For our final look at passenger suburban services considered in the draft Kent Route Study we look at a route which is, in many ways, a bit of an oddball – not least because it doesn’t have a current (or predicted) problem with capacity: the Victoria-Dartford service.
The service in question utilises a connection, otherwise unused by regular passenger trains, to connect the suburban heartlands of the London Bridge Metro services with Victoria. Seeing a train on the destination boards at Victoria advertised as going to Dartford seems out of place at a terminus originally built for the London, Chatham and Dover railway and generally serving routes via Bromley South.
The section of track between Nunhead and Lewisham unique to Victoria-Dartford services. Based on Carto Metro and used with permission
The potted history
The existence of the Victoria-Dartford service is a result of various quirks of railway history. The background behind the route is not really needed in order for us to look at it in relation to the Kent Route Study, but its story is quite atypical of rail development in London. The history does help explain why it is not a turn-up-and-go service and why the line more-or-less came about by accident rather than existed to fulfil a particular purpose – factors which lead some to consider it to be expendable.
The Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill in 1854 – an unlikely start to our story. Photo in public domain
That story really begins with the Great Exhibition of 1851 held at Hyde Park. Referred to in a derogatory fashion by Punch magazine as a palace of very crystal, it was not long before the building that housed it became referred to as a “Crystal Palace” by the general public. When the Exhibition closed it was decided to relocate the building to Penge Common just below the summit of Sydenham Hill. It was to be extended and rebuilt, even bigger than before. The move and work was completed in 1854.
The London, Chatham & Dover Railway (LCDR) wasted no time in deciding to tap into the potentially lucrative traffic available. Part of their urgency may be down to the fact that two of the directors of the holding company responsible for rebuilding the Crystal Palace were also directors of the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway (LB&SCR). Clearly, if a line was to be built, it was highly desirable for it to be the first to serve the Crystal Palace by rail and to become established as the best way to get there from London.
A new railway
Indeed, serving the Crystal Palace was their primary objective. Subsidiary objectives could wait. The fact that the railway company set up to create this new branch was called “The Crystal Palace and South London Junction Railway“ (CP&SLJR) shows that the purpose of the railway was to explicitly provide for visitors to the Crystal Palace rather than provide a service for the surrounding catchment area (Sydenham Hill). It must be rare example, especially then, of a station not named after the area it served.
As things turned out, the LCD&R were beaten in the quest for having a station at Crystal Palace by the West End of London and Crystal Palace Railway – a subsidiary of the LB&SCR. However the rival station, located less conveniently on Anerley Hill, did not provide a direct route all the way from the West End until 1860.
The original Crystal Palace and South London Junction Railway
The “South London Junction” in the title of the railway company is today’s Loughborough Junction and at the time only the routes to Herne Hill (centre arm) and Victoria (western arm) existed. The CP&SLJR would create the eastern arm. The railway was built through an area then devoid of railways so had no junctions beyond Loughborough Junction. It was just a long branch line. The line was opened before either of the two original intermediate stations (Lordship Lane and Honor Oak) were ready – such was the focus on exhibition traffic.
Nunhead
Once built, it must have been obvious to the LCDR that they weren’t exactly using their assets to the best effect. What then followed was a scenario, typical of the railways of South-East London and Kent, that only makes sense if one presumes that inter-company rivalry was the dominating factor in decision making. The LCDR, very reasonably, decided that a station at Nunhead would be a good idea in order to increase traffic. The CP&SLJR almost paralleled the main London Bridge – Brighton line for much of its route, so the potential for profitable intermediate stations was limited and Nunhead was probably, by far, the best location.
Off at a tangent
Also relatively sensibly, the LCDR decided to have a branch line branching off at Nunhead. This is where the red mist seems to have set in. The area south east of Nunhead (in the direction of Bromley) was a railway desert, likely with a lot of potential for local traffic. This would also be the logical direction to go in as it would lead away from the centre of London. Instead, the LCDR decided to go eastward towards Lewisham, but before reaching Lewisham the line would then head north east towards Blackheath and Greenwich.
The Blackheath Hill branch – later extended to Greenwich Park
There seem to be only two possible explanations for this somewhat absurd routing which both lacked strategic sense and inexplicably missed the one place where one would expect a lot of passenger traffic – Lewisham itself.
One possibility is that the LCDR had set its sights on a station at Greenwich, which would have been a popular leisure destination in its own right. It was also close to a location for catching pleasure steamers up or down the Thames. The rationale for this seems not to stand up to great scrutiny when one realises that it took the company 17 years to extend the line from Blackheath Hill to Greenwich Park – but then the LCDR was notorious for being nearly bankrupt for much of the time, and being hopelessly optimistic about money being available for new lines.
The other explanation is that the LCDR wanted an incursion into the established territory of its hated rival – the South Eastern Railway (SER). Such a decision would appear typical of the time, but there was no rational business justification for it. The SER already had direct routes to the West End and the heart of the City. It made no sense to provide an alternative, more long-winded route to Blackfriars and Holborn Viaduct – which were neither the heart of the City nor the West End.
A service that wasn’t needed
Of the four stations eventually opened on the new Greenwich Park branch line, three were in close proximity to existing stations. The one station that was not duplicated by the SER was Lewisham Road. This station was located on the main road now called Lewisham Way. However, even this station wasn’t the success they might have wished because the SER, probably in retaliation, subsequently built a six platform station nearby on their existing route to London Bridge. The SER station was called St John’s which was the name of the recently-built church practically adjacent to Lewisham Road station.
St Johns station in 1913 looking towards Lewisham with the bridge carrying the line then in use to Greenwich Park.
To give the LCDR some credit, one of the stations they did open (in 1872) was Brockley Lane which was directly overhead and at right angles to Brockley station on the London and Croydon railway. It is hard to see how Brockley Lane could have rivalled Brockley, but it may at least have led to some sensible interchange possibilities.
Finally, in 1892, very late in the history of Victorian railways of London, the LCDR got around to building the line they should have been thinking of building more than twenty years earlier – Nunhead to Shortlands.
It’s all doomed – or maybe not completely
Although it might not seem obvious, the Greenwich Park – St Paul’s (later renamed Blackfriars) service was, in many ways, the forerunner of today’s Victoria-Dartford service. However, the Greenwich Park branch closed at the start of 1917 as a wartime economy. Whilst, as events turned out, the line from Lewisham Road to Blackheath Hill and Greenwich Park was forever doomed, a twist in the tale led to the revival of the line from Nunhead to Lewisham Road and the building of a new short stretch of track from there to Lewisham Junction.
Under new management
In 1923 the Southern Railway was formed – one of the “big four” – when railways were amalgamated. In London it encompassed all main line railways south of the Thames – not just the area covered by today’s Southern Railway. The Southern Railway of 1923 quickly realised it had various problems to solve. It also recognised that there were considerable opportunities with the development of electric traction for suburban services and colour light signalling.
One of Southern’s challenges was to standardise on one form of electric traction rather than risk multiple different types of electrical working expanding over its network. It was rapidly decided to go for 750V third rail, as it provided the power needed and could be installed very quickly and cheaply. The need to be able to electrify the network was important in order to keep traffic receipts up and costs down, as well as to be competitive with the many tram services then in existence. On the South Eastern side there was the added bonus that multiple unit electrification did a lot to resolve the issues of an inconvenient weight restriction on Hungerford Bridge, which formed the approach to Charing Cross.
One of the main problems specific to the South Eastern side of Southern Railway was the bottleneck west of London Bridge – primarily at Borough Market Junction. Electrification and colour light signalling would do a lot to reduce the problem, but the benefits of this would be limited as long as there was a substantial amount of steam-hauled freight traffic going via London Bridge and Blackfriars via the Metropolitan Curve to the Metropolitan line at Farringdon and beyond that to the north.
Revival – due to freight
So, whilst rapidly electrifying and preparing pioneering four-aspect colour light signalling schemes, Southern Railway also embarked on a scheme to eliminate freight from passing through London Bridge station. By relocating Lewisham Junction signal box, the way was clear to build a viaduct to provide a connecting line from Lewisham Junction to the site of Lewisham Road station and from there they could reinstate the remains of the Greenwich Park branch to Nunhead. From Nunhead the freight trains could then travel along the original route of the Crystal Palace and South London Junction Railway to get to Loughborough Junction. They could then continue to Blackfriars where they would rejoin the established freight route and continue on their journey north.
New route (in red) to replace the old route (in blue) enable freight to avoid London Bridge
Routes overlaid on Carto Metro
The plan wasn’t quite as simple as that, because the freight trains had to be able to get to Lewisham Junction from the main line to Sevenoaks. To solve this lesser problem a short double track spur known as the Courthill Loop was built to the south of Lewisham station from the main line to the Hayes line (or “Mid Kent” as it was then known).
New link and Courthill Loop
What needs to be emphasised at this point is that the Courthill Loop and the new connection between Lewisham and Nunhead were only intended for freight use. They were not electrified when built, despite all the surrounding tracks now sporting electric trains and despite a major electrical feeding station being very conveniently located at Lewisham.
Capturing more traffic
By the late 1920s Southern Railway had a new policy aimed at capturing even more suburban traffic. It has to be said this policy turned out, in the main, not to be a great success. The line from Beckenham Junction to Crystal Palace, mothballed since the middle of World War I was reopened and a new station at Birkbeck added. The line from Wimbledon to Sutton via St Helier was built from scratch. The line from Woodside to Selsdon Road was electrified and reopened, again, in the rather optimistic expectation that an even less financially sound proposal, the Southern Heights Light Railway, got built.
Either Southern Railway was looking very much to the long term and was convinced that traffic would eventually build up on these new services, or the hopeless optimism that originally bedeviled the building of new railways was still alive, well and residing in the Southern Railway boardroom. So it was, then, that in 1935 both the Lewisham – Nunhead freight route and the Courthill freight Loop were electrified and made available for use by electric passenger services. The Courthill Loop enabled additional trains from Hither Green to call at Lewisham rather than run direct to London Bridge. The Lewisham – Nunhead connection meant that for the first time ever an electric passenger service along this relatively short section of line was instigated.
