Piccadilly line
The dark-blue deep tube from Cockfosters through the West End to Heathrow Airport and Uxbridge, calling at 53 stations.
About the Piccadilly line
The Piccadilly line is a deep-level tube with 53 stations, running from Cockfosters in north London through the centre to west London. At Acton Town it divides: the main branch heads to Heathrow Airport, serving Heathrow Terminals 2 & 3, Heathrow Terminal 4 and Heathrow Terminal 5, while the other runs north-west to Uxbridge. It is drawn in dark blue, officially “Corporate Blue”, on the tube map.
The central section is the reason many visitors use it. In order from King’s Cross St Pancras it calls at Russell Square, Holborn, Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, Green Park, Hyde Park Corner, Knightsbridge and South Kensington, close to the London Transport Museum, Harrods and Buckingham Palace. King’s Cross St Pancras is its busiest station, with 77.13 million entries and exits in 2024, followed by Green Park (31.1 million) and South Kensington (29.48 million).
It is also the tube’s direct link to the airport; our Heathrow to central London guide compares it with other options. Further out the Piccadilly shares tracks with other lines: with the District from Acton Town to just south of North Ealing, and with the Metropolitan line between Rayners Lane and Uxbridge.
Piccadilly line stations
53 stations, 21 of them with a change to another tube line (marked with a navy ring and the colours of the other lines).
Uxbridge to Cockfosters
Main route, 42 stations
Branch from Heathrow Terminal 4
Rejoins at Acton Town
History
The line opened on 15 December 1906 as the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway, running from Finsbury Park to Hammersmith. It was formed from two unbuilt schemes taken over in 1901 by Charles Tyson Yerkes’s consortium, and its stations were designed by Leslie Green with ox-blood terracotta fronts. A short branch from Holborn to the Strand, later renamed Aldwych, opened on 30 November 1907. On 1 July 1910 the company merged into the London Electric Railway, and on 4 October 1911 Earl’s Court received the first escalators on the Underground.
Finsbury Park made an overcrowded terminus, described at the time as “intolerable”, because the Great Northern Railway had blocked any extension north. Parliamentary approval finally came on 4 June 1930. Trains reached Arnos Grove on 19 September 1932, Enfield West (now Oakwood) on 13 March 1933 and Cockfosters on 31 July 1933, without opening ceremonies. To the west the Piccadilly took over District line services: it reached South Harrow on 4 July 1932, Northfields on 9 January 1933, Hounslow West on 13 March 1933 and Uxbridge on 23 October 1933. Many stations on these branches were rebuilt to designs by Charles Holden. Lightly used Down Street, York Road and Brompton Road closed in 1932 and 1934.
During the Second World War some stations served as shelters; on 13 October 1940 a bomb collapsed the westbound platform tunnel at Bounds Green, killing nineteen shelterers. In the 1960s the track at Finsbury Park was realigned to give cross-platform interchange with the new Victoria line, which opened on 1 September 1968 and relieved the Piccadilly. The last peak-hour District trains to Hounslow were withdrawn on 9 October 1964.
Approval for a Heathrow extension was first given in 1967, and it opened in stages between 1975 and 1977, serving Terminals 2 and 3 and the former Terminal 1. A loop to Terminal 4 followed in 1986, and a spur to Terminal 5 in 2008. Lots Road Power Station, which had supplied the line, was taken out of use in 2003.
Trains and service
TfL runs three route patterns from Cockfosters: to Heathrow Terminal 4, to Heathrow Terminal 5 and to Uxbridge. On weekdays the first train leaves Cockfosters at 05:08 and the last at 23:53, with 19 departures in the busiest hour. Fridays also start at 05:08 but continue through the night, Saturdays run all night with up to 14 trains an hour, and Sundays end with a 23:00 departure, again with 14 in the busiest hour. From Uxbridge, TfL’s Monday-to-Friday timetable gives a 05:20 first train, a 00:26 last train and four trains in the busiest hour.
On Friday and Saturday nights the Night Tube runs from Cockfosters to Heathrow Terminal 5 via Terminals 2 & 3; Terminal 4 and the Uxbridge branch beyond Acton Town are not served overnight. Key interchanges include King’s Cross St Pancras, Green Park (Jubilee and Victoria lines), Holborn for the Central line, Finsbury Park for the Victoria line and National Rail, and the Heathrow stations for the Elizabeth line.
The trains
The line is worked by 1973 Stock trains, and 78 of them are needed to run the peak-hour timetable. They are kept at two depots, Northfields and Cockfosters, with groups of sidings elsewhere and crossovers at several points, some of which let trains switch to other lines. Since Lots Road Power Station closed in 2003 the line has drawn its power from the National Grid. The 1930s extension to Cockfosters was engineered with speed in mind: its tunnels were bored slightly wider than the original section, at 12 ft (3.7 m), and sharp curves were avoided. Platforms there were planned at 400 ft (120 m) for eight-car trains but were built shorter, at 385 ft (117 m).