West Croydon trains get 3 minutes recovery time at Dalston Junction. This might explain slow running. The line speed on the East London line is 40 mph.. The crossover east of Highbury is 30 mph for trains leaving from platform 1. Also the signal for southbound east London line trains arriving into platform 4 is held at danger so neccistates a cautious approach. Unlike the tube there are TPWS overspeed loops set at 10 mph on the approach to all signals. After clearing Dalston Junction the limit is 40 mph as far AA the Hollywell curve, then it's basically 40 all the way to Wapping and 30 through the Thames tunnel past Rotherhithe and through to Surrey Quays. 40 after that except for a brief 30 through Canal Junction.

Unfortunately there's lots of timetable padding south of New Cross Gate towards Croydon where the line speed is 60 until Norwood Junction. Nevertheless a determined driver can reach at least over 50 even between stations quite close together thanks to the installed power on a 378. 55 is possible between Forest Hill and Sydenham for example.

"David B" wrote in message
...
West Croydon trains get 3 minutes recovery time at Dalston Junction. This
might explain slow running.

It is not 'recovery time', it is a 2 minute dwell to maintain the regular
intervals between services either side of Dalston Jn (DJ). Trains from
Highbury & Islington (H&I) run 7.5 mins apart (8 tph), south of DJ they run
at 5 min intervals (12 tph). If the dwell wasn't there trains would be
leaving H&I at intervals of 5 and 10 mins apart - and people would no doubt
be complaining about that.

I already mentioned all this in the second post of this thread, but this
planned wait will not be necessary once the 16 tph service starts, because
the 8 tph starting from H&I will integrate smoothly with the 8 tph starting
from DJ.

The timetable for Dec 10th shows that what you think of as 'recovery time'
has disappeared, as you'd expect, because the service frequency is now
balanced.

(As an aside, it's the West Croydon and New Cross services that reverse at
DJ in the new timetable, but that doesn't alter the explanation above.)

Paul S

Fair comment. This new timetable is interesting. We haven't seen it yet and such things have to be signed off by the union before being brought into use.