Piccadilly Line: Acton Town - Heathrow

I was a bit uneasy about travelling this final stretch of the Piccadilly Line.

I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was because I would be so far from where I lived. Perhaps it was because it looked a long way on the map. Perhaps it was because I was heading towards an airport, where I would be trying to take photographs and not look suspicious.

There have been tracks down this way since 1883, when the Metropolitan District Railway (now the District Line) opened a service to Hounslow Town. The Piccadilly began running trains during that decade of uber-expansion: the 1930s. District Line services disappeared 30 years later. The last piece in the jigsaw, the extension to Heathrow, only materialised a couple of decades ago. Indeed, part of it is still materialising today.

South Ealing, one of only two stops on the entire network to boast all five vowels in its name (I have yet to visit the other), squats by a pelican crossing at road level but opens out into a huge, recently refurbished cavern inside.

It's only just down the road from Northfields, or Northfields Halt as it was originally called. Or Northfields and Little Ealing as it was subsequently called. Either alternatives, I think, would improve the character of the place today and match the regal pretensions of its design (another Charles Holden effort).

Holden's tentacles extend down the line through Boston Manor and Osterley. These are fantastic creations, enhanced - inevitably - by the kind of brooding skyline that accompanied me on my trip. It's the towers that do it. They reach up into the firmament for no reason other than they can. The one at Boston Manor has an illuminated strip that rises above the tower itself, challenging the sky to do its worst.

Osterley, though, goes one better. Here the tower is capped by...another tower, poking up even higher, which feels like it's almost scraping the clouds. How many people pause to look up at this edifice when they're entering the station? Depends how many people have got the time and the inclination, I suppose. Probably not enough, though.

The trio of stops in Hounslow turn out to have vastly contrasting, confusing histories. The line used to terminate here, at a station called Hounslow Town which no longer exists. Then it was extended to Hounslow Barracks, which is now Hounslow West. For a while there were no, as there are now, Hounslows East and Central. Central turned up in the guise of Heston and Hounslow, but to the west of Hounslow Town. Then a new Hounslow Town opened, which is now Hounslow East. Following all this?

It's not that important. Nowadays Hounslow East, the first you come to when you're travelling towards Heathrow, is a real shock: uncompromisingly modern and completely at odds with its surrounding neighbourhood. There's no real point for it to look this way, other than to make a point.

By contrast Hounslow Central looks like a village shop...

...and Hounslow West like a university library:

No prizes for guessing who designed that one.

Here was where the Piccadilly Line ended for a very long time. Since there has been a civilian airport on the site of Heathrow since the Second World War, it's surprising now to think there was no Underground link until 1977. Hatton Cross only opened in 1975, acting as a temporary terminus until the final bit of the line was laid two years later. This last stretch of the Piccadilly was simply dug just under the ground then covered back over, in the same way the very first Underground lines were dug an entire century earlier.

Hatton Cross is a horrendous place. The station is like a warehouse: cold, vast, ugly, dumped in the middle of nowhere, and with absolutely no concession to anybody desiring to do anything other than pass through en route somewhere else.

Trains from here run either straight to Terminals 1, 2 and 3, or the same destination via Terminal 4. Or at least they did when I was there. In a matter of days this is set to change, when Terminal 5 opens and - hooray! - all the London Underground maps across the city will need to be replaced.

Terminal 4 was opened in 1986 and is a far more obvious and logically-designed place than its neighbour. It took me only a few minutes to get up from the platform and into the terminal arrivals lounge, a route clearly signposted and easy to use.

1, 2 and 3, originally called simply Heathrow Central on its opening in 1977, is a completely different matter. I didn't know where I was going once I'd left the station, first ending up in a bus depot, then outside with a bunch of smokers. All I was looking for was the main station entrance. This was as good as it got.

There's no way of getting directly from Terminals 1, 2 and 3 to Terminal 4 by Underground. You'd have to go back to Hatton Cross and start again. The line runs one way only, hence why there's only one platform at Terminal 4 station. Heaven help you if you need to nip to Terminal 4 quickly from 1, 2 or 3.

Believe it or not, this was my first proper visit to Heathrow. When I was very young my family went on a day trip on a plane from East Midlands Airport to Heathrow and back again - the height of sophistication and exoticism, I'm sure you'll agree.

Maybe it was that trip which gave me my fear of flying. I certainly recall being terrified at the mere notion of not having anything by way of solid matter underneath me. Anyway, since then I had never been to, or had cause to go near, Heathrow.

It's not a nice place. I felt as if my brandishing a camera around the place was being picked up by 100 security cameras. Despite it taking me hours to get to, being something of a national landmark, and representing the end of my vast journey around the Piccadilly Line, I got out of there as soon as I could.

Piccadilly Line: Acton Town - Uxbridge

So much for believing I would have this project completed in a year.

Anyway, there were two sections of the Piccadilly Line I needed to visit, and I did them both during one Saturday afternoon (and evening, as it invariably became).

This branch, which curves round from Acton Town to head northwards towards a rendezvous with the Metropolitan, represents another uninterrupted of Charles Holden-inspired stations, save for North Ealing which - as you'll see - stands out by virtue of resembling someone's house.

It's not a very well-served branch. It took me twice as long to travel this stretch as it did the Acton Town to Heathrow route (taking into account my need to get off at every single station, take photos, then wait for the next train). What the service is to frequency the stations are to hospitality. Despite their impressive designs, none of them were very welcoming. Then again, that could have been because they were mostly deserted, it was getting dark, and this was the middle of February.

There's been a station at Ealing Common since 1879, but Holden's version, like all of them in this part of London, opened in the early 1930s. Originally the District Line passed this way, in its previous guise as the Metropolitan District Railway. When the Piccadilly was extended to run west of Hammersmith, Ealing Common changed sides and marked the point (as it still does) where the two lines diverge.

