Wembley Park tube station

Wembley Park
Entrance to Olympic Way
Wembley Park Location of Wembley Park in Greater London
Location	Wembley Park
Local authority	London Borough of Brent
Managed by	London Underground
Number of platforms	6
Accessible	Yes
Fare zone	4
London Underground annual entry and exit
2012	10.60 million
2013	11.74 million
2014	14.11 million
2015	14.54 million
Key dates
1880	Tracks laid (MR)
1893	Limited opening
1894	Full opening
1932	Branch to Stanmore opened
1939	Started (Bakerloo)
1979	Ended (Bakerloo)
1979	Started (Jubilee)
Other information
Lists of stations	DLR Underground National Rail Tramlink
WGS84	51°33′49″N 0°16′46″W / 51.5636°N 0.2794°W / 51.5636; -0.2794Coordinates: 51°33′49″N 0°16′46″W / 51.5636°N 0.2794°W / 51.5636; -0.2794

Wembley Park is a London Underground station in Wembley Park, north west London. The station is served by the Underground's Metropolitan and Jubilee Lines and is in Travelcard Zone 4. It is located on Bridge Road (A4089) and is the nearest Underground station to the Wembley Stadium and Wembley Arena complex. This is where the Jubilee line from Stanmore diverges from the Metropolitan line which was formerly a branch of the Metropolitan Railway and was taken over by the Bakerloo line and today part of the Jubilee line.

The station currently has six London Underground tracks, with the two Jubilee line tracks in the centre flanked in turn by the Slow and Fast (outermost) Metropolitan line tracks. Fast trains call at the station only during off-peak periods (Northbound during the morning peak and southbound during the evening peak). Both Metropolitan and Jubilee line trains may start or end their service at the station. Jubilee line trains that terminate at Wembley Park reverse via sidings between the running lines to the north of the station. Meanwhile, Metropolitan line trains that terminate at Wembley Park use the fly-under and Neasden depot to reverse.

The frontage of the station building is an Italianate design from the early 20th century. However, because of the extensive use of the station the layout has been altered many times since. Behind the frontage are passages above track level with staircases leading down to the platforms, constructed in the 1940s in the red-brick modernist style of the period. Parts of the platforms were rebuilt in the 1940s and then the 2000s, which also added the current entrance to the west of the station towards the stadium.

Until 1880 the Metropolitan Railway (MR) line out of London only ran as far as Willesden Green. In early 1879 work began to build an extension to Harrow-on-the-Hill, with one additional station at Kingsbury and Neasden. Services to Harrow started on 2 August 1880, extending the MR route (today's Metropolitan line) into Middlesex. At this time Wembley was a sparsely populated rural area which did not merit the construction of a railway station and MR trains passed through without stopping. In his 1973 BBC documentary Metro-land, Sir John Betjeman remarked, "Beyond Neasden there was an unimportant hamlet where for years the Metropolitan didn't bother to stop. Wembley. Slushy fields and grass farms." However the then chairman of the MR, Edward Watkin, was ambitious businessman who sought new ways of attracting paying passengers out of London and onto his railway, and he regarded the barren lands of Wembley as a business opportunity.