The West London Line is a short railway in inner West London that links Clapham Junction in the south to Willesden Junction in the north.
The Birmingham, Bristol & Thames Junction Railway was authorised in 1836 to run from the London and Birmingham Railway, near Willesden Junction station, across the proposed route of the Great Western to the Kensington Canal Basin. Construction was delayed by engineering and financial problems.
Renamed the West London Railway (WLR) the line opened on 27 May 1844. The low number of passengers became such a regular target of Punch magazine that the line was called Punch’s Railway. After only six months it closed on 30 November 1844.
An Act of 1845 authorised the GWR to take a joint lease of the WLR - the line was used only to carry coal, and a passenger service was not re-introduced.
An Act in 1859 granted rail companies to construct the West London Extension Joint Railway on the filled-in canal south from the Kensington Basin to the bridge under the Kings Road, to bridge the Thames and to connect near Clapham Junction to railways south of the river.
The new line opened on 2 March 1863 with a passenger station at Addison Road (now Olympia) slightly north of the original Kensington station, and was then well used by various inner London services for the remainder of the nineteenth century.
