The Anonymous Widower

Up And Down On The East London Line

My memories if the East London Line don’t go back very far, as I probably only ever used the line once before I moved to Dalston in 2010. I think it must have been around 2000, when I was travelling from Brighton to my youngest son’s house in Bow. I changed trains at New Cross Gate to get to Whitechapel, from where I must have used the Metropolitan Line to Mile End, near to where he lived.

Comfortable and clean it wasn’t! The trains weren’t as bad as the travelling urinals of the North London Line, but the A Stock were forty years old and very tired.

I posted here about the step-free access improvements on the London Overground, so I thought I’d check them out.

The pictures show my route from Dalston Junction to New Cross, from where I walked to New Cross Gate for a train to Crystal Palace. After a refreshment stop at the excellent Brown and Green cafe at the flagship southern terminus of the East London Line, I retraced my steps stopping to look at the improvements at Honor Oak Park and Brockley.

Of the stations south of Surrey Quays on the New Cross and Crystal Palace branches only Sydenham will not be substantially step-free by early next year. At Sydenham though it is effectively two stations, one for each direction, which means with planning, difficult stairs can be avoided.

Several excellent new cafes and coffee stalls, seem to be setting up in the stations.

The future is definitely looking up on the East London Line.

A good start has definitely been made on bringing some of the stations in South London into the twenty-first century.

September 15, 2014 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | East London Line, London Overground, Step-Free, Surray Quays Station