It is, as ever, an imaginative creation, boasting the requisite Holden talking point: in this instance, a hexagonal roof. There also seemed to be the now familiar battery of small businesses skulking in side rooms, such as a taxi cab firm, estate agent or barber.

Actually, North Ealing looks more like a church hall than someone's house, but the incongruity of its design compared to its purpose remains. There's a cosy feel to the place nonetheless, not borne out by its platforms which stretch for miles and are barely welcoming.

When this bit of the line was built at the turn of the last century, a station was opened specifically - and temporarily - purely to serve the Royal Agricultural Society's recently opened Park Royal show grounds.

This sort of thing doesn't happen anymore. Stations are built to last, permanence is considered a premium, and there's neither the time nor money to waste on frippery that will have a short shelf life. I think this is a shame. Imagine the pleasure to be had in first discovering, then using, a station only erected for three months. Well, I'd find it a pleasure.

The main station at Park Royal still stands, and is a dazzling edifice. When the light starts to fade and evening creeps in, Underground stations turn into beacons of solace and safety. A lot of this is undoubtedly due to the way they are lit inside, which in turn is thanks to their overall design. Park Royal draws you towards itself like a well-tended hearth.

The onset of dusk doesn't always make for valuable photography. I had trouble at Alperton, where - by the time I eventually arrived - it was now almost pitch black.

This station was originally called Perivale Alperton, about as suburban and domiciled a name you're likely to get. Holden's building is once again giant-like in both size and ambition. In fact it's huge. It dominates the surroundings like an airport terminal.

Sudbury Town's lack of decent outside lighting rendered the chance of a decent photo almost negligble. I don't know if you can actually see anything here:

That is Sudbury Town station, I can assure you. The interior lighting did, at least, make for a rather dramatic wall of yellow, looming out of the murkiness.

For further proof, here's a shot of the platform:

The shot of Sudbury Hill below is almost two years old, and is another one taken during my circumnavigation of London on foot. I doubt, if I'd been here in the dark, I would have been able to capture anything on camera:

Finally, South Harrow and another station benefiting from a warm illuminated interior. Although this belied the mood of the place, which was grim and combustible. Saturday night was beginning, and Harrow's hordes were roaming. I got out of here as quickly as I could.

North of this point the Piccadilly meets the Metropolitan at Rayners Lane and runs in tandem all the way to Uxbridge: a section of the Undergrond I have already covered.

There was still unfinished business, however: that stump of the line that sprawls south westwards towards the sprawl of a terminus that is Heathrow airport.

Piccadilly Line: South Kensington - Acton Town

You begin to shake off the tourists on this stretch of the Piccadilly. You also shake off the ground itself.

The line breaks cover just before Barons Court. I feel the same thing every time this happens, anywhere on the network. It's a sense of escape, a sort of liberation. The sprawl of the city centre is behind and away from you. Ahead is the open air, the suburbs, and space. And, of course, places you can take photos of without having to schlep up and down escalators all the time.

All the stations on this stretch have counterparts on the District Line, and it was for the District - or rather the Metropolitan Railway, or the Metropolitan District Railway, or the Great Northern, Piccadilly & Brompton Railway, or the London and South Western Railway, and so on and on - that all of them were founded.

So none are technically Piccadilly stations. Their histories are bound up with that aformentioned jumble of erstwhile multi-named companies and conglomerates, dating back to the 1860s. The Piccadilly only turned up in 1906, and then only as far as Hammersmith. It wasn't until the 1930s that the likes of Acton Town joined the line.

As such, passing this way and photographing the stations as members of the Piccadilly family is, I guess, somewhat disingenuous. That's my way of saying I'm not going to bother much with the histories of the buildings and leave that for when I write about the District Line. Meanwhile here are half a dozen west London destinations snapped, as usual, in varying stages of daylight and nighttime, becoming evermore ornate and everless populous.

Gloucester Road is worth loitering in awhile, in order to check out the art installations that take up the whole of the disused platorm 4.

Anybody with little English and even less patience will have a torrid time at Earl's Court, a brilliantly sprawling junction with bits of the District line sprouting off in all directions where there's no telling what train will be passing your way next. It's still got these fantastic old-style multi-purpose destination boards as well. But I realise I'm talking about the District line and the Piccadilly has nothing to do with them at all, so instead here's an interesting (well, I think so) view from the station's Warwick Road entrance.

Come Barons Court and you're above ground, with the Piccadilly and District line tracks running side by side. The building is Grade II listed. I took this photo, along with the other night ones here, after work in the week before Christmas.

I always wonder what people must think of this weird bloke standing outside Underground stations taking photos of them without their permission. Yet nobody has ever come up to me and said anything, or enquired what I was doing, or asked me to stop. Nobody, that is, until I got to Hammersmith.

I only realised this afterwards, but in this photo you can actually see the security man who's about to ask me to put my camera away. He's the one walking towards the lens, in the blue anorak, right in the middle of the shot.

He didn't give me any valid reason for not being able to take a photo. It wasn't like I was even anywhere near the station entrance itself, as you can see. So much for festive spirit.

I took these last two photos during the week after Christmas, one wintry afternoon when I was feeling ill and continually eating Strepsils.

Piccadilly Line trains don't call at Turnham Green most times, only stopping in the early morning and late evening. Although it doesn't look like it here, the flower seller was doing an OK trade for the time of day (and year).

Notice anything familiar about Acton Town?

Recognise that 1930s-ish minimalist art deco-esque look? Yup, we're back in the world of Charles Holden, with stations meant to be looked up at rather than just passed down through. I suspect there'll be a fair bit more of this as the Piccadilly shakes itself free of the District line and strikes north towards Sudbury.