Jubilee Line: Willesden Green - Baker Street

South of Willesden Green there are still a few stations above ground before the Jubilee Line dives into darkness, and all of them - like Dollis Hill, Neasden and Wembley Park before - have twin sets of tracks running through.

On the outside, not served by platforms, are those used by battered, dirty Metropolitan Line trains operating what is dubiously described as a "fast" service to Finchley Road.

On the inside scuttle the smaller Jubilee Line trains with their purring engines and well-scrubbed carriages. All the stations are pretty close together, though, especially West Hampstead and Finchley Road. On the day I did this part of the journey it was actually quicker to walk between both stations given how, for some reason, the frequency of trains had suddenly slowed to one every 10 minutes.

Anyway, all the way down to Baker Street you're passing along the route, if not necessarily the same tracks, as that first etched by the Metropolitan Line in the 1870s, which then became the Bakerloo in 1939, and which ended up the Jubilee in 1979.

There's little to see of this pensionable heritage nowadays, thanks both to refurbishment and expediency. Kilburn, for instance, got completely rebuilt after the Second World War, in the process having its name contracted from Kilburn and Brondesbury.

It's somewhat overshadowed by the A5 passing overhead, which means that when you leave the station you kind of feel you haven't really emerged into daylight - despite having travelled in it to and from the station.

West Hampstead is a far more appealing prospect, lurking discreetly on a bridge above the line itself. As Laura pointed out in her comments on the last blog, some thoughtful renovation has been going on. Not that I'd bet most people using the station have noticed, but, like a local library or Antiques Roadshow, it's reassuring to know it's there.

Finchley Road has one of the best interchanges on the whole Underground. You can step off a Jubilee Line carriage and walk three paces - at most - to climb aboard a Metropolitan Line train. As such the station has a sort of compact, bustling feel a bit like a small ferry terminal or airport; the fact it's right on the edge of the first tunnel on the Jubilee Line compounds the air of departure and anticipation.

If you're heading south it's the last place to gasp a few breaths of fresh air before plunging underground. Equally when you're heading the north on an especially crowded and stuffy train, arriving at Finchley Road can, if you're feeling suitably emotional, feel akin to reaching the promised land. Albeit with fusty shopping arcades at the exit and a squawking dual carriageway alongside.

Finchley Road is where the Jubilee Line waves goodbye to its true Metropolitan ancestry. In the 1930s, to ease congestion on the line, a second set of tunnels were dug; but unlike the existing, just-below-the-surface ones (or 'cut and cover' tunnels to give them their official name, because they were cut into the ground then covered up), these were bored deep.

Hence the stations between here and Baker Street - Swiss Cottage and St John's Wood - lie a long way under the earth, and a long way from the original Metropolitan tracks. When the new route was opened in 1939, so were the two new stations, and the whole line all the way up to Stanmore became part of the Bakerloo.

At the same time, two old stations closed: Lord's and Marlborough Road, which I'll talk more about when covering the Metropolitan Line. Their de facto replacements have, I'd argue, two of the most evocative names on the whole network. Swiss Cottage and St John's Wood have also had much of their 1930s design restored or enhanced, notably those magical escalator uplighters which I last saw on the Morden branch of the Northern Line.

Outside Swiss Cottage there's this curious brick tower, the only element of the station that's above ground:

St John's Wood is more substantial and memorable: a sleek circular building that's retained - or recovered - much of its original elegance, despite the ugly block of flats above. I waited ages to take this photo because I wanted to get people in it; I love the way the woman appears oblivious to what looks like a deliberately exuberant pose.

The station itself was originally going to be called Acacia Road, or simply Acacia, thanks to being on the corner of the eponymous street. Granted it would have made for something even more evocative than St John's Wood, but then you wouldn't have been able to apply the latterday ubiquitous rule of the station being the only one on the Underground not to contain any letters in the word MACKEREL.

Finally to Baker Street, one of the stations on the very first underground line, indeed one of the stations on the very first underground line in the whole world, opened in 1863.

With ten different platforms it's the most sprawling station on the network. The story of its development belongs more to the story of the development of its long-forgotten parent, the Metropolitan Railway. Rising above the entrance, however, you can still see the essence of that company's breathless ambition and extraordinary imagination in the shape of Chiltern Court, designed by Charles Clark, opened by the Metropolitan in 1929, and originally consisting of half a million square feet of shops and luxury flats, some of which were home to, at one time, the likes of Arnold Bennett and HG Wells.

It's also the point at which the Jubilee Line bids farewell to the old, and plunges unblinking into the new.

Jubilee Line: Stanmore - Willesden Green

Here's a confession: I really like the Jubilee Line.