Revived line, no revived stations
It does seem at first glance that some sanity did prevail at Southern Railway, because they did resist the temptation to reopen Brockley Lane and Lewisham Road stations – which were located on the newly electrified route. In the latter case, at least, the station building remained in fairly good condition. Such an outbreak of apparent sanity is tempered when one considers that this route was still primarily a freight route, and a busy one at that. Stopping passenger trains would have been a considerable nuisance. It wasn’t long before Southern Railway was back in form and building a new line down to Chessington South (and beyond). Today the Chessington line is considerably busier than any of the other revitalised lines that are still open, but even it cannot be considered a great success.
The line needs a London terminus
The choice of London terminus for the new electric service via Lewisham and Nunhead was rather strange. Holborn Viaduct was chosen. As we have already seen, this didn’t exactly open new markets and Charing Cross and Cannon Street could be reached much quicker. Why Holborn Viaduct? Perhaps even then people could sometimes be too keen to restore the railway routes of yesterday (the remnants of the Greenwich Park service in this case) rather than provide what is wanted currently.
An alternative explanation for the choice of Holborn Viaduct is that it was likely the easiest London station to terminate at from an operational perspective. The only real alternatives were nearby Blackfriars – which was probably at capacity as far as terminating trains were concerned – and Victoria. Whilst there was likely capacity at Victoria station itself, the congested approaches in the Brixton area would have made it a less favoured option. A consideration would also have been the substantial amount of freight heading towards the West London Line.
Why did they bother?
It is not immediately obvious quite why Southern Railway felt a need to run passenger trains between Dartford and Holborn Viaduct via Lewisham when no previous service existed. It wouldn’t have generated much more traffic, as the West End was already accessible from Charing Cross. The new route may have made some people’s existing journeys easier but the service would be unlikely to stimulate journeys that were not already being made. Either Southern Railway opened the new link simply because they could and it fitted in with their expansionist policy, or, much more likely, they were already running all the trains they could to Charing Cross and Cannon St and the line via Nunhead provided a genuine opportunity to increase capacity into London.
Death of the Holborn Viaduct service
The Holborn Viaduct-Dartford service ran from 1935 to 1990. Not surprisingly, throughout this period it was neither frequent nor especially busy and 8-car trains appear to have sufficed even at the busiest times. It was a service generally forgotten about by those who did not use it. The line was mentioned in the reports of the Lewisham Rail Disaster of 1957. The 17:22 8-coach Holborn Viaduct – Dartford train was the one that stopped just short of the collapsed bridge at St Johns. The accident report describes the Lewisham-Nunhead line as “an important freight exchange route, on which there were also some passenger services between Holborn Viaduct and Dartford”.
The birth of a new service to Victoria
In 1990 Holborn Viaduct station closed as a result of enhancements to the original Thameslink scheme, making it incompatible with the through route to Farringdon. It was clear that the service from Dartford via Nunhead would either have to be abandoned or another London terminus found. With other services being a higher priority for the three terminating platforms at Blackfriars, the only realistic option was Victoria. And so, by accident rather than design, the service from Dartford was rerouted after departing from Peckham Rye to take the tracks that would enable the train to terminate at Victoria.
For the next two decades the service had the feeling of one that was being dutifully run because it was fulfilling some kind of useful purpose for a small portion of the travelling public. However, nothing was done to encourage its use. In its nadir, the service was roughly half-hourly, Mondays-Fridays only, with no service after 19:00. It was not surprising that TfL honed in on it as a line that was not achieving its potential. Of particular note to them was the limited hours of operation and the potential of rebuilding the platforms at Brockley Lane. This would create an interchange station there which would increase journey opportunities for London Overground passengers.
Improvements
A very simple Sunday timetable
Things on the line have gradually improved. The nonsense of 19:00 finishing was eliminated and Saturday services were reintroduced. Sunday services have recently been added by the simple expedient of replacing the Dartford – Cannon Street Sunday service on the Bexleyheath line with a Dartford – Victoria one.
In the proposed timetable for May 2018 there is the rather imaginative proposal to extend off-peak service from Dartford to Gravesend calling only at Greenhithe (for Bluewater). This means that the line can be run both peak and off-peak with five dedicated trains. In the morning peak hour it is currently possible to run a service that is slightly better than half-hourly by utilising the a train returning from London on a different service from Cannon Street to provide an train to fill a slot where a gap would otherwise occur. A similar thing happens in reverse in the evening peak. This is clever and efficient but does reduce resilience as the service now becomes dependent on other services and can be affected by any delays at London Bridge. The proposed timetable with its captive fleet of trains eliminates the need for such dependency.
Issues
Having painted a fairly rosy account, one is led to wonder what issues there are with the service. Although this service is not explicitly stated, the Kent Route Study does mention the idea of reducing the number of London terminals served from individual stations as a means of improving reliability. Some people have interpreted this to mean the Dartford-Victoria service is in the firing line.
Best use of capacity?
What is probably more of a problem is that the Dartford-Victoria service is a bit of an operational nightmare to run. At Dartford terminating platform capacity is limited and this service is probably not the best use of that limited capacity. Capacity at Lewisham station is also limited and it could be argued that Dartford-Victoria trains are not making the best use of this capacity either.
Even in 2024 Network Rail believes that there will be some seats available (yellow) between Lewisham and Nunhead
West of Lewisham station the service crosses the diamond junction so that conflicting movements are maximised. The only saving grace is that down Victoria-Dartford trains can be held at a signal on the approach to Lewisham (in the vicinity of the former Lewisham Road station) without causing conflict. It is inevitable that these trains are timetabled to wait as necessary for a convenient moment to cross Lewisham junction.
To the west of Lewisham Junction the service shares the tracks with trains using the Tanners Hill flydown – now much more heavily used as a result of the Thameslink Programme, eliminating the day-to-day use of crossings to enable trains to switch between the Charing Cross and Cannon Street lines. In the up direction (towards London) this is not an issue, but in the down direction (towards Lewisham) one generally wants to avoid bringing a train to a halt on the rising gradient of the flydown. This is especially true if the train is 12-cars long as it will foul the main line. It is inevitable that these trains generally take precedence over ones from Victoria.
An unnecessary hindrance on the approach to Victoria?
The inconvenience at Dartford and Lewisham is almost insignificant compared to the approach to Victoria from Peckham Rye. On a track diagram it is clear that multiple opportunities exist to reach Victoria. This would appear to be helpful but, in fact, they are all pretty full. Things are not helped by the multiplicity of flat junctions or the relatively recent introduction of 4tph on the London Overground service to Clapham Junction, which eventually replaced the 2tph South London Line service. Each Victoria-Dartford train has to be threaded into the mix by whatever route is available. There is no consistency. It is inevitable that these trains are often timetabled to wait where they can do so in order to get their slot through various congested junctions.
One has to question whether the Victoria-Dartford service makes the best use of these tracks in the Brixton area, as not all the trains are even 8-cars long. Then again, London Overground operates 5-car trains so it could be argued there is even less justification for these. Certainly it seems hard for TfL to fulfil their wish of running 6tph to Clapham Junction on the East London Line by the early 2020s until another service is curtailed or the digital railway comes to the rescue.
Carriages required in the morning peak hour to provide the service (B)
The route study gives a figure of 22 vehicles (carriages) arriving at the London terminus (Victoria) in the morning peak hour. This would strongly suggest three trains with only two of them being 8-car formations.
A 21st century, half-hourly service in urban London
As well as the Victoria-Dartford service not really fitting in well spatially with the aspirations for London suburban services, it does not fit in well temporally in that it is only a half-hourly service. TfL for one would like to see a 15 minute service all day. They would also like to see high level platforms added at Brockley.
What will almost certainly happen in the next few years is that the service will continue as it is because it would be too difficult, politically, to abandon it. One factor favouring its retention is that it would be hard to see how the paths and terminal capacity freed by abandoning it could be put to better use. It is one thing to remove a service because resources could be better utilised elsewhere. It is quite another to remove it because it adds to the complexity of trying to run other services which have co-existed, without too many problems, up to now.
Unfortunately, it seems equally unlikely it will get any better unless it is the incidental beneficiary of some major infrastructure works. Even without TfL taking over Southeastern we are seeing services that run half-hourly becoming more and more of an anachronism in a built up area of London. Perhaps unsurprisingly though, that seems likely to be the fate of the generally unloved Victoria-Dartford service.
Some of the background recounted here can be found in “Holborn Viaduct to Lewisham” by Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith (Middleton Press). Wikipedia has also been surprisingly useful in the preparation of this article.
The line between Lewisham and Nunhead currently serves as a useful diversionary route.
In the event that the Dartford-Victoria service were removed; would that leave any regular, non-diversion, service on this route?
Why Holborn Viaduct? As a journalist I can add some folk memories from the start of my career, back in the 1970s. People who’d worked on Fleet Street (and the wider publishing area) recalled late-night trains, after the newspapers had gone to press, from Holborn Viaduct and Blackfriars to Blackheath, which has always been a favourite among us media folk (I’ve lived there myself for 28 years).
No idea how much business the media trade brought in, from SE London and north Kent into Blackfriars/Holborn Viaduct and back, but it might have been a factor.
I still sometimes commute from Blackheath to Blackfriars, changing at Peckham Rye — that’s reasonable, with a 5-10 minute wait in the morning peak, with no platform change, but the other way in the evening is no longer feasible because of a long wait at Peckham.
The train is absolutely packed between Victoria and Peckham Rye, even with 10 car trains in the week and eight cars at weekends. Overcrowding on the platform at Peckham Rye (out of London in evening) is often so bad that the train is stuck there for two/three minutes as there’s not enough space to get passengers out onto the platform. Pretty easy to get a seat once you get to Nunhead – but what do you do about the Peckham commuters?
Can’t say I’d concur that it has no problem with capacity unless a lot has changed recently. I was a daily user for 9 months in 2011/12 and frequent thereafter until around 2013-14. In the PM peak it was packed from Denmark Hill to Lewisham. In fact I’d say it was worse than the vast majority of Dartford routes from Charing Cross or Cannon Street I also use.
Disabled people from Kings College hospital had little chance of getting on as it was a scrum at times. It was never 8 carriages then – has this changed? 6 carriages was usual but 4 very common.
