East London line


The East London line is a railway line running north to south through the East, Docklands and South areas of London. It is used by London Overground services. It was previously a line of the London Underground.
Built in 1869 by the East London Railway Company, which reused the Thames Tunnel intended for horse-drawn carriages, the line became part of the London Underground network in 1933. After nearly 75 years as part of that network, it closed on 22 December 2007 for an extensive refurbishment and expansion, reopening as part of the Overground network in April 2010. Phase 2, which links the line to the South London line with a terminus at, opened on 9 December 2012, creating an orbital railway around inner London.
In 2024, London Overground services on the line were rebranded the Windrush line.

History

Establishment of the East London Railway

The East London Railway was created by the East London Railway Company, a consortium of six railway companies: the Great Eastern Railway, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, the London, Chatham and Dover Railway, the South Eastern Railway, the Metropolitan Railway, and the District Railway. The latter two operated what are now the Metropolitan, Circle, District and Hammersmith & City lines of the London Underground. The incorporation of the East London Railway took place on 26 May 1865 with the aim of providing a link between the LB&SCR, GER and SER lines.
The companies reused the Thames Tunnel, built by Marc and Isambard Kingdom Brunel between 1825 and 1843 for horse-drawn carriages. The tunnel, with generous headroom and two carriageways separated by arches, connected Wapping on the north bank of the Thames with Rotherhithe on the south bank. A triumph of civil engineering, it was a commercial failure and by the 1860s it had become an unpleasant and disreputable place.
The tunnel was the most easterly land connection between the north and south banks of the Thames, close to the docks on both banks of the river, and was not far from mainline railways at either end. Converting the tunnel for railway use thus offered a means of providing a cross-Thames rail link. On 25 September 1865 the East London Railway Company took ownership of the tunnel at a cost of £800,000. Over the next four years the company built a railway through the tunnel to connect with the existing lines. The company's engineer was Sir John Hawkshaw, who was also responsible for the major re-design and completion of I K Brunel's long-abandoned Clifton Suspension Bridge at Bristol. The section of the railway construction work from Wapping to Bishopsgate, which was very difficult, was carried out by the firm "T. & C. Walker and Co.".
The line opened in stages as financing became available:
  • 7 December 1869: to opened, operated by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, with intermediate stations at Deptford Road and.
  • 13 March 1871: A spur opened from just south of what is now Surrey Quays station to the South London line's Old Kent Road station. Passenger services were withdrawn from 1 June 1911 and freight last used the line in 1964; the track was subsequently removed. This alignment was relaid and restored to passenger service by London Overground in late 2012.
  • 10 April 1876: Wapping to, through a cut-and-cover tunnel constructed in part along the bottom of an infilled dock. At Shoreditch a connection was made with the Great Eastern Railway to. Intermediate stations were at and Whitechapel.
  • 1 April 1880: A spur to opened.
  • 3 March 1884: A spur to the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways opened south of Whitechapel using St Mary's Curve. This enabled Metropolitan Railway and Metropolitan District Railway trains to commence through services to the East London Railway later that year. Although passenger services via this spur ceased in 1939, it was retained to transfer empty trains to the rest of the sub-surface network.

    Early use

The East London Railway Company owned the infrastructure but it was operated by its controlling railways. Steam trains were initially operated by the, and the. The used its LBSCR A1 Class Terrier locomotives, which William Stroudley designed partly with this line in mind. It carried both passenger and goods trains; the operated between Liverpool Street and Croydon, the running between and Liverpool Street from April 1880 until March 1884. From March to September 1884 the service ran from Addiscombe to St Mary's. Metropolitan Railway services from St Mary's to and Metropolitan District Railway services from St Mary's to commenced on 1 October 1884. On 6 October through services started from Hammersmith to New Cross and from to New Cross.
Before the development of the Kent coalfields in the early part of the 20th century, house coal from the north for distribution in south London and as far afield as Maidstone and Brighton was an important source of revenue. Access at the north end of the line was difficult: trains were limited to 26 wagons and had to be shunted into the Great Eastern's Liverpool Street station and drawn forward onto the. To avoid this reversal, a line was planned from the north of Whitechapel to the at Bethnal Green. Acts for this were passed: the East London Railway Act 1866 and the '. When the route to Hackney Downs Junction, now Hackney Downs, was constructed in 1872, the route was altered to connect at Cambridge Heath, with the ' as an abandonment act for the previous route, and two new acts the ' and the '. A short length of the latter tunnel was built, and from October 1900 additional capacity was offered by a wagon lift, carrying two ten-ton wagons, from the Great Eastern coal depot at Spitalfields to a siding laid in the tunnel stub. The surface junction was taken up in 1966 and the lift closed in 1967, after a fire at the Spitalfields depot.
When the Metropolitan District Railway was electrified in 1905 it ceased using the, the last trains running on 31 July 1905; the Metropolitan Railway suspended its service after 2 December 1906. and services continued, and services recommenced on 3 December 1906.
The line was electrified, with the controlling railways funding the upgrade and the Metropolitan Railway providing the rolling stock. Electric services began on 31 March 1913 and ran from the two southern termini to Shoreditch and via and. In 1914 the service to South Kensington was diverted to, on what is now the Hammersmith & City line.
After the 1923 grouping the goods service was operated by London and North Eastern Railway, with the Metropolitan Railway continuing to provide passenger services. Ownership was transferred to the Southern Railway by the , but the railway continued to be leased to the joint committee, now comprising the Southern Railway, the LNER, the Metropolitan Railway, and the District Railway.

