central Line

Completed on 27th December 2018
49 Stations over 55.5 miles
3 Days Effort
London Boroughs: Harrow, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea, Westminster, Camden, City of London, Tower Hamlets, Newham, Waltham Forest, Redbridge, County of Essex (Epping Forest District Council)

The Central line runs through central London, from Epping, Essex, in the north-east to Ealing Broadway and West Ruislip in the west. It is one of only two lines on the Underground network to cross the Greater London boundary, the other being the Metropolitan line.

The line was opened as the Central London Railway in 1900, crossing central London on an east–west axis, as the third deep-level Tube line to be built after electric trains made them possible. It was later extended to the western suburb of Ealing. After World War II, the line was expanded considerably into the new suburbs, taking over steam-hauled outer-suburban routes to the borders of London and beyond to the east. This realised plans that had been delayed by the war, when construction stopped and the unused tunnels were used as air-raid shelters and factories. However, suburban growth proved to be lower than anticipated, and of the planned expansions one (to Denham, Buckinghamshire) was cut short due to its location in the Metropolitan Green Belt and another (to Ongar) ultimately closed in 1994 due to low patronage; part of the section between Epping and Ongar later became the Epping Ongar Railway. The Central line has mostly been operated by automatic train operation since a major refurbishment in the 1990s, although all trains still carry drivers. Many of its stations are of historic interest, from turn-of-the-century Central London Railway buildings in west London to post-war modernist designs on the West Ruislip and Hainault branches, as well as Victorian-era Eastern Counties Railway and Great Eastern Railway buildings east of Stratford, from when the line to Epping was a rural branch line.

In terms of total passengers, the Central line is the second busiest on the Underground. In 2016/17 over 280 million passenger journeys were recorded on the line. It currently operates the second-most frequent service on the network, with 34 trains per hour operating for half-an-hour in the westbound direction during the morning peak. This makes the Central line the busiest and most intensively-used railway line in the United Kingdom: it is the only Tube line running east–west through the central core of London, running under Oxford Street and the financial centre of the City of London.