The morning from Lewisham to Denmark Hill was also quite bad at times but I recall it was 8 carriages.
It’s infrequent (every half hour except three an hour in the high peak) so needed to be 8 carriages. Unfortunately the lack of rolling stock prevented this. 377s really need to move over to free up Networkers to boost services like the PM peaks to entirely 8 carriages.
Bloody hell I put the email as the name. Silly sod. [Fixed. LBM]
Anyway, to touch on the hospitals a bit more, this is a big factor in retaining it. The only link from three Dartford lines to Denmark Hill with two very large hospitals.
Also it’s very handy for all three Dartford lines to reach Victoria for trains, coach station etc with a single change at Lewisham. Often better than the tube – which also costs SE passengers an extra £1.60 as not on the TfL fare scale. If SE joined it and the surcharge dropped then it would be fairer to remove services.
The line does seem quiet after 8pm but it didn’t help that when later services introduced Southeastern’s marketing of the fact was very limited.
To add to Alan Burkitt-Gray’s comment, I also used the Holborn Viaduct – Barnehurst service week-daily in the early 1970s (changing at Lewisham to/from Bingham Road on the Mid Kent). The 8-car trains were well filled to standing from Holborn especially with office staff during the peaks and most were still on the train when I left it at Lewisham, so there was clearly a demand east of Lewisham from Holborn Viaduct/Blackfriars for that traffic.
Apart from the late services that Alan mentioned, I believe there was no off-peak service between Nunhead and Lewisham. The climb from Lewisham to Brockley Lane in the wooded cutting was always a struggle during days of poor adhesion, with the EPBs wheel-slipping their way up.
Following the demise of the all-day South London Line service to Victoria in 2012, with the Victoria-Dartford-direction service running, there was still no direct service between Victoria and Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye (and Nunhead) after the evening peak, which was an extraordinary and inconvenient situation for those affected (the SLL ‘replacement’ Overground service diverts off to Clapham Junction). After pressure was applied to Southeastern, the Victoria-Dartford service was extended to run ’til late close of service and hence at least that western section is justified in its own right.
Fromthemurkydepths at 16:40 “Southeastern’s marketing of the fact was very limited”
And so was that of its predecessors. I remember telling a local, both of us having dropped children off at school — must have been in the late 1990s — that I was catching the Victoria train and he was astonished — had never heard of it. He wasn’t a commuter because he worked in the Catford area, but made regular trips in to the Victoria area and had always got the District line from Embankment.
Even today at Peckham Rye no one bothers to say that you can get the London Overground or trains to Blackfriars, Farringdon or St Pancras: at the right times, it’s a step-free route to Paris or York.
I recall the first experiments in Victoria to Dartford services occurring whilst Holborn Viaduct was still open. I think they started with a train each to the Woolwich, Bexleyheath and Sidcup lines and found Bexleyheath to be the most popular. There was at one time a proposal to reroute the service via Sidcup to ease the working at Lewisham but this seems to have disappeared. The service is now more important than ever since the demise of the SLL as it is the only link between Victoria and both Peckham Rye and (via a same-platform change) the Catford Loop. It also enables journeys to be made without going into Zone 1 from a huge area by changing at Clapham Junction onto LO then onto the Dartford train at Denmark Hill.
Regarding Fromthemurkydepths’s comments concerning the hospitals at Denmark Hill (King’s and South London & Maudsley), just to mention that King’s College Hospital alone supports 13,000 staff (it was 14,000 last year but the figure has unfortunately dropped since then because of you know what). Add to that the in-patients, out-patients and mass of visitors and supporting staff and then think of the area which King’s supports, one will realise how many of those folk use Denmark Hill (Loughborough Junction being another station nearby which has become popular recently).
One goal achieved was to have lifts installed at Denmark Hill, which is a boon to those who require step-free access to the hospitals. All it needed was for the trains to run as discussed above.
(Syntax query – please delete if out of place.)
Shouldn’t reference to the smallest of the 1923-47 Big Four be to “the Southern Railway”, or perhaps “the Southern” or “the SR”? The text omits the definite article; today, “Southern Railway” with no “the” is certainly an operational brand for a segment of Govia Thameslink Railway but it doesn’t seem right in the pre-nationalisation context.
I may of course be talking rubbish; on seeing the film Titanic it struck me as wrong that references to the ship omitted the definite article which I thought should be there” but I was just as unborn in 1912 as I was in 1947!
Graham Feakins 9 August 2017 at 17:20
That wouldn’t be this one, would it?
How hilarious, Swirlythingy! Thanks. That must have been the one up in the morning which I caught at Lewisham for Blackfriars! I have to say that the service was a tad unreliable at times but that was often due to industrial action of one sort or another. On good days, my connections on and off the Mid Kent at Lewisham were around 2 to 3 minutes (the ‘train behind’, as it were).
David Brown’s Southern Electric – a New History says that the Southern’s expansion of suburban services in the late 1920s was to do with the anticipated unification of London transport under one body. Apparently this would “inevitably” lead to pooling of fares by LTPB and the mainline rail companies, and suburban developments would increase the Southern’s share of the pool.
The high peak train path diagram on page 20 of the Kent Route study shows the service on the Sidcup line rather than Bexleyheath. It would save crossing the scissor junction at Lewisham, but would be quite a major change that has not yet entered the public consciousness in the Blackheath area.
Really interesting, the services from Dartford to Holborn Viaduct and Victoria always seemed like curio;, when compared to the jumble of the Southern inner London services, the Dartford lines are relatively self contained.
ROBERT CARROLL, yes I remember this too, the Victoria services initially being an additional service. Wasn’t there also a plan to terminate SE services at City Thameslink, and use the Smithfield sidings to reverse the trains?
Has plugging the South Eastern Dover/Hastings services into Thameslink been looked at as an option, to free up platform space at Charing Cross for more Metro services?
I have used the Victoria to Dartford service perhaps twice in my life, but would use more if the service was just more frequent. A station at Brockley would be very useful, talking from first hand experience, a trip to the West End on the Forest Hill to NXG corridor can take quite some time with a change and Canada Water for the Jubillee-which then parks you at Bond Street, not Oxford Circus.
Looking at the impressive freight route the Southern built with full ownership of track and train, I can’t help wondering if we need some kind of public rail body for the South East (and no, I’m not going to say it), that owns the train and infrastructure and can be closely linked with TFL. I will say full TFL ownership would probably be a bit awkward considering the length from London commuter routes run.
Lastly, in terms of the Holborn Viaduct/Blackfriars services, I believe these stations would or would have been a lot more popular if there was better tube access westward towards the West End. Blackfriars is relatively close to Theatreland, but would require an awkward interchange at Embankment on the tube and by that time a passenger may as well had caught a train from Charing Cross. I can never understand why the Central London Railway didn’t built a station underneath Holborn Viaduct station which it passes by. I was told a problem with building a current Central Line station at City Thameslink is because of the Cold War Deep Level BT tunnels are in the way, but surely they were not a problem in 1900?
Swirlythingy, Graham Feakins,
I think that was the train that entered into folklore in times gone by. In those days there was a shortage of crew. So much so that that travel announcements on the local radio gave a list of cancellations. The last one was always the same train from Barnehurst to Holborn Viaduct.
People started to query why it was always cancelled. The explanation given along the lines of the fact that the shift that took it out was actually the spare turn shift that started much earlier and covered for any non-appearance of staff during the morning peak. Presumably, the idea was that if they were needed then arrangements could be put in place to cover their duty – which was the last one out the depot.
Needless to say, with the staff shortage endemic, they never got to take out their allotted train. The basis of the staff shortage may well have been an industrial dispute – I don’t remember.
NickBXN,
Well spotted! However I have to say that I think it is simply a mistake. As I understand it, that diagram is supposed to show the base case situation and that is what is already agreed, or generally accepted, as what will happen in the near future.
Note that the trains specified from Dartford [2U58 0716 (6), 2U60 0736 (8), 2U62 0756 (8)] already run in the current timetable. Note also the number in brackets which is number of carriages matches exactly the current situation as given by the table near the end of the article which gives the number of carriages in 2014.
With regard to the original choice of Holborn, I am sure I read in G T Moody’s book “Southern Electric” that when the electrification of the Lewisham links was planned it was to alleviate overcrowding on Cannon Street peak hour trains (i.e. to/from the City). Their overcrowdedness was more acute than on Charing Cross trains.
I am pretty sure that for most of its pre-Victoria peak only life trains from both the Bexleyheath and Sidcup lines linked to Holborn.
An interesting and well researched article. I remember using the Sidcup line route to Holborn, which ran in peak hours only. It was a slower and longer route into the City but it was always possible to get a seat. The link now from Lewisham to Victoria has grown in importance as a means of crossing south London without going into London and back out again. Kings College is a regional trauma and neurosurgery centre covering Lewisham and Bexley boroughs. It would be difficult for visitors from south east London to get to Denmark Hill without this link, particularly as the service from London Bridge was withdrawn when the Overground service began. The line also gives links to Southern, Thameslink and Overground services at Peckham Rye. Whenever I travel on it, trains are always reasonably loaded. It is a very useful link that should continue.
I’m curious on the route LCDR took to reach Crystal Palace, which from Loughborough Junction heads east, and then south west. This seems indirect, and there seems to be lines closer to Crystal Palace to branch off from (eg Herne Hill)?
Though of course these lines may not have existed at this time. Why did they choose that long alignment?
Chris Keene,
I think the simple answer is “work backwards and follow the contours”.
Focus on the fact that the objective is to serve the Crystal Palace as quickly as possible. This means you want to minimise tunnel building and certainly avoid long ones. You also want the entrance really close to the exhibition centre and this was achieved by the station being sited where it was and an underground passage under what today is Crystal Palace Parade.
The contours take you north to Nunhead. Once at Nunhead your objective is to take the best course you can find to join the existing LCDR lines.
It;s not just the size of the hospitals close to Denmark Hill – King’s College Hospital (along with Guy’s to a lesser extent) is the major tertiary care centre for the whole of SouthEast London and beyond. (As I found when I needed a stack of neuro tests). I have no idea how someone from the Bexley/Crayford/Dartford area would get there by bus.
