South London Line

Q1= Quarter 1

Yes, I also know it was part of the ELL project, but while the route has been l;egally secured, it hasn't received funding as of yet.

I believe there was supposed to be a central government yay or nay in relation to funding in Quarter 1 of this year.

Basically the government and TfL both want it to happen but Boris is trying to squeeze at least some money out of the DfT and has thus only committed about 80% of the funding. We're in the midst of some tedious back and forth about how much each party pays towards the rest, which will hopefully be resolved very shortly.

On the plus side, they've already built the earthworks for the grade separated junction at Surrey Quays on the assumption it will go ahead. The Transport and Works Act is already in place, LUL own the freehold on the entire route of the new connection and there are no buildings in the way.

Years ago, there was a proposal to make the South London Line run from Lewisham to Clapham Junction. With a new interchange station at Brockley it would probably be more useful than what we are currently heading for, and prevent the inherent unreliability of a four-branched metro.

I can't see why these trains cannot serve Clapham High Street and Wandsworth Road and even better would be high level platforms at Brixton, something that has been talked about for years but will probably never happen. At the moment there is no service between Victoria and Lewisham in the evening.

I think you need to read the petition again. The problem is there'll be no services from the west end of the line (Wandsworth Road, Clapham HS, Denmark Hill) to London Bridge, and none from the east end (Queen's Road Peckham and South Bermondsey) to Victoria.

They plan to introduce a new service from Victoria that will call at Wandsworth Road and Clapham HS and then disappear somewhere further south, so these stations will still have service to Victoria.

Many years ago I came across a simple map of an idea for the south london metro services. It basically managed to alter the routes in the central division into three straightforward shuttles. There were interchange stations at Brockley, Brixton and Lboro Jnct., and it might have involved building platforms on the Chatham lines. But it seemed to simplify the situation enormously. Does anyone remember it? The colours used were blue, red and lime green. Looked like it was done on paint? Maybe by someone called Jo(h)n something. Was a serious proposal by a commentator.

Well exactly. Pick two routes starting from Victoria for example and turn them into the Overground. Maybe when the 455s and 456s need replacing an order of high capacity 378s (or 379s?) could be introduced?

Not quite sure what you mean Metman? Moving existing Southern destinations from Victoria and making them extensions of the WLL? Or adding them onto the ELL and SLL at CJ?

Okay, the SLL service runs London Bridge - Victoria currently... Runs through Factory Junction... instead of going to Vic, go to Clapham Jct. At the other end make a new connection from South Bermondsey towards New Cross utilising overgrown former trackbed of the route through Bricklayers Arms - this might be a tight divergence, what with the Waste compound/recycling centre built in the vee of the LBSC and SE tracks. It's not really a heavilly used route. There's little else that can be done with the service currently.

Victoria is shortly to have major work done, roof replacement. Some platforms cannot accomodate 12 cars and I think this is an area Network Rail are looking at sorting out. They could get rid of at least half of the concourse, and bring platforms 9-19 back further, put the retail units on the mezzamine with access from platform 7 & 8; move the current booking office into the various offices on the side where the toilets& pub is now.

I know the area pretty well, and I even have Google Maps open, and I don't understand this at all. What route are you proposing?

I quite agree.
The Northern CX branch, should the line ever be segregated, going directly south and the Bakerloo going SE. Both could have interchanges with the SLL. Having previously commuted using the Southern franchise from Croydon, I can only say that a few underground routes that which do not involve those rather congested junctions just South of LB and Victoria would be most beneficial to the wider South East of England and naturally to South London too.

I don't really follow what this adds to the currently planned connection to the ELL? Surely a detour down to an extra change at New Cross isn't going to help anyone from the area get into town?

I don't see the point of building a connection between the SLL and New Cross when there is already one to Lewisham.

Running through services SLL/ELL, as is already under construction, is much more useful.

Extending "congested" tube lines into the suburbs will help - Take an example of an extension of the Victoria Line towards Croydon - many of the people using the extended tube line will have previously changed from the Southern to the tube at Victoria, so the extension will reduce congestion at Victoria, without having such a large increase in passengers on the Tube as you might suppose. Similarly an extension of the Bakerloo would reduce the pressure on Charing Cross (and Borough Market junction, as more trains could go to other termini)
As for Waterloo, that's what Chelney is for.

NR has loads of inner London stations, at least as many as the Underground, and lots of all-stations services too, even in South London. The stations During peaks, quite a few trains skip stops, but I suspect this is really more for reasons of tradition and attempts to increase capacity rather than to give passengers faster trips into London. There seems to be a lot of engineering work at the moment, so it is hard to establish what intentions are, but at least half Caterham Trains call at all stations to London Bridge. New Cross Gate, Brockley, Forest Hill and Sydenham are all in the top 100 busiest NR stations in London, so it makes sense for one ot two trains to stop there.

Railways in South London have always been pretty miserable, with complicated everywhere-to-everywhere-else timetables that put off the general public, and really slow journeys. Compare Wimbledon to Blackfriars by District Line and by Thameslink, useless. Give me D Stock over a Class 455 any time.

But back to Overground, and it is looking less and less as though a proper Metro (6tph per branch) is ever going to happen, yes, there will be longer trains, but they probably would have got them without the help of London Overground, and they might have come with seats.