Marylebone Station, Melcombe Place, NW1

The elegant glass-roofed frontage of Marylebone Station leads to a small, rather quiet station serving the northwestern suburbs. Its period elegance (lately compromised by the paraphernalia of a modern terminus) and quiet location have made it a film favourite.

In 1963 it became ‘Bradford Station, Yorkshire’, where Billy (Tom Courtenay) bottles out at the last minute, leaving Liz (Julie Christie) to go off alone to, well, London, at the end of Billy Liar.

The following year, Marylebone was still up north and still apparently serving London when it became ‘Liverpool Lime Street’, where the Beatles evade screaming fans at the beginning of A Hard Day’s Night. And the London Station at which they arrive? Marylebone again, but from a different angle, naturally.

The scientist is abducted from Marylebone at the opening of The Ipcress File, and the blinded train driver causes panic when he crashes his train into the station in The Day Of The Triffids. In the 1978 version of The Thirty Nine Steps, Marylebone stands in for ‘St Pancras’, where British intelligence officer Colonel Scudder (John Mills) is stabbed by the beastly Prussians, embroiling Richard Hannay (Robert Powell) in the assassination plot.

Trivia: although she’s just emerged from Embankment Station, it’s opposite Marylebone, outside the Landmark Hotel, Melcombe Place, that Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) escapes an attempted mugging in Sliding Doors.

Marylebone Station

A Hard Day’s Night (1964, dir: Richard Lester)
Billy Liar (1963, dir: John Schlesinger)
The Day Of The Triffids (1962, dir: Steve Sekely)
The Thirty Nine Steps (1978, dir: Don Sharp)
The Ipcress File (1965, dir: Sidney J Furie)
Sliding Doors (1998, dir: Peter Howitt)