And someone got there before me with that song, made famous by Capital Radio. A thread on uk.railway from 1999 suggests it was a shortage of guards, and that service being the only passenger one on a particular turn, that led to its frequent (constant ??) cancellation.
Re Chris Keene,
On the surface all the more strange because their Victoria – Herne Hill – Sydenham Hill – Penge – Beckenham Jn Route opened in 1863 just 2 years before the opening of their Crystal Palace High Level route. (And 9 years years after “LBSCR” from Victoria and 11years after LBSCR from London Bridge both to Crystal Palace Low level).
From 1863 to 1936 when the Palace burnt down, “Sydenham Hill” was officially called “Sydenham Hill (for Crystal Palace)” but there is the long walk up College Road with about 60m increase in height from platform level to the Parade won’t have gone down to well with users.
But the real reason probably has something to do with the big hill involved…(as any local will point out)
Palace High Level (LCDR) station platform level would have been about 52-53m above Sydenham Hill (LCDR) platform level and they are only 800m, apart which equates to 1:15 gradient which isn’t even countenanced today.
There is height difference of about where the 2 LCDR lines crossed with the till active LCDR tunnel 20-25m below High Level Drive / Vigilant Close which were built on the closed high level route.
@
“Fromthemurkydepths at 16:40 “Southeastern’s marketing of the fact was very limited”
@ Alan burkitt-Gray
“And so was that of its predecessors”
So much so that when, in the 1970s, I tried to buy a ticket to Blackheath from Victoria (intending to change to the ex-Blackfriars service at Peckham Rye) the ticket clerk refused to sell me one, saying I had to go to Charing Cross!
The South London Line is significant in the history of this service, which I found surprising. That line, including Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye stations already existed before the Crystal Palace branch was built in 1865
oops “which I found surprising was not mentioned in the article”
ngh,
Indeed. I rather conveniently omitted anything to do with the Low Level station. Partly not to let the facts get in the way of a good story but also because it is not particularly relevant in explaining how we came to get a Victoria-Dartford service.
It is clear from a visit to the low level station (the current Crystal Palace station) that it was built to handle large crowds – as it still does on occasions. The low level station was clearly more convenient for the park and the many activities that went on there (e.g. Saturday firework displays) whereas it would have still been quite a hike to the Crystal Palace itself. As the crow flies, Gipsy Hill station might have even been closer.
It is notable that when a tram extension of Tramlink was being proposed one of the major issues was how to get from the low level station to the bus station – roughly at the height of the high level station. The problem was how to gain the height and there was never any totally satisfactory solution.
timbeau,
Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye stations already existed before the Crystal Palace branch was built in 1865
As diagram in the article made clear, the branch was built and was open in August 1865. According to Wikipedia, Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye stations opened on 1st December 1865. Of course Wikipedia may be wrong but the dates logically fit in.
I was not trying to give a history of the Victoria-Dartford service as such. Where do I stop? I was just trying to explain how it really came about by chance and highlight on the critical link from Lewisham to Nunhead that connect it with other services.
Re timbeau,
Really? – Denmark Hill and the LCDR side of Peckham Rye* opened in 1865 though… (as did Palace High Level which opened a few months before Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye)
*LBSCR side in 1866
Worth a look at this old LR article:
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2012/not-stopping-here-crystal-palace-high-level/
Re PoP,
Low Level platforms to the top of the Hill is about 35m but it was on the right side of the hill to…
Crystal Palace Parade is the mid-point between Palace Low Level and Gipsy Hill stations
timbeau,
On further checking, I am convinced you are 100% wrong about there being any line existing before the CP&SLJR came about. I think you are confused by the fact that some of the line was built by the LBSCR – that portion between Cow Lane Junction, Peckham and Barrington Junction, Brixton. However this line was only built as a result of the CP&SLJR and LBSCR Acts of 1862. The CP&SLJR had rights to this line as a result of giving reciprocal rights to the LBSCR to use LCDR tracks at another location.
See Alan A Jackson, London’s Local Railways page 102.
Mea Culpa – the SLL was authorised in 1862, not opened. Still puzzled about when the link from Loughborough Junction to Victoria was opened though – did it pre-exist the rest of the SLL?
The move of the Palace to Palace was actually a stitch up by several LBSCR directors (hence no surprise LBSCR got the best of it.) who used it and the railway extension initially from Sydenham station to increase the value of their land which they “generously” sold to make everything happen (including the park). LCDR bought the High Level station site from LBSCR’s Solicitor (also a sometime LBSCR director) a Mr Farquhar (after whom the road is named).
I recently had very unusual use of this route, having over-stayed an afternoon in Woolwich. I was resigned to arriving in West London very late, but turned up at the station to find that the semi-fast Gillinghams were diverted to Victoria, and got there in 28 minutes. That would give Crossrail a run for its money, but it was a quiet Sunday afternoon for traversing the terrain.
I have sometimes used another Cinderella service through Denmark Hill, the semi-fast to Gillingham (Calling at Bromley South, St. Mary Cray, then all milk posts).
This sometimes slots in very nicely with the Overground and sometimes goes just ahead of it… What is noticeable is the number of times it stops dead between Nunhead and Bromley South, obviously waiting for other services.
A pity as otherwise I’d use it more often when coming back from Richmond.
Victoria -> Dartford is far from Cinderella. I’ve been catching it from Victoria to Welling every Friday since 2010 and it’s gone from a (rammed) single EMU unit to a (pretty rammed) pair of units.
I think a number of people on that route aren’t aware of Victoria trains as until very recently they only ran in peak commuter hours, so non-commuters would never trip over them.
I wasn’t aware they were the *only* service using the flyover at Brockley and into Lewisham, though I am very aware that they’re always timetabled to sit there and await a gap!
In the late 1970s and early 1980s I used the Sidcup to Holborn Viaduct service and seem to remember it being pretty well used.
As to who it served I suggest (based who I know and what sort of businesses were in the area): those who worked in ‘Fleet Street’; the law (Old Bailey, The various Inns of Court etc); insurance (The Pru’ and Pearl in High Holborn). The area may be between the City and West End but it was (and is) by no means dead – far from it.
PoP I doubt if driver shortages were caused by an industrial dispute; the pay was poor then and BR had a habit of closing depots thus leaving staff with a follow the work or quit problem. So recruitment and retention was pretty dire as better alternatives were out there. This was brought to a head by the government imposing a recruitment freeze in the final days before privatisation.
@NICKBXN 00:09
“… quite a major change that has not yet entered the public consciousness in the Blackheath area.”
Oh, yes it has, Nick. There’s a bloke handing out leaflets most Sundays at the farmers’ market in Blackheath station car park trying to raise interest. “They’re going to take away your trains to Charing Cross and Victoria,” he tells people.
Once London Bridge is fully reopened it will be no problem to change, I say, to no avail.
And the issue was in the election leaflets from major party candidates in June — certainly on my, Greenwich, side of the borough boundary that skirts the station.
Watch out for influential letter-writers to Chris Grayling and others.
A very useful service. As has been noted above, much of its value is in allowing journeys across South London that would otherwise be difficult, rather than being a straight commuter service. That said, trains out of Victoria in the evening peak can get very busy and busier still when they reach Denmark Hill.
The same platform connection to London Overground at Denmark Hill is invaluable, but it’s notable that the National Rail app is loathe to acknowledge it. It much prefers to send you to Victoria and back out again if you want Clapham Junction.
Am I correct in thinking trains ran Victoria to Plumstead at one point? I think it was intended to provide a connection to the Millennium Dome buses from Charlton.
“The Holborn Viaduct-Dartford service ran from 1935 to 1990. Not surprisingly, throughout this period it was neither frequent nor especially busy and 8-car trains appear to have sufficed even at the busiest times. ”
Whether or not eight cars were sufficient, it was all that would fit into Holborn Viaduct. Latterly, most services ran to Blackfriars (the bay platforms then being on the east side of the station) but most other stations on the ex-LCDR lines could only take eight cars too.
@Chris Keene 10 August at 11:32 (& PoP) – “I’m curious on the route LCDR took to reach Crystal Palace, which from Loughborough Junction heads east, and then south west.”
I have a map which shows that an extra route was planned from Greenwich Park/Crystal Palace that would have run down from Nunhead beside the present route but then over Cow Lane Bridge at Peckham Rye and then run straight on, proceeding North-north-west to rejoin the present LCDR route at Walworth, just short of Elephant & Castle, thus avoiding Peckham Rye station as well as Denmark Hill, Loughborough Junction and Camberwell.
If you look at this 1874 map, you will see the formation down from Nunhead was built for (and substantially remains) for quadruple track, with one pair going straight on (but not far) at Cow Lane Bridge and the other branching into Peckham Rye station:
http://tinyurl.com/y8npcnbp
Use mouse wheel to zoom in and out and cursor to shift the map about.
On why the Southern Railway chose Holborn Viaduct as the destination: could it have been that part of the thinking was to serve Elephant and Castle? I get the impression that E&C was a much more important centre in its own right in South London pre-blitz, as well as being a very important tram junction with extremely frequent routes in several directions (and two Tube stations).
And speaking of trams (which would have been the main competition) most took a similar Lewisham-Elephant-Blackfriars route so there was some kind of proven demand in that direction.
@GF
The unbuilt more direct route proposal is interesting. I knew about the wide formation between Peckham Rye and Nunhead, and assumed it must have been passive provision for widening, for goods loops or similar. I’d not examined that particular vintage map showing the extra bridge span over the South London Line though. Assuming a fairly straight projection from there to Walworth, the railway could have had a very convenient station very close to the by then already very well established Peckham High Street, and it would have saved considerable distance and time compared to going via the Loughborough Jn dogleg to Blackfriars. It might even have made an excellent surface alignment for extension of the Bakerloo Line to Lewisham!
@ Graham Feakins @ Mark Townsend
The 1897 map (revised in 1893-4) does not show the bridge. Housing development in Albert Road and Clayton Road would have inhibited any further railway building. It would be interesting to know whether the development came because the railway abandoned their plans or vice versa.
http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=18&lat=51.4711&lon=-0.0645&layers=176&b=1
@Graham Feakins: A very interesting map! I wonder if this is that “High Line” that is sometimes mentioned?
