Why must South Hampstead - Euston be diverted?

Maybe because there isn't enough capacity on the line to run two Overground services and the Bakerloo? Although that doesn't explain why they couldn't run Watford to Euston and Queens Park - Stratford.

First, we cannot reverse LO trains at Queens Park. Second, the bay platform at Willesden Junction LL is not able to sustain a regular service of over 2 tph because of depot access issues and frequency of Bakerloo Line services and LO services into Euston, etc., etc., so overlaying an additional shuttle to Stratford is out. The NLR west of Camden Road is blockaded for mainly for signalling work to be completed and for control to be transferred to Upminster. Therefore, the only alternative is to operate an end to end service from Watford Junction to Stratford.

Correct me if I am wrong as I don't this this route but am I right in thinking you can only reverse in the down direction at Queens Park. To reverse in the up direction you would have to go to Kilburn High Road?
This would probably complicate things further.

As I said before we don't/can't reverse at Queen's Park! To do so would mean a very restricted NLR service and would disrupt LO services into Euston. Going end to end Watford Junction to Stratford means we can provide an adequate service over two lines whilst Camden Road West Junction to Gunnersbury Junction is blockaded. Passengers for Euston can change at Watford Junction, Bushey or Harrow & Wealdstone.

'control to be transferred to Upminster.' If so, what going to happen to the signalbox at Willesden?

... even better value via Watford Junction ;D

The line would need resignaling to allow more trains to run through. The last resignaling took out many of the intermediate signals, between stations, meaning that a higher frequency than at present isn't really possible.

An alternative would be to cut back the number of Bakerloo trains running to / from Stonebridge Park to release their paths between there and Queens Park for LO services. This would allow such services to reverse at Willesden Junction.



That was one of the plans, especially with the works needed at Euston for High Speed 2.

I have to say, travelling as I did between South Hampstead and Camden Road yesterday (in both directions) was of course a nice novelty, but also quite useful and being enlightened as I was, quite amusing! Despite the trains of course being advertised as Stratford/Watford Junction, the DVAs repeating this along with showing the next stop, all the posters on the stations etc etc etc more than a few people were clearly somewhat surprised to end up where they ended up in both directions! Of course, despite all the aforementioned, there is no indication from the maps inside the train as to quite how it can route between these two stations, which clearly was confusing and bewildering many. 'How can on earth can this train be at Camden Road?!', many confused glances and anxious double takes, people standing up apparently anticipating Kentish Town West when the train paused for the pan down at Primrose Hill and so on. Most amusing! I wondered to myself if all LO drivers can do both NLL and the DC?

Did the trip yesterday to look at the remains of Primrose Hill - a lot of people left at Camden Road when they realized that train is not going to Euston. I don't think there was any publicity about the diversion at South Hampstead station!

Sorry - I meant including the route between Camden Road and South Hampstead (not Kentish Town West) as a dotted "Special Journeys Only"link on the in-car route maps.

1956 - re the inclusion of this link on the map, I was thinking exactly the same, as so many people were staring incredulously at it. To be fair to pretty much any commuter who doesn't have any interest in this stuff (and who therefore is unaware of the link) you could imagine how misleading that must have been! I have also mentioned in the past how convenient this service was/would be for me - having a direct train to Camden was great - and there has been EPIC discussion on the matter of a regular service (or indeed, this route taking over from Euston entirely for LO).

Causton I don't think it seemed like 10 minutes even if that's the timetable - long, but not 10 minutes. You notice the lower speed when you diverge in the tunnels, then of course the long-ish pause followed by something of a trundle into Camden. One thing that did strike me on both trips I made was that the pan up and pan down were considerably louder than when I've experienced it on the WLL? Made quite a few people jump! Added an extra degree of bewilderment for those who looked utterly perplexed as we sat in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason (it was dark when I travelled, so unless you know where to squint there is little evidence that you are sitting at a disused station).

As for there being no publicity at South Hampstead station - I don't know, but I can vouch that it was clearly advertised at Harlesden and Willesden Junction. Wouldn't entirely surprise me if it wasn't at SH though - I would wager it must be one of the line's least used stations??

Edit for ps: I was slightly disappointed by the view! You get a nice look at that floating Thai restaurant near the lock and a few other things on the canal, but what I had anticipated to be a commanding view over the market and High Street (from the bridge I had for years mistakenly thought was just the NLL) was in fact extremely brief and mostly obscured by the bridge's unusually high sides, d'oh!

I shall give the diverted service a try tomorrow - and will see how many puzzled passengers I can spot!

The driver on my train decided not to announce that the train was not going to Euston until the train arrived at Camden Road (and just announced that people should change at H&I for the Victoria line) ... a video is coming soon!

Edit: Of course the DVA announced it, but lots of people just claimed it was an error

Edit 2: Video uploaded! Sorry about the formatting issue making the widescreen not very widescreen...

I had a travel around this afternoon. The station and on-train information seemed to be pretty OK - although not all of the passengers actually believed it!

There was a member of LO staff on 'rescue' duty at South Hampstead, to assist people who had arrived there unexpectedly. His opening line was: "You look a bit lost!!"

It was interesting to see ELL test trains running to and from H&I, too.