"Dave Newt" wrote in message
...

No, but the service has changed for the worse recently. I stood at
Bethnal Green station for an hour and a half last week, and watched 3
Chingford trains pass straight through without stopping. Nobody on the
platform knew what was happening, and National Rail Enquiries told me
that their records showed that the trains had stopped.

I quite like that line as a quick way into town (I live near St James'
Street Station), but it's got a lot worse of late.

After the Chingford line was electrified, in 1960, the peak service was 9
trains per hour. This was reduced to 6 after the Victoria Line was opened,
and at that time 3 called at all stations (not Cambridge Heath or London
Fields) and 3 were fast between Liverpool Street and St James Street. Before
privatisation, the service had reduced to 3 an hour all day, including the
peaks. It's now up to 4 an hour (every 15 minutes), but half-hourly after
the evening peak. As pointed out, for some reason alternate peak trains do
not stop at Bethnal Green.

There were proposals a few years ago to reinstate the spur so that trains
from Chingford could run to Stratford, but nothing seems to have come of
this, despite the enormous increase of employment in Docklands.

Peter