Tubeticking (271): Preston Road ✅
I had somehow never been to Preston Road station. I'd stood on the platforms, I even included it my undefinitive list of The Top 5 Tube Flowerbeds, but I'd never ever crossed the gateline. That's ridiculous given the number of times I've ridden the Metropolitan line during my lifetime, but to tick it off properly I needed to walk in or out. So I did.
Preston Road is the road to Preston, a village swallowed whole by Metroland, located just north of Wembley. It has its semis and it has its shopping parade, but they're not as elegant as further up the line, as you'll soon spot once you step outside. I won't list all 100 shops, only those called Preston something, but these ought to give you the flavour of the locale. Preston Kebab House, Preston News, Preston Shoes, The Preston (a pub), Preston Nails and Beauty, Preston Accountants, Preston Carpets. And embedded in all this is the station entrance, a couple of doorways beneath a single gable to summon passengers within, as designed by CW Clark in 1933.
The entrance swiftly narrows to a mundane and fairly narrow ticket hall, wide enough for a quartet of ticket gates and nothing more. No distractions, no reason to linger... unless you need the defibrillator in which case it's on the wall beside the station supervisor's office. I assume Preston Road still has a station supervisor, it certainly once did, but on my trip the gates were wide open suggesting either a lunch break or longer-term cutbacks. A skew staircase beckons, initially tiled and artificially lit, leading down to the single island platform.
One end of the platform's quite dark, burrowing underneath the road and its accompanying shops (which cross the tracks on pillars). This is the end of the station I know best because as a child we always sat at the front of the train on the way up to London, which I see now didn't offer the best impression. Facing the foot of the stairs is a claustrophobic waiting room, not much wider than a tube carriage, where on inclement days you can sit in close proximity to 15 other people. Enjoy the heritage displays by the door, kindly added by the Northwick Park Gardening Group, which show the station flowerbeds in nostalgic black and white.
The flowerbeds are the key feature at the far end of the platform - four raised beds interspersed by roundels, lamps and benches. You can tell they're well established by the size of the shrubbery, and that they're well looked after, although early autumn isn't the ideal time to judge. I dare say they'd have been a lot more pristine in their heyday, but I still enjoyed (in successive beds) the buddleia, the poppies, the red hot pokers and the Michaelmas daisies. They provide something nice to look at as you watch Chiltern and semi-fast Metropolitan line trains speed by on parallel tracks, because Preston Road is easily skipped. I have not skipped it now.
Tubeticking (271): Preston Road ✅