I also noticed that the LB&SCR lines from Queens Road appear to be three tracks and the branch to East Dulwich looks like single track! But this might simply be a cartographical error…
RE SH(LR),
East Dulwich branch looks like double track when I look at it. Towards Queens Road it was 3 track for about 100years, now just the outer tracks remain with the station platforms rebuilt on the centre track bed.
@NED at 20:47
“Am I correct in thinking trains ran Victoria to Plumstead at one point?”
Spot on. The backers of the Millennium dome were so optimistic about the hordes of visitors that South-Eastern (Connex?) ran a frequent service from Victoria via Blackheath and Charlton to Plumstead. I think it was every 20 minutes. The canopies at Charlton station to shelter waiting visitors while they waited for the shuttle buses are still there.
Trouble is, no one came. Pierre-Yves Gerbeau (remember him?), Peter Mandelson (remember him?), Tony Blair (remember him?) and many others were wrong.
My memory is that, after the shuttle service closed, the regular Dartford-Victoria service became a more established part of the timetable. But that might be just me.
@Alan B-G: That would have been Connex… They were “in charge” until November 2003.
I remember the dome well and quite enjoyed it. I guess it being only a couple of stops away on the Jubilee Line made it an easy visit. And I regret they didn’t turn it into a theme park. Even the dangleway might have had some visitors if it had been.
Timbeau 13.50 10 Aug
Joe Brown’s London Railway Atlas suggests the date the link opened to be 1864.
I used to use this service quite often around 1985 when I was living in Mitcham and working in Sidcup. If I remember correctly, the connections only worked coming home in the evening.
There used to be a terminating platform at Blackheath which could have been useful for this service. But I don’t think that there is now the space to reinstate it.
I used to use the Woolwich – Holborn Viaduct service, a very pleasant way to get to my office nearby.
We knew it was a stitch-up when the pre-abolition survey for “did you use this service” was done after it left Woolwich in the morning, and still got much interest, so we didn’t expect a replacement when HV reopened as City Thameslink. Here’s to seeing what happens with future Thameslink services.
@ Graham Feakins 11 August 2017 at 00:49
http://tinyurl.com/y8npcnbp
Graham, thank for a fascinating item of new knowledge!
What I have to add is merely supposition, so may be wrong.
The railways knew well even by then that large-scale housing demolition was difficult and costly, and the LCDR didn’t (never had) lots of spare cash. So when you scroll northwards on your linked map, I do wonder whether the thought was to head (through limited property demolition) towards the Grand Surrey Canal’s Peckham branch, take that over and infill it, making it a railway…? (There are plenty of previous and subsequent examples of that process.)
That would get you to south of the Old Kent Road and with only a few more properties to demolish to get near to the SER Bricklayers Arms goods depot… But I wouldn’t have relied on that route to get much further! So maybe a thought of a goods spur might be more realistic, whether just into Peckham or a bit further, not another main line (surely the LCDR had enough of those either existing or in the making, by then?!).
A link to map north of the one you show is here:
http://maps.nls.uk/view/103313081
Cinderella service. Actually pretty useful. Personally not travelled as far as Dartford on this service. However off peak to Greenhithe is an interesting development. For me High level platforms and interchange at Brockley would be really, really useful. But to make a sensible business case that needs a regular 4tph all day frequency. Lewisham (junction) and off peak freight are hurdles to overcome. Victoria (Kent) side platform use is not exactly rammed. {Whether Eltham really needs a choice of 3 termini is another debate – simplification!} For me more Dartford – Victoria please; better marketed.
The old Sidcup route avoided crossing the flat junctions at Lewisham though it contended with Hither Green. You could in principle rearrange trains through Lewisham as Cannon Street to Woolwich and Bexleyheath and Victoria or Charing Cross to Sidcup, Orpington and Hayes. People who would have to start changing trains might protest though.
I agree Future’s Bright, that’s the way ahead. If only the DfT would grow a pair and not run scared from local MPs bleating at every timetable change as if the service was being withdrawn rather than rationalised.
@ Jonathan Roberts –
Another map
So apparently not a canal conversion – perhaps a symptom of a commercial death wish on the part of the LC&DR?
@JOSEPH PESTELL 15:17 “There used to be a terminating platform at Blackheath”
The remains of it are still there, on the up side. In winter, when the undergrowth has died off, you can still see some of the rails, and you could see some of the sleepers a few years ago on the way to Lewisham. But I doubt if it can be reinstated, especially since the platform has been extended from eight cars to 10 and then 12.
LCD extensions (etc)
You all have to remember that that map linked to by Alan B-G is dated 1864 – at that point the LCD thought it had, if not “plenty” of money, at least enough …
But, everything went smash, financially, 18 months later in the great banking crash of 1866, which hit the LCD particularly hard & lots of plans were abandoned then, never to be revived.
I have some sympathy for what Anonymous just said, but maybe the wording could be better. If one day passengers can travel from X to Y on a through train, and later this journey can only be made by changing trains at Z, then strictly speaking, a service has been withdrawn. The withdrawal may be entirely justified by other benefits, and softened by the change being easy, but withdrawn it still is.
Regarding the former platform at Blackheath…
It is clearly visible where it was on the up side. From passing through a number of times (including today) I am absolutely convinced it could be reinstated. It is quite a way to the next road bridge over the railway which restricts the width. Until then the railway land is nice and wide – if very overgrown.
The more pertinent question: is why would you want to do so? First of all it is to one side of the existing running lines thus anything terminating there would foul the up line as it crosses over it. Secondly, Lewisham a major bottleneck. It makes absolutely no sense to get through Lewisham and then, once having done so, terminate at the very next station.
To make the case for terminating trains there even weaker, if you continue a short distance beyond Blackheath, you come to Blackheath Junction and once beyond that finding slots to run trains is not a great issue – so why terminate at Blackheath having got through the difficult bit?
The Blackheath platform would be perfect for doubling the frequency of the South London Overground out of Clapham Junction (with interchange at Brockley, of course) without having to squeeze it into the ELL… and finally provide a direct link between the strategic Lewisham and Clapham Junction nodes, but I guess it would not find favour with the timetables at the Lewisham crossover.
Thanks Vince for the link to the 1864 crayon map – a great resource, with some bonus gems such as the Hammersmith & City apparently extending through Fulham to what’s now Hurlingham Park
Blackheath station – South is to the top of the linked picture, which is zoomable (etc)
HERE FYI
NickBXN
Yes, and those probably won’t be the only two aborted rail projects on that map – the 1866 bank-crash, again, I’m afraid
@PoP: Which begs the question: Why was it built in the first place?
Yes Malcolm but if you take that to its logical conclusion we’d never change anything!
“The London, Chatham & Dover Railway (LCDR) wasted no time … the first to serve the Crystal Palace by rail.”
Unless a lot of dates in various Wikipedia articles are horribly wrong, that’s stretching it rather much. In 1854 when the Palace was relocated, the LCDR was known as the East Kent Railway, and was still raising funds for its first line, which opened four years later.
Between 1859 and 1863, LCDR trains actually ran through (what later became) Crystal Palace Lower Level, until their own line through the Penge Tunnel was built.
When the CP&SLJR opened in 1865, the Crystal Palace had been there for eleven years.
Vince’s map also shows the original CP&SLJR starting from Brixton rather than Loughborough Junction. This agrees with remarks in several Wikipedia articles, and seems to make more sense of the alignment, but would mean that the diagram labeled “August 1865” in this article is wrong,
There are sources stating that the “Cambria Spur” from Denmark Hill towards Elephant opened only in 1872, probably in connection with the Blackheath Hill branch. So the trains from that branch can indeed have run to St. Pauls from the beginning.
@SH(LR) – 11 August at 09:53 “I wonder if this is that “High Line” that is sometimes mentioned?”
If you scroll along the OS map I provided towards Nunhead, you will see the Crystal Palace line labelled “High Level Line”, clearly referring to the Crystal Palace High Level station. The next map along in that series shows Nunhead with four platforms but the Greenwich Park route under construction.
Should you go one map south from the 1864 map Vince provided, you will see Loughborough Junction but no north to east curve (“Cambria spur” as mentioned by Henning Makholm):
http://london1864.com/stanford66.htm
Thus it appears that the earliest services to the High Level station were from the Victoria direction but remember that the LCDR also had services from SW London via Clapham Junction and Brixton to serve the City and then also Crystal Palace.
Before Cambria spur was built, it was clearly the intention to create that direct route from Walworth to Peckham.
@Graham Feakins: Actually what I was refferring to was this proposal, which I could never quite place from my travels in those parts.
SH(LR)
That’s because there is very little to see.
The “Coal Line” was just a siding or two and a shunting-neck on a slightly wider part of the viaduct that carries the line between Peckham Rye and Queen’s Rd (Peckham).
It’s now overgrown,but still there.
Compared to genuine High Lines elsewhere,this isn’t a strong proposal,being a narrow path alongside a live railway….
And here’s the map showing the coal line: http://tinyurl.com/ybg3d497
Work back from the end of the siding by the laundry on the right beside the three tracks of the South London Line towards Peckham Rye station. As Slugabed suggests, it is the least inspiring high level walk I’ve ever seen!
The coal depot between the two routes was at ground level.
P.S. Without labouring the point as this has got OT but that chap reported in the Evening Standard clearly hasn’t done his homework for his High Line. Starting at Peckham Rye (PR), access would have to be from the Old Waiting Room (Google for details of that) outside onto a new walkway opposite the up platform of the SLL and immediately beside a signal. Moreover, the folk of PR have long been pressing for lifts for normal purposes, so he’d have to wait at least until then!
If you have Google Earth, then zoom in on PR station (Google Maps satellite is a poor second) and work your way eastwards (to the right) along the SLL and see where the coal siding was, then follow the route as proposed towards Queen’s Road, Peckham. Firstly there is no longer any space for the walkway where the line passes under the route from Nunhead (Cow Lane Bridge). Also, no less than at least five underbridges would have to have a walkway constructed beside them alongside the railway, starting at Rye Lane! Finally, you will note that the railway goes onto a very steep, narrow and quite high embankment between PR and Queen’s Road. If you are going to eat into that for a walkway, then that would mean constructing a retaining wall to replace the embankment, at least on that side! Who’s going to agree let alone pay for that lot, just for a walkway?!
