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.
Crossrail, HS2 And The Overground Seem To Be Coming Together At Old Oak Common
There has been a report in the Standard, which talks about how Crossrail, HS2 and the Overground could come together at Old Oak Common, which is an area of London ripe for redevelopment.
The report shows this map.
Rail Lines At Old Oak Common
The map is informative and it shows how the West London Line might split from the North London Line at the new Old Oak Common station, rather than at Willesden Junction.
The map though doesn’t show the Dudding Hill Line which joins the North London Line in this area, possibly just south of the new station.
To show the space available in the are, look at this Google Map shoeing the wider area around the proposed station.
Old Oak Common Area – Downloaded 7th July 2015
There are rail lines everywhere. This second image shows the Southern part of the previous one, along the Great Western Main Line and Crossrail.
Old Oak Common Detail – Downloaded 7th July 2015
Working upwards from the bottom (South) on this map, you see the following.
1. The long building is the North Pole depot to be used by the new Hitachi Class 800/801 trains, which will be delivered over the next few years.
2. The Great Western Main Line and the future Crossrail tracks.
3. Depots for Heathrow Express and other trains.
4. I think that the large building surrounded by a large amount of grey blobs is the factory that manufactured the tunnel linings for Crossrail.
5. The Grand Union Canal encircles the site.
So could the imaginative minds of the planners at Transport for London have decided to bring the North London Line, an Extended Gospel Oak to Barking Line, Crossrail and HS2 together at the proposed new large development at Old Oak Common? With a little bit more clever design, they might even be able to tie the Central Line into the mix.
I’m all for this personally, as North East London, where I live, will be given a simple route to get to Heathrow and Reading, by just taking the North London Line or the GOBlin to Old Oak Common for Crossrail.
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.
Does London Need A ‘Grand Paris Express’?
The Grand Paris Express is a plan to create an automated Metro, that goes all the way round Paris. Wikipedia says this.
Grand Paris Express is a project of new rapid transit lines to be created in the île-de-France region, in France. The work could begin in 2014, with the first line opening between Pont de Sèvres métro station and Gare de Noisy – Champs (fr) RER A station around 2020. This line was first proposed in the project Orbival, then integrated into the Arc Express project.
The French also seem to be moving on the project as is reported here in Global Rail News.
So does London need something similar?
If we look at Berlin, that has a circular railway around the city centre called the Ringbahn. It’s about the same size as the Circle Line, but differs in one big way; it has a parallel freight ring.
London also has the Overground,which is a great way to get round the city without going through the centre. Like the Berlin Ringbahn it also carries freight.
The Overground is not a Metro, as in Berlin or as Paris is proposing, but a full-size railway, with not as high a frequency, as you’d get on a tube or metro line. However, the Overground does share a lot of objectives with the Grand Paris Express.
But those creative minds at Transport for London have proposed something similar to the Grand Paris Express in their Transport Infrastructure Plan for 2050. It’s a plan to extend the Gospel Oak to Barking Line under the Thames from Barking to Abbey Wood and then by means of existing lines take the trains around London via Sutton, Wimbledon, Hounslow, Old Oak Common to Gospel Oak. I documemted the route in full in these posts.
London’s plan differs from that of Paris in one big way, as it only requires one expensive piece of new infrastructure, which is the tunnel from Barking to Thamesmead. The main factor that will make London’s plan possible is that in a few years, all trains will have in-cab signalling, so slotting in the new Overground services on existing lines, will be a lot easier.
The title of the French proposal sums it up. It contains the word Grand and that is what it is.
London may take a much more mundane and affordable step-by-step approach, but it means that you don’t have to wait years to get the benefits you need now.
Before Overground – Clapton
Another Station For Those Not In The First Flush Of Youth – Rating 2/10
Clapton station is another with access problems for the disabled, buggy-pushers and the elderly.
Unfortunately, the station also seems to have a touch of the Japanese Knotweed, although this could be one of the few stations in the Lea Valley Lines, where simple gardens could make the station much more pleasant.
I’ve been trying to imagine this station in a few months after a deep clean and a good painting, London Overground double orange handrails, some better standard seating and some tidy foliage at the far end of the platforms.
It will be much better than it is now.
The Anonymous Widower 