I like the way its trains make a sleek, gentle revving sound when they leave the platform, and a weirdly becalming sighing noise when they pull to a stop. I like the fact the carriages look and feel really new, because they are (dating from 1996), unlike the Northern Line carriages which look and feel really rank, despite also dating from 1996.

I like the line's colour: silver. I like the name, because it refers to an event rather than a place. And I like its implausible route, being shaped by expediency and happenstance and illogic, which leads to it binding together the most disparate of places: genteel suburbs, hectic interchanges, unbecoming backwaters, forgotten tourist attractions and above all loads and loads of stations that used to belong to someone else.

The line kicks off with a whole slew of these which, even more appealingly, are all above ground. After the dungeon-esque horrors of the Victoria Line, this was a real relief.

Indeed, this entire first leg of my journey was in the open air - and entirely through stations that were once the property of not one, but two different owners.

The whole of the Jubilee Line north of Baker Street was once part of the Bakerloo Line, up until 1979 when the Jubilee was officially "born". But before the Bakerloo took up residency from 1939, it was the run as part of the Metropolitan Line. Hence when you travel south from Stanmore, you're running along tracks that have masqueraded under more different names than anywhere else on the Underground network.

It starts off as a very pleasant excursion through pure suburbia. Until you get to Wembley Park there's no real urban sprawl in sight. Stanmore itself was built as a terminus and has stayed that way ever since, replete with the eccentricity of having a ticket office downstairs at platform level and the booking hall upstairs at street level, where you can find a bank of old fashioned public telephones that nobody uses.

They're in the process of adding a third platform to the station. As it is, it's a sprawling, spacious terminus with that slightly giddy feeling of being on the edge of nowhere. It's very well kept, though, as is its neighbour, Canons Park.

This opened like its predecessor in 1932, but under the rather fussy name of Canons Park (Edgware).

At least this title did have some local resonance; the next one down the line, Queensbury, wasn't named after anything at all, conceived merely as complement its own neighbouring station, Kingsbury. It does, however, boast this rather wonderful construction just outside its main entrance:

What it's there for I've no idea, but it does look ace. Here's a long line of people, all of whom watched me take the above photo before finding themselves the stars of this one:

Queensbury was clearly an add-on to the existing line, opening two years later than all the stations north of Wembley Park. Indeed, Kingsbury feels a far more established and logical presence, sitting on a main road yet with platforms cleverly sunk below large verges covered in woodland.

Only when you get to Wembley Park does the Jubilee Line start to feel suitably regal. For here, surely, is one of the greatest stations on the entire network. Wembley Park is magnificent: a cavernous, palatial-esque playground with extraordinary flights of steps to rival any cathedral.

To arrive here ahead of a crucial football match must be one of the most thrilling feelings in the world. There's a stunning view upon exiting of the new Wembley Stadium arch. It really is the perfect introduction to a couple of hours in the company of several hundred thousand people watching a national team forget how to win.

The station dates back to 1893, but its current incarnation only opened last year, in a ceremony blessed by the presence of Ken Livingstone (naturally) and David Seaman (er...). Even more excitingly, mainline London to Aylesbury trains run *underneath* its platforms.

After all that, Neasden can only be an anti-climax. Which it is.

Opened in 1880, it was first called Kingsbury and Neasden, then - presumably due to local politics - Neasden and Kingsbury, then finally just plain Neasden in 1932. Immortalised, not to say bowdlerised, by a spoof Private Eye 7" single in 1962, it was given equally portentous canonisation by John Betjeman during his televised travels through Metro-Land, more of which another time. Today the place is sadly lacking in pomp or swagger; it's tatty, dirty and trite. Albeit with locals willing to stare straight into a camera lens.

On the day I was making this journey the next station, Dollis Hill, was closed for repairs. Or "planned engineering work", to use the official euphemism. Hence all I have to show here is this non-descript photo:

The station, singularly absent from this scene, hails from 1909.

And so to Willesden Green, another grand building but of an entirely different vintage to Wembley Park.

Opened in 1879, it was completely redesigned and rebuilt in 1925 by CW Clark, the Metropolitan Railway's chief architect. Much of his work remains, thankfully, intact, and quite rightly became a Grade 2 Listed Building in 2006.

Willesden Green I will forever associate with the one thing I don't like about the Jubilee Line: its tinny-voiced, strangulated-sounding in-carriage recorded announcer person, an elderly woman who mis-emphasises all her words and all in the poshest accent imaginable. "This train," she will cry, "terminates at WilllLLLLLLLEESSSSSDDDen Greeeeeeeeen". And so does this blog.