Re. that area: Here is the relevant RJD – all the “SE&C” lines in the main diagram/map are ex- LCDR.
As GF says, the proposal seems very much in the “me too!” class, & certainly not properly thought through.
“Ain’t it a shame
There’s never a train
From Barnehurst to……
Blackfriars”
Sorry, the train in the song and LBC cancellations list wasn’t described as terminating at Holborn Viaduct.
The equally frequent announcement re Addiscombe to Elmers End wasn’t immortalised in song.
And thank you for reminding me about that irritating earworm. It will stay in my head for weeks.
@Graham F: No wonder I could never work out where it would go, there really isn’t any space! The four track road bed between the Consort Road and Nunhead, I had seen and the comments above had led me to think that High Line had been misreported, as is so often the case when it comes to transport projects.
A bit like the August works at Waterloo being reported as delivering a 30% increase in capacity. What is being missed is this bit: “only on some routes”…
A more convincing High Line would be (have been?) the viaduct from Bishopsgate Goods towards Bethnal Green…I walked it once years ago,and the views are pretty mahgnificent.
It may no longer be possible though,due to the East London Line Extension,but I’ve heard rumours that the Braithwaite Viaducy is earmarked for such a purpose.
PS: Greg..there’s something unopenable about the link that you provided…
Oops ?
Try the bare link?
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:London_RJD_1914#/media/File:Streatham_%26_Tulse_Hill_Hastings_%26_St_Leonards_RJD_100.jpg
Blackheath station and why it had a terminating platform – from Wiki comes this: “The downside platform has a disused platform face (bay platform) facing towards London, used in earlier days by commuter trains terminating here. Unusually, the track in the bay remains in situ, although it is now heavily overgrown and otherwise obstructed. The area to the north (now a car-park) was formerly an area of railway sidings, where commuter trains were stabled when not in use. The bay platform used to come into its own when a circus was taking place on Blackheath. Many of the animals would arrive in train vans. The circus would then process through Blackheath Village on to the heath.”
This OS map published in 1916 shows that Blackheath station had far more than that bay platform, even by then:
http://tinyurl.com/ycofyo7s
so clearly the surviving bay platform outlived the rest and was probably used for short-turn suburban trains. Somebody must have thought that useful – perhaps because many morning peak trains from the east were already packed full. In the down direction, Blackheath-bound commuters and stations before would be encouraged to catch an emptier, terminating train than one bound to be packed with those for more remote stations. After all, short workings during the peaks on London’s tramways and buses &c. were commonplace, e.g. just between London Bridge-Liverpool Street by bus.
Blackheath
Fascinating article ( by Peter Kay ) in London Railway Record No 90 ( Jan 2017 ) all about Blackheath station. There was also a second south-side siding, behind the bay platform road – long since vanished.
Graham,
I suspect the Circus animals will have been unloaded at the northern bay platform rather than the southern bays as you could walk lions/ elephants out the large side door rather than up the stairs!
The more I look at the car park, the more I see a potential tunnelling portal for CR3. The bay siding would be an excellent place to put the spoil wagons.
CR3: Quite a drop to get under the rivers Ravensbourne & Quaggy which are at about the same depth as the DLR terminal at Lewisham.
@ SHLR – a tunnel portal in Blackheath? Can you imagine the outrage from the locals? It would never, ever happen. The arguments and legal challenges would go on for decades. You build portals in scrap yards or industrial estates or where poor people live who can’t afford recourse to lawyers or are friends with the local MP. Pardon the cynicism but look where the CR2 portals are planned to be and where CR1’s portals actually are.
@WW: 😉 I was well aware of that!
Actually Kidbrooke (Old Post Office Road) and along the A20 Sidcup Road (Between the “Dutch House” pub [now shut?] and the start of the houses further out). would be better places, but then you’d have to do something about the Kid Brook and the river Quaggy and you’d leave Lee station as a bit of an orphan…
Both these options would also require some fairly steep gradients, not impossible probably. e.g. Build a roof over the top of the entrances to reduce traction issues for example.
The big problem is that in that part of the world there really aren’t any scrap yards or industrial estates to grab, unless you want to start tunnelling at Slade Green or Crayford of course. That would be very, very expensive…
For the Mainline from Chislehurst you could start between Hither Green and Grove Park. but that would require the relocation of part of the sidings there, so a much easier option. I believe there is room in Tonbridge West Yard. But even there you need to drop down quite rapidly in order to get under the South Circular.
For the Hayes line, your only option now is the Halfords/Wickes site opposite Catford Bridge station, now that the Catford dog track has been built over. Not an ideal location either, but it’s about all that’s left. Again some fairly hefty gradients would be required.
Anyway, if you wanted to increase the Dartford – Victoria Services, you’d have to do something about Lewisham in order to reduce the pressure on it and CR3 (or whatever number it would end up with) would provide that.
Where CR3 would go I will not go into, as that is not relevant here.
Southern Heights,
Alternatively, if you want to increase Victoria-Dartford services then, amongst other things, you need to decide which existing trains will no longer serve Lewisham.
I suspect the problem with Lewisham is, passenger access issues apart, anything that can be done will be so expensive that money is better spent putting it towards the proposed Bakerloo line extension or Crossrail 3.
Re WW @1357,
A tunnel portal would be more popular with the locals than the St*rbucks that they kept out of the village for years. The up hill gradient from Lewisham to Blackheath is the real killer.
Re SH(LR),
{Crayons on] Agree on Old Post Office Lane Kidbrooke for one portal and some where between Hither Green and Grove Park for a second to add some alternative capacity up the SEML e.g. Sevenoaks stoppers (via both Swanley and Orpington) with Chiselhurst Rebuild may be even Bromley North [Crayons off]
I used this for many years – beyond the huge demand of the hospitals, it is also worth adding in the transformation of Camberwell and Peckham (and the wider areas’ boom/gentrification) – has led to a massive surge in demand. Plus East Dulwich’s service being terrible too (and good buses from ED to DH).
Adding in the East London line, and the additional Kent calls (first peak, now all day) – it’s clear that both Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye are now important interchanges and destinations. This service is integral to that – and forthcoming increases to the Catford Loop will only support this further. Not to mention more ELL services being desired.
I’d say anything further would have to try to slot in via Sidcup, even if 1tph, but 2 would be better. The Brockley interchange (another neighbouring area to have ‘come up’ in popularity) – would be great but I believe there are several reasons why it isn’t so feasible?
In any case, this is certainly not Cinderella any more. In ten years, Denmark Hill went from having 6tph (Dartford, Vic-LB SLL and Catford) pass through to up to 20tph in the peaks. With possibly more to come…impressive. Better to divert more metros away from Lewisham (e.g. the Blackheath/Charlton services) – where at least there are more options.
Brockley lane re-opening is TfL strategy. Although , confusingly for this article, they call it Brockley High Level. So there can’t be obvious expensive difficulties with it ( unlike say at Brixton). As they all ready run the station you would think they would have had every chance to appraise it.
I was surprised actually at how much emphasis they gave this in the plan, it seems to have moved from being just one of many ideas to something they really think they should be doing- assuming they are allowed to actually run a service to it…
Whatever the history of the route- there can be little doubt surely that today a Clapham junction – Lewisham / Blackheath service, with a stop at Brockley would be popular, creating its own demand as well as relieving capacity elsewhere.
C I wouldn’t say East Dulwich’s service is terrible; 4tph is Overground standard. If you’re at the north end you’ve also potentially got Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye to choose from; at the village end it’s the same 4tph and at the park end there’s West Dulwich with 4tph to Vic all day Mon-Sat now.
PoP could we get 4tph Vic-Dartford if everything was separated according to least conflict principle at Lewisham? That is Sidcup line to Vic, Hayes Line to Charing Cross via flyover and fast lines; Blackheath line to Cannon Street via St Johns and so on. Or do the other conflicts on the route present as many obstructions?
ANON @ 0926 – yes and I think they are making moves towards this. For example with Cannon Street.
Hayes I suspect might be a Bakerloo thing (although no-one is talking beyond Lewisham) – but yes, it should all be fast and all to Charing Cross. DLR connection loss would be controversial however and shove more via London Bridge.
One issue I see is removing Blackheath-Victoria service, which I think could be somewhat unpopular, especially if all services via Blackheath ended up being to Cannon Street. Another option from Victoria/Nunhead is via Grove Park of course, but with a conflict on the up at Hither Green.
The tricky thing is that (possibly due to historical spread of termini along Thames) – there are genuinely multiple destinations especially from the south, with less tubes and the growth of the Docklands – as London’s main centres seem wider spread along the south of the centre.
So being super ruthless with one terminus per line would create a lot of trouble. Charing Cross for instance, would only have metro services to Hayes and Orpington/Sevenoaks – and then outer/Kent ones. But maybe those metros could each be 6tph instead of 2tph currently (with opposite 2tph via Cannon St/Lewisham). Lewisham connection removals. unpopular.
Cannon St would only have North Kent metro services (via Greenwich and both Blackheath lines) – but at 6-12tph each dependent, could be a good service. Sidcup only Victoria and maybe fast CX.
C at 13:55
Prepare for a fight on your hands. There’s already a campaign rumbling to preserve trains from everywhere (especially Blackheath) to everywhere.
As a Blackheathite who works midway between Charing Cross and Cannon Street, I’d be very happy if all services were focused on one. When I occasionally need to use the Greenwich line I love the way there seems to be a train every few minutes.
So if the choice is to use Cannon Street, there are connections, and will be even more once they stop at London Bridge again, so what does it matter? What I find irritating is having to dither around when I’m wanting to go home about which terminus to make for.
But if the Department for Transport, or the winner of the SE franchise, or — wonderful thought — TfL ever do want to implement the scheme, they’d better manage its introduction very carefully. Councils and MPs will get in the way, I warn you.
@A B-G, C: Oh for a timetable changeover in September!
If you could manage to keep it under wraps until after parliament breaks up and then introduce it about the same time they get back, you’d have a clear month before they’d get around to moaning about it.
😉
@C: Outer Kent is already 6tph for most of the day: 2tph Ashford & beyond, 2tph Hastings, 2tph Tunbridge Wells….
