Paul Corfield wrote:


I just noticed that Northumberland Park and Angel Road are, apart
from a few trains at the extremes of the day, only served by
Stratford trains, and so have no service to Central London, but
also have no service to Ponders End or Brimsdown, which are only
served by Liverpool Street trains. Tottenham Hale has no trains
that call at Clapton or London Fields etc., so if you wanted to go
from London Fields to Northumberland Park, although it's four
stations on a straight track and many trains pass through both
stations, you need three trains. I don't know of any other straight
line with such a fragmented service pattern.

Well this shows the problems of emphasising longer distance services
over local ones and inadequate infrastructure. I recently checked the
current timestales to see whether any trains from T Hale ever stop at
Clapton (or vice versa) and none do. I am sure that sometime in the
last 20 years trains used to serve both stops but I can't recall any
formal request to remove the service. It is ludicrous that a single
stop journey cannot be done - to make the trip requires a trip back to
Hackney or via Walthamstow Central and the tube which is just mad.
Going by bus would require 3 buses.

There is still one train a day between Clapton and Tottenham Hale, the
2340 Liverpool Street - Hertford East.

Peter Smyth