The Anonymous Widower

Improvements To Clapham High Street And Wandsworth Road Stations

In the June 2016 Edition of Modern Railways, there was an article entitled Turning South London Orange.

The report suggests putting platforms at Clapham High Street and Wandsworth Road stations on the Southeastern tracks to enable a direct service to Victoria to be reinstated.

This map from carto.metro.free.fr shows the lines through the two stations.

Lines Through Wandsworth Road And Clapham High Street Stations

If the proposed Brixton Tunnel were to be built, that would mean that only local stopping services and the London Overground trains would call at these two stations.

So would only two platforms be needed to handle all the trains? The frequency would probably be something in the region of twelve trains per hour, with possibly six on the Overground and six going to and from Victoria.

I know of many places in London and the rest of the UK, where a train every five minutes would be considered easy to handle. Crossrail and Thameslink will be handling a train at twice this frequency.

The great advantage of all trains in one direction being handled on a single platform face, is that if say you wanted to go from Dalston Junction to Victoria, you could get off one train at either of these stations and then get the next to your appropriate destination.

You could even use a wide island platform, which would allow changes where direction is reversed without leaving the platform. It would also only require one lift, so could the money be used for an escalator?

Because of the problems of providing platforms and a step-free connection at Brixton, undoubtedly, the platforms there would be built on the Northern pair of tracks. So I suspect that they would on these two stations.

This would have various knock-on effects.

• Freight, empty stock movements and other non-stopping services would use the Southern pair of tracks.
• There would probably need to be some reorganising of the junctions to the West of Wandsworth Road station, as part of the tunnel works.
• There would need to be some sorting out of the junctions East of Brixton to make sure all of the trains got to and from the correct places.
• Clapham High Street station could be properly integrated into Clapham North station with an escalator connection.

In some ways, it all shows how a tunnel under Brixton could be a masterstroke.

May 27, 2016 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Centre for London June 2016 Proposals, South London Line, Stations