SHLR
But not the ex-LCDR lines in “outer Kent” – 3 tph from Victoria at average sppeds of approx 39 mph – plus the 2 tph from the “High Speed” lines, which then slow to the same crawl, once they are past Ebbsfleet.
[ Even the slowed-down ex-SER lines do better than that by bettering 42 mph (!) ]
Re Alan B-G,
I suspect too many SE users (including those from Blackheath) have a long memory for the old P6 at London Bridge (and the former up Loop) that made changing at LBG unenticing so it will take a while after things have settled down in 2018 for the concept of changing at LBG to become more accepted (e.g. 28tph post works vs 18tph pre works in the am peak to Charing Cross from LBG and longer dwell times so you can actually board too).
Seeing is believing and they haven’t seen it yet…
ABG, you have it in a nutshell there – the idea of jumping on the nearest SE train to an interchange, knowing I’ve never got more than 15m to wait for the one that takes me home, is as good as we will ever get it. Unless a major rebuild of the network or several new lines are forthcoming – which they aren’t. Without devolution to TFL there’s no hope because all the time the DFT listens to half a dozen boroughs and tries to accommodate them all we get nowhere. People on the tube change, so can we.
To what extent could a simplified route network be introduced, requiring more interchange by passengers, without significant station upgrades? Remember that the Northern line has not been split because Camden Town station could not accommodate everyone changing lines. I suspect the same problem would arise at Lewisham in particular, where crowding on platforms and in the subway could be an issue. Passengers accept, or tolerate, quite long walks within tube stations, involving use of stairs, because it has always been like that. If greater interchange is imposed at Southeastern stations, I suspect that step-free access between platforms would be expected. Also bear in mind that very many tube interchanges are underground. The need to interchange in the open air suggests that much more weather protection would be needed.
LiS
Tulse Hill? As you say, Lewisham is crowded already.
The new platforms at LBG are much better, but the oft-mentioned long trog down-to-the-basement-&-up-again is going to be a minus, compared to the old footbridge, even if the platforms themseleves are a great improvement.
Peckham Rye & Denmark Hill?
Unfortunately, the opportunity for a complete, total rebuild of Lewisham in the early 2000’s ship has long since sailed, & although do-able, the cost would be seriously frightening.
@LiS – this approach does get aired from time to time,and we did look at it, for example, in NSE days when the project would have required a new interchange at “Leaham”. From an operational point of view, the elimination of some conflicting movements was a big prize and, as you say, the punters get a much more frequent service,but at the price of interchange. However, managers were afraid of the public outcry that such a radical approach would cause – even minor changes provoke, as we see, bellows of outrage and bitter campaigns to restore the status quo.
On the specific point of interchange, there seems to be a perception problem here: research behind the PDFH shows a greater value of time cost for rail/rail (20 minutes) compared with tube/tube (5 minutes). I suspect that this partly because many tube/tube interchanges are genuinely easy but also because the tube is perceived as a system, with high frequencies, the railways are perceived as neither. Franchising hasn’t helped at all because of the way in which operator A refuses to acknowledge the existence of operators B to Z, let alone any services they might run.
Re Greg and LiS,
Both Lewisham and Tulse Hill are acknowledged by NR as needing major work to improve passenger interchange. (Tulse Hill cost was in the high 8digits if memory serves)
Anonymous 15th August,
I don’t know if reorganising routes at Lewisham would be enough to get an extra 2tph Victoria-Dartford via Bexleyheath. And the impression got from other comments is that it is the Bexleyheath line where the demand is for this service so it would appear hard to eliminate the conflicting movement for this service. I suspect re-organising routes would not be enough to provide the extra 2tph if the current route remains via Bexleyheath but I am guessing.
Also, I think Network Rail’s and the current Southeastern TOC’s general attitude is that as long as the ultimate restriction of capacity is terminal capacity at the London end they will put up with conflicts at suburban junctions as these are not critical and resolving them would be unpopular. I suspect if the only gain were an extra 2tph Victoria-Dartford and this could be achieved by other means (i.e. having a couple of other services nor routed via Lewisham) then they would go for the other means.
Regarding tunnel portals,
Interesting to see that you are almost in a position where you have to chose your tunnel portal first and then fit in routes and stations around that. In the case of Crossrail 1 at least, I don’t buy the argument that they go where the poor people reside. For Crossrail 1 they are located where no-one resides. In any case, tunnel portal location is partly a consequence of land cost: is it cheaper and easier to build on the surface or tunnel underneath it?
Grey Tingey,
A total rebuild of Lewisham may be out of the question but there are things that can still be done hence Lewisham still being very high on Network Rail’s list for station enhancement. In any case you always were constrained by the track layout.
ngh,
Yes and it is amazing how many of these stations in the top ten, or top eleven, are in south east London. Even more amazing that four of the them are either on a major rebuilding list or on the list for major internal work to improve passenger flows (and highlighted in Gibb report for that) and are also served by the Victoria-Dartford route.
Londoner In Scotland,
Actually, one could argue that the Northern line hasn’t been split because there is little point in doing so until one can actually run more trains as a result of doing it. Not only will splitting upset people, splitting without providing any gain will upset people further.
It is a good a analogy though. It is the same on Southeastern. You can split the lines and improve reliability but this is not enough to satisfy widespread public misgivings about getting a perceived less-good service.
@Graham H:
Franchising hasn’t helped at all because of the way in which operator A refuses to acknowledge the existence of operators B to Z, let alone any services they might run.
You could put that down to sloppy contracts. It is not outside of the bounds of reality to have designated interchanges and stipulate connections and the extent to which a connection must be held….
RE SH(LR),
“It is not outside of the bounds of reality to have designated interchanges and stipulate connections and the extent to which a connection must be held….”
So how much more subsidy would Northern require from DfT to compensate Virgin East Coast users for the delay every time the Knaresbrough – York service is late to maintain the connection at York, holding the connection at York will also screw up GN GC, Hull Trains and in the future Thameslink services so add even more compensation a complete non starter.
The network is also now too busy in most places to be able to hold trains and turnaround times at termini have often reduced since the BR days increasing the probability of delaying the next service.
@PoP
“And the impression got from other comments is that it is the Bexleyheath line where the demand is for this service…”
Now I may be completely out of step with the needs of Southeastern commuters here (and am open to correction by someone who knows more about this than me) but to me, this has the air of a self-fulfilling prophecy about it. The reason for the demand for the Victoria service being on the Bexleyheath line could simply be that that is the line the service generally uses (at least in recent years). Passengers on the other lines through Lewisham who might want to go to Victoria may be turned off from using the service because they don’t consider rail/rail interchange as a viable option (as suggested by Graham H earlier).
@NGH:
Note the get out clause:
and the extent to which a connection must be held…
I’m fully aware that it might not always be possible to hold a connection for more than a certain amount of time or even at all. Also in certain locations this may require some investment to put in some infra-structure to enable it. In that case so be it….
@SHLR – yes, you say that, but since DfT will do *anything* to avoid admitting that the railways are a system, they certainly won’t be writing connexions into a contract. In fact, if you adopt a strategy of high frequency/multiple interchanges, specific connexions cease to matter – as on LU. (last trains apart, to meet the inevitable pedantry…)
Graham H
Leigham?
Re Graham H,
Exactly and I would add what is the relative delay time cost (given real passenger volumes in most cases) to holding vs not holding, it will often be cheaper to not hold even intra TOC.
Re SHLR,
So what would happen if some passengers miss a “non-held” connection because the train has been held earlier held for a “held” connection??? My understanding is that most TOC modelling suggests that holding is usually a bad idea (the exceptions usually being rural branches with low frequency on the branch side in some limited cases) on an intra TOC basis even before considering holding for other TOC’s services.
Re PoP @1120,
Not surprising given the Gibb report pointing out it is very unloved for that kind of infrastructure work compared other regions given the passenger volumes.
One thing I’ve always thought odd about this area of railway – the lines around Brixton – is the sheer number of almost-but-not-quite connections there are.
Loughborough Junction is served by WImbledon loop services, but passed on disused platforms by the Catford Loop, and over the end of its platforms by the South London Line and Victoria – Dartford service.
Brixton is passed on disused platforms by Dartford trains, and the Overground runs over the top.
Clapham High St and Wandsworth Road are passed (either through or alongside) by the Dartford and Orpington services, while no longer having a service to Victoria of their own.
Finally the two Southeastern services pass Battersea Park in close proximity.
I know there are logisitical reasons why some of these connections can’t be built – particularly over the top of Brixton station – but surely a lot of these services – Victoria to Dartford in particular – would be better served by more connections? Its last stop is Denmark Hill, after which it travels some way west through sizeable areas. It’s particularly odd that the two Southeastern suburban services from Victoria travel alongside eachother for several miles, but to change between them, you need to travel all the way to the terminus (or do so at street level).
@slugabed – yes, my bad.
@ngh – what does need attention by timetablers are connexions “planned to miss”, in cases a tweak has no obvious consequences. One example to illustrate is the departure of the Aldershots at Guildford which are timetabled to take place at the same time as the Portsmouth slows arrive at the other platform face. Given the selfcontained nature of the Aldershots and the long layover at Guildford, a 2 minute shift would provide a welcome connexion between two hourly o’p services. In the same vein, connexions out of the via Staines services at Weybridge to SWML services are usually awful – given that Weybridge is hardly a major destination compared with, say, Woking (or Wimbledon or Clapham), this is an unintentional but planned miss. No doubt, we all have our favourites…
@NGH: I was specifically thinking of those rural branches where the services are few and far between.
As you and Graham quite rightly point out that when the services are truly high frequency, this becomes less important to irrelevant.
@Graham H: Since when did “connections” become “connexions”?
Anon E Mouse,
The suggestion, by others, is when the route was diverted to Victoria that the route settled on the Bexleyheath route because all were tried and the Bexleyheath route produced the largest passenger numbers. So there might be an element of a self-fulfilling prophecy about it but the hypothesis has been tested as rigorously as is practical in the real world.
Even if ultimately self-fulfilling, you could say that of any line. People on that line tend to want to travel to the destination available because, to some extent, they have planned their life around this.
ngh,
I feel I have been over-obtuse and ambiguous.
