[posted to uk.transport.london and uk.railway]

(Apols to anyone on uk.railway who couldn't care less about such
Metropolitan matters - in which case there's no need to read on!)

Just as a (rather late in the day) heads up to anyone who may either
have forgotten or been unaware that London Underground's East London
Line (ELL) is closing tonight (that's Saturday 22 December - though
AFAICS the last trains will still run as normal just past midnight on
sunday)... though it isn't closing for good, it is in fact headed for
bigger and better things when reopen in summer 2010, as a quasi-
National Rail (or heavy-rail) line, with trains operating on 'Metro'
frequencies serving a much longer route stretching from Croydon in the
south to Dalston in the north. The project was officially known as the
East London Line Extension (ELLX), though the official title is now
the East London Railway, and it is being run by Transport for London.

Thus tomorrow (saturday) is the last day the East London Line will see
London Underground operation, and hence the last day that the 4-car A
stock trains of LU will be in passenger service down this line - which
remains LU's furthest foray from the river into south-east London.

In the interim period the ELL will be replaced by several rail
replacement bus services, although none will provide the crucial cross-
river link previously provided by the ELL through the Thames Tunnel,
which was the first tunnel under the Thames and was designed by Marc
Brunel (father of Isambard Kingdom) and opened in 1843. The
replacement buses cannot traverse the only sensible route through the
nearby Rotherhithe Tunnel, so passengers looking to cross the river
are thus advised to consider making use of a combination of the
Jubilee line and the Dockland Light Railway, or alternatively travel
via London Bridge (though there won't be any zonal/fares easements on
routes via central London - so tickets valid for zone 1 will be
required for any journeys made via zone 1).

The new ELLX will form part of TfL's new London Overground network
(and will be operated by TfL's chosen rail concessionaire, LOROL,
rather than London Underground - hence the talk of the line being
'privatised'), with through trains from West Croydon and Crystal
Palace joining the course of the existing ELL at New Cross Gate,
travelling up to Whitechapel then on and up over a new line across the
Great Eastern lines out of Liverpool Street station to join the course
of the Broad Street to Dalston Junction line (part of the original
North London Line/Railway), with new stations up to and including
Dalston. Some trains will continue alongside the existing North London
Line to Highbury & Islington. New Cross will continue to be served as
a branch, with trains terminating there as before.

The following TfL leaflet provides the official, albeit brief, low-
down on the plans, plus lots of detailed info on the replacement buses
(PDF):
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/ell-closure-leaflet.pdf


The East London Railway (as was) has a most interesting past,
originally serving Liverpool Street station it also provided a wide
range of destinations to the south, including Croydon and even
Brighton. Thus one can see the ELLX project as fulfilling the
potential of the line as a new cross-London link. It won't however be
available as a freight route, as it used to be - the climb up from the
cutting north of Whitechapel to the level of a viaduct at Bishopsgate
will be too much of an incline for freight trains.

An as yet unfunded phase 2 of the ELLX would provide a link between
the existing line and the South London Line north of Old Kent Road and
would allow for through services via Peckham Rye to Clapham Junction.
This is likely to go ahead an an enabling work for the Thameslink 2015
project, as it would 'solve' the issue of the existing South London
Line (Victoria - London Bridge) service's occupancy of valuable
platform space at London Bridge by replacing the service with ELLX
trains (plus a separate replacement service to Victoria).

As ever Clive Feather's ever excellent CULG provides a plethora of
information on the ELL, including a good outline of the history of the
ELL:
http://www.davros.org/rail/culg/eastlondon.html


Whilst undoubtedly the current ELL doesn't carry anything as near as
many passengers as other LU lines it is nonetheless an important link,
with nearly 35,000 passengers on weekdays or over ten and a half
million journeys each year. The ELL has in fact actually had a
relatively recent extended closure - it closed for what was supposed
to be a period of 6 months in 1995, but the closure actually ended up
lasting three years because of wrangles about the way the historic
Thames Tunnel was being treated.

However since then ridership of the ELL has been substantially boosted
by the arrival of the extended Jubilee line at the new station at
Canada Water, which allows for easy interchange onto the Tube network
to access the West End and, crucially, Canary Wharf and points further
east. In addition the burgeoning Goldsmiths' College in New Cross,
with an expanding number of students, will have provided the line with
additional patronage - hence the closure will have a bigger impact
this time around (though the 1999 arrival nearby of the DLR south of
the river will provide an alternative cross-river route this time
around compared to the previous period of).

But much of what I have written concerns the future - today is the end
of Underground operation on the line, and (notwithstanding the
somewhat more adventurous earlier history of the line) it is also the
end of the self-contained East London Line as we know it (or indeed
the "Metropolitan Line - East London Section", as it was known up
until the 1980's).


~~~

P.S. It's a bit difficult finding out the times of the last train on
the web - the TfL Journey Planner has had a Stalinist turn and
seemingly has wiped from its memory any knowledge of the East London
Line... however, Google has a long memory, so the PDF converted by
Google into HTML can be seen, for a short while at least, by following
this link (though it takes a bit of deciphering):

http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache...ast-london.pdf
or via http://tinyurl.com/2embko

(If anyone has a proper copy of this file I'd much appreciate it if
you could email it to me - when the ELLX opens, it'll be interesting
to see how the first and last train times compare to what's currently
on offer.)

I presume that East London Line trains will be stabled in the small
New Cross depot on saturday night at the least, before returning at
some point to Neasden (via St. Mary's curve, a connection between the
ELL and the District line in the vicinity of Whitechapel). I don't
know the fate of the small New Cross depot - i.e. whether it will be
used by ELLX trains - as there is a big new purpose built depot being
built for them outside New Cross Gate. However all the Underground
staff are being relocated elsewhere on the network.

STOP PRESS... STOP PRESS...
I've just this morning read a thread on District Dave's internet forum
about the closure of the ELL - it looks like a 'special' train of some
sort was on the cards and was due to run this afternoon, but this has
seemingly been called off for reasons unknown (as is explained on page
2 of the thread)...
http://districtdave.proboards39.com/...d=11972028 43