The psychogeography* of Willesden Junction

View Larger Map We've just moved to a new production kitchen in Willesden Junction, on a triangle of land bounded by railway lines, the old Great Western and its Old Oak Common depot, the West Coast Main Line, and the Grand Union Canal. The reason there are so many railway lines is that in the 1830s, when it was planned, the Great Western was going to join up with the London and Birmingham Railway at this point and run into Euston. Our neighbours are the Willesden Junction Waste Depot and Car Giant, who sell second hand cars on the former production site of Rolls Royce's defunct Mulliner Park Ward division. Willesden Junction is the terminus of the odd but useful direct three-coach train from Clapham Junction, which winds its way through Car Giant's endless lots and out-buildings.

This image shows the scene five miles further down the line in to London in the late 1830s. The London and Birmingham Railway's first terminus was planned to be at Chalk Farm. When the land to run the trains in to Euston became available, it involved a gradient that was too steep for the first generation of steam locomotives to climb. So a fixed steam engine, whose chimneys you see in the engraving, was built at Chalk Farm, running a continuous cable running at 20 miles an hour that drew the largely open carriages up the slope for a little more than a mile where they were coupled to a locomotive. On the way down the trains freewheeled into Euston, their speed controlled by an operator in a brake car.

*psychogeography: this word is a showy way of saying 'local history' but also can mean the effect of a place on your mood and the way we personally map places according to how we use them .

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