Gibb pointed out the need to get on with work at Victoria to deal with passenger flows within the station. This would be necessary whether or not there was a Victoria-Dartford service.
Nunhead and Peckham Rye are apparently on the top ten of Network Rail stations needing an major upgrade and Lewisham is number 11. At each station the upgrade is almost certainly necessary regardless or not as to whether the Victoria -Dartford service runs. That service is not the main cause of the station overcrowding. It is not worth doing it specifically for this benefits to this route. However, if the work were to be done anyway, at all three stations, it would help make the Victoria-Dartford service more attractive and possibly help justify running 4tph.
Re PoP,
My point was more along the lines that stations with the passenger/interchange volumes of Tulse Hill, Lewisham, Peckham Rye, Nunhead etc. were outside London (especially outside the NR SE route) then they probably would have been upgraded long ago.
e.g. Lewisham with double both the interchange and Entry/Exit passengers volumes of Slough but the later has had far more money spent upgrading pedestrian flow aspects of the station. (Plenty of other similar comparisons available nationwide)
@SHLR – wrong question – since when did connexions become connections…?
ngh,
Slough is possibly a very bad example. It is a Crossrail station and also the much of the work (e.g. the new footbridge) was done in advance due to the Olympics (rowing at Dorney Lake). Nevertheless I take your point.
Also, to be fair, Lewisham station has had a lot of money spent on it in previous years. The most recent, to make better use of the interior of the building between platforms 2 and 3 has been done in the last two or three years. The problem is that it is just getting busier and busier – the Stratford of the south.
I suspect apparent preference for out-of-London stations is partially down to a captive clientele in London which, amongst other things, means that the work won’t be reflected in a notable boost in passenger numbers. Also the fact that the individual journey does not raise much revenue in London so where is the payback?
However, there is also the issue of Access for All. I have no evidence of this but suspect that if there is a station nearby that is fully accessible then it is harder to make a case for a second station in the area. Obviously, this works against London stations but then again it does mean that very large London interchange stations such as Clapham Junction do benefit from an enormous slice of the pie.
The two spellings of “conne*ions” are equally acceptable on this site, and discussions of by whom and when exactly one or other has been used are discouraged, in the hope and belief that there are many better things within our scope to discuss. The same goes for “tickets must be sh*wn”.
I have slightly revised the article in the light of various comments and further research.
I have clarified the position of the first station to serve the Crystal Palace with the following additional paragraph:
I have also amended two of the diagrams to emphasise that running rights were used between Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye. This more sensibly explains the route chosen though the details about how these running rights (exclusive use of northernmost pair of tracks) came about are long and complex so I haven’t gone into detail.
@Macolm: I cannot recall of ever having seen the ‘x’ spelling anywhere other than on the sides of buses in The Netherlands in which case it is with two x’s (presumably so it can be trademarked). I was surprised to see Graham H use something that I would consider to be “avant-garde” and some might consider gauche and/or American! 😉
BTW: Where is this list of stations? Anybody got a link they’d care to post?
@ PoP – in terms of “pay back” it does, of course, depend on which business case methodology you use. At least TfL take a more rounded approach and can take other modal impacts and externalities into account. The far narrower “money in the bank” approach that appears predominant in DfT / TOC thinking is utterly unhelpful when we consider the needs of inner London locations like Lewisham and elsewhere. If Lewisham had been under TfL control for, say, 10 years we wouldn’t be having this debate. The work would have been done long ago. No wonder people want TfL in control of their local rail services.
Since I have been addressed directly, I hope I will be permitted one short – and last – comment on spelling. As the OED remarks, in England, we prefer the etymologically correct “x”., not the American “ct” Same goes for reflection.
[Of course this is permitted, I did say “discouraged” rather than “banned”. Malcolm]
@ Simon 17 August at 15:50 – History bit: as well as the disused platforms you mention at Loughborough Junction and Brixton, the original station at the former comprised platforms on the north to west spur, and there were also platforms on the LCDR/SER side at Clapham (High Street) and Wandsworth Road.
For SH(LR) this may be of interest (The Railway Magazine, 1953, courtesy Southern Email Group):
http://www.semgonline.com/RlyMag/SouthLondonLineAndItsTraffic.pdf
from which you can read that “the South London Line trains wait for up to two minutes at Denmark Hill to make connection with the Holborn Viaduct-Sevenoaks trains and sometimes also for the Blackfriars-Crystal Palace (High Level) trains”.
Adding to the point about TOCs keeping themselves to themselves, using North Dulwich as an example, in Southern Region days, the prominent route maps on the platforms showed that one could change at London Bridge for Waterloo, Charing Cross and Cannon Street, as well as for connections outwards on other routes. These days, the route appears on the replacement map to terminate at London Bridge with no railway connection elsewhere. Having said that, I have heard at North Dulwich platform auto-announcements advice for those awaiting the incoming train to change at Peckham Rye for the Dartford line! It’s all a bit hit or miss.
As has been alluded to in various mentions of perusals of old maps, the story for the earliest years of the CP & SLJR is slightly different to that given by PoP in the article. Joe Brown’s excellent atlas confirms the date of the Cambria curve (N to E at Loughborough Junction) as 01.07.1862. That backs up the suggestion that the 1865 diagram is wrong. That diagram also omits the SLR line which completes the triangle at Loughborough Junction and of which the northern two tracks were opened on 01.08.1865. Given that the LCDR were keen to tap into the Crystal Palace excursion traffic, it is surprising that it took another seven years after the opening of the high-level branch for the Cambria curve to be in place to link it to St Pauls (Blackfriars) and Farringdon. Before that, where were the LCDR services to Crystal Palace terminating in London. Was it Victoria?
I fear that Joe Brown has suffered a misprint. In his supplement to R.H. Clark’s Southern Region Chronology and Record (Oakwood Press, 1975) H.V. Borley quotes 1 July 1872 for opening Loughborough Junction to Cambria Junction
Re last two posts. Joe Brown is correct.
The current 4th Edition of Joe Brown`s Atlas correctly shows that the Cambria Spur opened 01.07.1872 (Page 39- also Index entry)- which is the correct date for the opening of the spur. I have not done original research on this but am quoting Borley and Quick.
From memory, Crystal Palace (LCDR) was initially served from Victoria.
@POP
The 1865 and 1871 Map shown is incorrect as on the 01.08.1865 the Crystal Palace line opened, from Barrington Junction, just east of Brixton throughout to Crystal Palace. The Crystal Palace &South London Junction Railway Act of 1862 authorised that company to construct the Peckham Rye -Crystal Palace section and to also construct the Barrington Road -Peckham Rye section if the LB&SCR failed to complete it with four tracks, as authorised by the LB & SCR (New Lines) Act 1862 (The four tracks were completed in time!). This Act also granted the LC&DR running powers over the South London Line , in order that the LC&DR could work the proposed Crystal Palace & South London Railway from Victoria.
Trust this clarifies.
I have done some original research at the National Archives on this, but see London Railway Record July 2013 (Peter Kay article)
@POP
Quote
As things turned out, the LCD&R were beaten in the quest for having a station at Crystal Palace by the West End of London and Crystal Palace Railway – a subsidiary of the LB&SCR. However the rival station, located less conveniently on Anerley Hill, did not provide a direct route from the West End until 1856.
Unquote
I am perhaps being pedantic here – but the `1856` date should read 1860, as the westward extension from the original terminus at CP opened in 1856 only to a temporary station at Wandsworth Common, then in 1858 to Pimlico, on the south side of the Thames, before opening finally to Victoria in 1860.
Steven Taylor,
I don’t doubt you are correct in your dates to the West End and have modified the text accordingly. Thank you for pointing it out.
I will look at sources regarding the other issue if I have time. Oh the dangers of a knocking up a simplistic diagram intending to make a specific point. This was made worse by me not initially appreciating the complexity of the arrangements as to who built the tracks in the Peckham Rye area which meant the diagram really needed to be modified to accommodate that.
@Pop
Thanks for response. Doing `history` can take an inordinate amount of time! And, from personal experience writing for London Railway Record, always `getting it 100% correct is often an aspiration, and you can be sure that mistakes are found, even by the author, post publication!
Here is a good link http://maps.nls.uk/view/103313111. The OS map dates from 1871. You will note that the eastern spur at Loughborough Junction is not shown as it was constructed later.
Also it is interesting to note that the site of the current station was just a continuation of the four tracking to Herne Hill.
I had better stop here, as LR is not primarily historic site.
Seeing a train on the destination boards at Victoria advertised as going to Dartford seems out of place at a terminus originally built for the London, Chatham and Dover railway and generally serving routes via Bromley South.
Brings back memories of the 1970s, when the 3.00am (4ish on Sunday mornings) newspaper train from Victoria (Platform 8) to Ramsgate was a most useful service for those in the know to return to Chatham (and beyond) after a night out in London.
My memory is now somewhat hazy, and I can no longer be sure whether it wandered across (rather than going via Herne Hill and Sole Street) to reach Chatham via Sidcup, Dartford, Gravesend, Strood and Rochester every night or just on Sunday mornings.
It could certainly be affected by diversions, presumably for engineering works.
I cannot find a timetable from the 70s, but by 1982 it was not shown as calling at Dartford etc. Mon-Sat.mornings (first stop Rochester) , but the 4.25am on Sundays did. call at Dartford etc.
The service presumably replaced that which in 1947 had started from Holborn Viaduct at 3.00am (Mon-Sat) and from London Bridge at 4.35am (Sun), both services first stop Dartford after London Bridge, then .Gravesend, Strood and Rochester .
Steven Taylor (you may know this already,but…)
The London and Brighton had a head-start on getting a railway to Crystal Palace as a certain Mr Schuster was:
A director of that railway
A member,with Paxton,of the consortium which successfully bid to move the Palace from Hyde Park at the end of the Great Exhibition and
The owner of Penge Place on whose well-placed site the Palace was to be reconstructed…
@Slugabed
Thanks for your post. This does `ring a bell`. I will have to revisit my copies of the minutes. With regard to the WEL&CPR, there is almost too much information! i.e. Monthly reports of the completed length of the Crystal Palace Tunnel etc. (The original hand written plus printed minutes all survive). This `history` thing can get really addictive.