Limitations of the East London Railway?

With optimized operationally I take it you mean do as quickly as possible and if it is finished by 2010 all the better. Also could mean that it is still planned as if it is still the ELL and LUL still think it's their railway. If that is the case then LOR has proved to be a waste of time and any chance of a fully intergrated ELR as part of the national rail network will be lost.


If it was to be fully segregated, it would not go any further south than the twin termini at New Cross. The continuation south has at least opened up the ELR in that direction so why not the north end. As for putting more trains onto the NLR, TfL proposes 8tph Camden Road - Stratford with 4tph from Richmond and 4tph from Camden Road/Queens Park. This seems to be a little excessive, if all go to Stratford. If the service divided at Dalston Western Jcn the 8tph would be continued from the Eastern Jcn with services from the ELR heading east.


The project to date has spent a fair bit of money so that would not be insurmountable.



The only insane bit would be to construct a grade separated junction. Connections between all four lines would make operational sense as it would enable services to be run when engineering operations were undertaken on one pair or the other.

I have to agree with cetacean on all these points here. I think a relatively segregated service is a good idea here, and Highbury and Islington is a pretty good interchange point. Camden would be even better, but an easy transfer to those 8 trains per hour it's not too bad.

Finsbury Park would indeed be expensive and I think the existing connection is only single tracked as well, and it would involve so many at grade crossings. If FCC trains would start running from Finsbury Park to Moorgate all day long that would probably make up for this as well.

Not an expert on the 455s but there could be problems!

I thought the east curve at Dalston was going to have a single track running thru it! I hope it isn't wasted, its a useful link line. I think a 4tph New Cross - Stratford service could be run!

I think it's physically possible, but you'd have the sacrifice the two long freight loops between Camden and H&I that are part of the current proposal and probably key to making the 8 tph timetable work on the two NLL tracks from H&I to Stratford. There's also a bottleneck west of Camden Road where the alignment narrows to two tracks for short distance before the Queen's Park and Gospel Oak routes split. Four tracking across here would be a challenge.

So I think Highbury is as far as you can realistically get segregated. It might be possible to build a flyover west of there where the alignment is quite open to get trains from the eastbound NLL down onto the eastbound ELL without crossing in front of westbound NLL trains. But the business case and planning permission prospects for such a thing surely aren't good.

The diagram here shows the proposed new track layout.

Just want to add that this week Construction News reports that DfT are funding four tracking of the NLL from Gospel Oak to Stratford, costing £100m. Work includes platform extensions, loops and resignalling.

It also costed work on the Dalston Curve at £6.5m with and I quote "reversing platforms at Camden Road" thought the graphic shows the curve work going as far as Caledonian Road & Barnsbury.

Full story - mackenzieblu.blogspot.com/

I also thought that the alinement east from Dalston Junction towards Stratford was safeguarded for the future?

There might be some confusion over the fact that turnbacks are planned both at Camden Rd and at Highbury & Islington, leading people to think the ELL will go on to Camden. As per cetacean's link, the turnback at Camden Rd is for Stratford service and the one at H&I is for reversing the ELL. Seems this is the best operational arrangement for turning that number of trains from two different services.

As for the southern end, I'm surprised that the Croydons are again up for discusion. My feeling is the area might be seen as of too much strategic importance for the route to be changed. However, Croydon does already have SO many good connections to London that it might not be terribly missed. I remember reading elsewhere that it is a difficult section of railway to terminate any extra trains.

My new idea would be to extend the 4tph+ Crystal Palace service to Tulse Hill, Peckham Rye and back up the ELL and to change the the 4tph+ Croydon service to run from the ELL to Peckham Rye, Tulse Hill, Crystal Palace and back up through the ELL the other way round. This relies on ELL phase 2 to connect Peckham to New Cross Gate but it would be an easy way to bring the ELL to more key stations in south London. The other routes would be NXG - Dalston and Clapham Junction - Dalston 4tph each as planned.

In my opinion there should be no turning back at Camden. They should run via (a reopened) Primrose Hill to Willesden LL and turn back there. They could even reinstate the second line in the bay.

I have heard on the grapevine that there are big plans for the bay at Willesden..

Why stop at Finsbury Park. Why not go to Alexandra Palace via Crouch End and Highgate. ;D ;D

You mean Bakerloo? Are there conflict free reversing facilities at Queen's Park for the DC line? If not WJ might be better. There aren't any major problems with this section currently and Richmond-Gunnersbury seems to run ok too.

Re: the investment required for a further separate extension beyond Highbury. Should be like the DLR, where useful infrastructure alterations seem to happen all over the place almost overnight. Like someone said earlier, this may all happen eventually anyway so maybe it's just a case of initially being content with the line opening. Step by step?

Queens Park would need a total rebuild. You'll also need to add platform faces on the NLL along the four track section (and sacrifice freight loops). You'll also need to quadruple the Camden section, which would be costly.

Lets look at the amount of people who'd use it:
stations north of Dalston - can just use NLL for Camden (and Queens Park when the Stratford-Willesden Junction services come into play)
Dalston Junction can use Dalston Kingsland to get to Camden
South London (the shared bits) - quicker via NR and tube to get to areas served by such an extension.
Several stations (Whitechapel, Shadwell, Canada Water) would be quicker to go via the DLR/tube to at least some of Camden, Chalk Farm, South Hampstead, Kensal and Queens Park
Several other stations are close enough to tube stations (Shoreditch High Street, Rotherhithe, Surrey Quays) as to make it likely that there's no point in taking the ELR
This leaves Wapping, Hoxton and Haggerston to the whole of the extension, plus a couple of others to a couple of those on the extension you propose.

It's just not worth it, especially when you consider that there would be a fairly easy (guessing step free) interchange at Canonbury and Highbury & Islington to these locations, on a 4tph service.

You have also have the problem of frieght going across the Primrose Hill link, creating extra conflicts. Basically the ELR will be a spur of the Southern network and to have it meet up with something else will cause the possiblity of problems (see Crossrail being a spur of the GWML for another example).

The old lines behind the eastbound road at Camden Road, have sinc ebeen hoarded off with wood panels attached to the fence... Peering over the fence, by standing on the catenary support concrete, shows that a lot of dumped rubbish, has been removed. It would benefit the pax service if the freight could be confined to those reopened lines, as at Cally Road & Barns? A conflicting move would only be apparent at Camden Road West Junction, where the Kentish Town and Primmy Hill lines converge/join/separate...

They are only close to the buffers. Would not affect a 3 or four car unit from using a reinstated line. The photo below is about two years old, but nothing has changed.