please empty your brain below
Astonishing to think that line closures east of the city have now been taking place since 2008, and still these halfwits haven’t finished. We must be approaching over 200 weekend line closures. At the end of all this, the service won’t be one iota better, particularly in rush hour. A quite spectacularly mismanaged tale of utter incompetence.

Andrew | 05.07.20 - 8:12 a.m. | #

SMA's 13 & 14 (basically, after Harrow on the Hill on the Met) will never, ever, happen.

Virus, money, delayed ... and eventually scrapped.

David | 05.07.20 - 8:33 a.m. | #

Why are they closing 4 extra stations up to West Ham when the upgrade is only up to Stepney Green?

dungeddit | 05.07.20 - 9:07 a.m. | #

Two of those weeks are mine :-)

The Tower Hill to West Ham closures aren’t to do with the 4LM SMAs but for Crossrail works at Whitechapel.

GreenKitten | 05.07.20 - 9:15 a.m. | #

Some people say it's Crossrail work at Whitechapel, not 4LM. That does apply to a lot of the closures Andrew mentions.

@dungeddit There's nowhere to reverse trains. [map link]

toby | 05.07.20 - 9:15 a.m. | #

And then there's the parallel C2C and Greater Anglia lines.

They might as well work through the week at the moment. The trains are empty.

Old guy | 05.07.20 - 9:27 a.m. | #

Note to self: The quickest way to find out what’s going on is to publish an incorrect explanation.

Post updated, thanks.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 05.07.20 - 9:33 a.m. | #

The signalling isn't being upgraded simply for a better service. The old signalling is time expired and spare parts are becoming unobtainable, leading to an unacceptable level of reliability.

Keith | 05.07.20 - 9:56 a.m. | #

Interesting some of this may be crossrail at whitechapel! I wonder if one of those weekend will be to re-open the main entrance? It seems some people here are working on the project - it looks (from a distance) as if decent progress has been made in the past months and its not too far off

Alex | 05.07.20 - 11:15 a.m. | #

Toby - great link, thanks.

Lindsay | 05.07.20 - 12:34 p.m. | #

The East London line is also closed every weekend until September, for the same reason.

dg writes: Ooh yes. Updated again, thanks.

Westerleigh Junction | 05.07.20 - 12:55 p.m. | #

I would have thought they could run a service between West Ham and Upminster, which would allow inter change with the Jubilee.

kev | 05.07.20 - 1:00 p.m. | #

Hopefully Andrew will soon be in charge, so we can be assured that these projects will be managed with total competence going forward.

John C | 05.07.20 - 1:50 p.m. | #

Ooh, have they finally started using helpful names for the various bits of London Overground I thought? No, TfL's status update still has to describe it by the long-winded "Highbury & Islington and New Cross / Clapham Junction / Crystal Palace / West Croydon", followed by a bit about other operators' trains running on some bits, which they don't show on the map. They then repeat the list of which bits are closed in a different order, twice. Perhaps they think we might not understand it the first time.

AS | 05.07.20 - 2:07 p.m. | #

at least we have the DLR, Jubilee & Central Lines (or do we?) Then of course TfLRail and NR throw closures into the mix!

Andrew Jarman | 05.07.20 - 3:34 p.m. | #

It will be better for the drivers though, I bet they prefer to drive rather than press a button. More experience as well

Luke | 05.07.20 - 11:16 p.m. | #

Here at the rump end of the circle saucepan handle, we've been blessed with the signal-less system for some time. Yet weekend closures (of the H&C) abound, I wonder why?
As for the drivers, I imagine that they're enjoying the more chilled coasting pace which we've become used to too.
By the way, what's happened to all the train sets not being used as a result of the fifteen minute service? Are they all parked-up in the East London sidings? That would explain the prevalence of (admittedly quite artistic but nevertheless unwelcome) graffitied carriages.

JP | 06.07.20 - 3:28 a.m. | #

You never saw graffiti on the exterior of London Overground trains until the operator changed.

Kim | 06.07.20 - 11:29 a.m. | #

Aspiring ELL passengers south of New Cross Gate are not even favoured with rail replacemnt buses. The advice on posters for the last two weekends has been to use existing Southern services, which consist of a half-hourly train to East Croydon - nothing to Crystal Palace or West Croydon.

Chris Cook | 06.07.20 - 1:23 p.m. | #

Thanks for the heads up, East London neighbour! :(

4LM is vaguely worth it - hey maybe H&C will see more than 6 trains an hour before I retire!

Crossrail is a gigantic pain though - it helps me very little tbh

Philip Whitehouse | Homepage | 09.07.20 - 12:35 a.m. | #

SM3 (Euston Square to Stepney Green) finally introduced on 6th March 2021.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 05.03.21 - 2:47 p.m. | #











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