Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 17, 2017

Marylebone station is a Central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in the Marylebone area of the City of Westminster. On the National Rail network it is also known as London Marylebone and is the southern terminus of the Chiltern Main Line to Birmingham. On the Underground it is on the Bakerloo line between Edgware Road and. The station opened in 1899 as the London terminus of the Great Central Main Line (GCML), the last major railway to open in Britain in over 100 years, linking the capital to the cities of Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester. Marylebone was the last of London's main line termini to be built, and is one of the smallest, having opened with half the number of platforms originally planned. Marylebone station suffered from a lack of traffic and after the GCML closed in 1966, it gradually declined in use. By the 1980s, it was threatened with closure, but was reprieved due to continued commuter traffic on the London to Aylesbury Line (a remaining part of the GCML) and from High Wycombe. In 1994 the station found a new role as the terminus of the Chiltern Main Line. Following the privatisation of British Rail, the station was expanded with two additional platforms in 2006 and improved services to Birmingham Snow Hill. In 2015 services began between Marylebone and Oxford Parkway via a new chord connecting the main line to the Oxford to Bicester Line, with an extension to Oxford following in 2016.