Before Overground – Stamford Hill
Add Imagination Here And You Might Get A Station! – Rating 2/10
Stamford Hill station has potential, as estate agents love to say.
Although not as bad as Bethnal Green, that misery station gets twice as many as this one.
The shelter on the Up platform needs reopening, perhaps new window frames could replace the bricks, but the biggest short-term improvement could be made by doing a bit of gardening.
And also, as with many of the stations being taken over by the Overground, the step-free access is the major problem.
It will be interesting to see this particular station two or three years from now! I suspect because of its low number of passengers, not much will have been done except deep cleaning and application of some orange paint and logos.
Before Overground – The Step-Free Access Problem
If you look at stations on the London Overground, where a million or so has been spent on installing lifts or ramps to give step-free access, it would seem that the station needs over a million passengers a year before it is updated.
Some of the stations without step-free access on the Lea Valley Lines, like Bethnal Green, Cambridge Heath and Southbury, have nowhere near a million passengers a year.
But then we don’t have before and after usage figures for stations like Camden Road and Hampstead Heath, where lifts have recently been installed. If say lifts and new and longer trains, do raise traffic substantially, it might make the installation of lifts more likely.
One of the problems with these lines is that in many stations the train lines are way above the street, so some of the simple ramps used at stations like Hackney Wick are not possible.
In some places, London Overground might not make the station step-free. Edmonton Green station will soon be step-free and as White Hart Lane is going to be rebuilt in all of the work to create a new ground for Tottenham Hotspur, would it be possible to improve the buses, which are already step-free to serve Silver Street and the North Middlesex Hospital.
It certainly is a complicated problem, with many people not wanting to be down the queue.
Before Overground – Bethnal Green
London Overground Have A Difficult Problem Here! – Rating 1/10
Bethnal Green station is probably why a doctor I know, left the area.
It was reasonably clean, but some of the things that passengers would like weren’t even there. In common with a lot of stations, there was no step-free access, but on the up platform, there wasn’t even any seats or a shelter.
Do London Overground really want to take control of this ruin?
Probably not, but on the other hand it does get a surprising number of over 700,000 passengers a year. And if the ones I saw today, struggling with kids and buggies on the stairs are typical, the station is a total disgrace!
To make matters worse, unlike Cambridge Heath, useful bus stops are not near the station.
Before Overground – Cambridge Heath
A Pretty Run-Down Station! – Rating 2/10
Cambridge Heath station has little going for it. The only positive thing that can be said about it, is that is not as much of a dump as Bethnal Green station.
It was reasonably clean and unlike one platform at Bethnal Green, the station did have seats and shelters. But the stairs were even worse!
One point about this station is that it is served by a reasonable number of buses, as this map shows. So if you have difficulty walking, have a baby in a buggy or are carrying something heavy, it may be easier to take a bus to a station with better access.
As it is not the busiest of stations with only 300,000 passengers a year, will London Overground bother to improve the access?
Before Overground – Southbury
A Surprisingly Busy Station With Work Needed – Rating 3/10
I must have been past Southbury station hundreds of times, but I’d never used it until today.
The station is unusual in that, all pedestrian approaches are up-hill.
The station also suffers from being on a busy main road, with badly-placed bus stops and no easy way to cross the road.
These factors and the non-existent step-free access probably accounts for the facts that Enfield Town station, a couple of miles up the road, gets four times the passengers and the next station towards London; Edmonton Green gets nearly six times. Although saying that, it was quite busy, when I passed through!
I wouldn’t be surprised if London Overground put this station at the back of the queue for improvements.
Before Overground – Enfield Town
A Classic 1950s-built Concrete Station – Rating 6/10
I have a long history of travelling through Enfield Town station.
It was built in 1957 and that was probably about the time, I used it for the first time, as it was just a 107 bus ride away from where I lived in Cockfosters.
Coming back from White Hart Lane in the 1960s after seeing Spurs play, you folded the doors back, as you entered the station and when the train had slowed to a flat out run, you jumped. That way, you tended to beat all the other hundreds of people wanting to get a 107 bus home.
London Overground could probably make this station into one of their best, as there are no step-free problems, except a high step into the Class 315 trains. But hopefully, the step up from the platforms to the new trains will be minimised.
Before Overground – Seven Sisters
Rabbits Would Be At Home Here – Rating 4/10
Seven Sisters station is a bad station, that was made a lot worse by tacking a Victoria Line station on with all the subtlety of the worst of 1060s-architecture and design.
I approached the station on a 76 bus from near where I live.
The first time, I did this, I entered the station from the Tottenham High Road end and went down and up escalators and steep staircases to get to the platform for Enfield Town and Cheshunt.
This time, I stayed on the surface and walked up Seven Sisters Road to the southern entrance of the station.It is a route that is almost as tortuous.
The station itself has some problems that are easily fixed and others like the narrow down platform that aren’t!
I should say that Seven Sisters is a station I avoid, as for me Hackney Downs is an alternative, that although it has long staircases, it wasn’t built for rabbits.
London Overground will have fun, making a customer-friendly station out of this one.
Before Overground – Class 317 Trains
The Class 317 trains are the workhorse of the suburban services out of Liverpool Street. Wikipedia says this about them.
The British Rail Class 317 electric multiple units (EMUs) were built by BREL York in two batches, from 1981–82 and 1985-87. They were the first of several classes of British Rail EMU to be based on the all-steel Mark 3 body-shell.
So they’re no spring chickens, but like actresses of a certain age, they scrub up well, as this picture of the interior shows.
Class 317 Interior
Being based on Mark 3 coaches, they also have a good body underneath, that rides better than many of the much more modern trains.
Plans are possibly afoot to refurbish and fit new traction equipment to some of these trains, but London Overground have said they will be replacing them in 2017.
But whatever happens on the Overground, these Class 317 trains may well be refurbished and find gainful employment somewhere else.
Having seen the superb way that South West Trains’ sister fleet of Class 455 trains have scrubbed up, I would be happy, if the Overground got a refurbished fleet of 317 trains. One of the Class 455 was involved in this incident at Oxshott. I wonder how some of the modern aluminium trains would survive the dropping of a 24 tonne cement truck on top from a height of several metres.
Before Overground – St. James Street
A Station With Potential – Rating 5/10
St. James Street station, is one of those that with a deep clean and a good paint job could become an acceptable station.
But of course, in the long term, it would need lifts to make the access step-free.
I know the station has a florist, but someone is maintaining a good floral display at the entrance to the station.
Before Overground – Highams Park
A Station With A Garden – Rating 7/10
Highams Park station, is one of those that doesn’t need a great deal of work to make it one of the best stations on the Overground.
It is one of the few stations, where because there are three ways to cross the tracks, step free access isn’t the greatest of problems. Although, when the new trains come, it might not be a bad idea to make sure that the platform edge is matched to the train.
The Anonymous Widower 