London Underground era

In 1933, the East London Railway came under the control of the London Passenger Transport Board. Although the infrastructure was still privately owned, passenger services were operated as the "East London Branch" of the Metropolitan line. The railways were nationalised in 1948, and became part of the British Transport Commission along with the Underground. Goods services continued to use the line until 1962, with occasional passenger trains from Liverpool Street until 1966. The short length of track connecting Shoreditch to Liverpool St was removed in 1966. The service to Shoreditch was reduced, with becoming the northern terminus for much of the time; by the time station closed in 2006, it was only open at peak times on weekdays and most of Sundays.
Services to and from stations further west were curtailed during the early part of the Underground era. The service to Hammersmith was reduced to peak hours only in 1936 and withdrawn in 1939, leaving the East London branch as an isolated line. Until 1999, its only passenger interchange to the rest of the Underground was at Whitechapel, with interchanges to main line trains at the two New Cross stations. In the 1980s and 1990s, the line gained two important new connections: became an interchange with the Docklands Light Railway in 1987, and a station was added at in 1999 for interchange with the Jubilee line. The line was closed entirely between March 1995 and March 1998 for major maintenance and refurbishment works, during which time a rail-replacement bus service operated.
The identity of the East London line changed considerably during the London Underground era. On Tube maps between 1933 and 1968 it was depicted in the same colour as the Metropolitan line. In 1970, it was renamed the "Metropolitan line — East London Section", in Metropolitan line purple with a white stripe down the middle. In the 1980s it became a line in its own right and from 1990 its colour on the map changed to orange. In 1995, London Underground threatened to close the line if it did not receive listed building consent from the London Docklands Development Corporation for the shotcreting of four arches of Thames Tunnel. Maintenance passed to the Metronet consortium in 2003 under a public-private partnership, although the operation of trains continued to be the responsibility of Transport for London. According to TfL, the line carried 10.7 million passengers per year before its temporary closure in 2007.

Physical characteristics

The line was the only Underground line not to penetrate London fare zone 1 and the only line designed and constructed for mainline trains. At in length it was the second-shortest line, with nine stations and an end-to-end journey time of 14 minutes. It ran in tunnel from Whitechapel to Surrey Quays, with the remainder on the surface or in cutting. Whilst much of the line was built as cut-and-cover, it also contained overground and tube construction features. The deepest point is at Wapping station, constructed in the Thames Tunnel's original entrance shaft below the surface.
It connected with South Eastern Main Line services at New Cross and Brighton Main Line services at New Cross Gate. Underground connections were at Canada Water and Whitechapel. A non-contiguous connection with the Docklands Light Railway was at, with the DLR station some away on a viaduct. Although the interchange was via the street, through ticketing was permitted.
A link with the Metropolitan and District lines was made just south of Whitechapel via St Mary's Curve. This has been out of passenger use since 1939 but was still used to transfer rolling stock to and from the Metropolitan line's main depot at Neasden. The curve can easily be seen on the northbound and eastbound approaches to Whitechapel station, although a temporary wall was built across the line in January 2008, close to the junction with the District line..
Most of the line was double track, with Shoreditch station and the final sections into the southern termini single track, the latter because of lack of space. This required trains to alternate between the two southern termini.