Gospel Oak to Barking line
The Gospel Oak to Barking line, sometimes shortened to GOBLIN, is a railway line in London, England. It is in length and carries through goods trains and London Overground passenger trains. The line is part of Network Rail Strategic Route 6, and is classified as a London and South East Commuter line.
The London Overground service which runs on the line, connecting Gospel Oak in north London and Barking Riverside in east London, is branded as the Suffragette line. The name came into use in November 2024.
For much of its existence the line has played a minor role in London's transport system; however, in recent years it has received significant investment to increase its capacity, including full 25kV AC overhead electrification, completed in 2018. At the eastern end of the line, the extension to the Barking Riverside regeneration site opened on 18 July 2022.
History
Original lines
The line is mostly an amalgamation of lines built in the 19th century. The main section, between South Tottenham and Woodgrange Park, was built as the Tottenham and Forest Gate Railway, a joint project between the Midland Railway and the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway. This opened on 9 July 1894, linking the Midland and Great Eastern joint line at South Tottenham and the Forest Gate and Barking line at Woodgrange Park. The section west of South Tottenham was built as the Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway, which opened in 1868 but had not been commercially successful as a stand-alone railway.Predecessor routes
Although the route between Upper Holloway and Woodgrange Park has been constant, several stations have been the ends of the line.,, and Moorgate have all been the western termini. East Ham was an alternative eastern terminus for some time. Some trains were extended beyond Barking to destinations such as Southend and Tilbury. There was a regular boat train service between St Pancras and Tilbury.A connection to Gospel Oak was added in 1888, but the routes via Kentish Town remained the primary ones and the Gospel Oak branch was abandoned during 1926. The connection to East Ham was abandoned in 1958.
The Tottenham and Hampstead Junction Railway section of the line had stations that were closed due to proximity to other stations or for other reasons. These include Highgate Road, Junction Road, Hornsey Road and St Ann's Road.
The line was considered for closure to passengers in 1963 as part of the Beeching Axe, but local users protested and formed an action group to prevent closure. Beeching's proposals for London were not implemented for the most part, and the line remained open. Even so, it was allowed to fall into a poor state of repair and reliability, and by 1980 had been cut back to an hourly service between Kentish Town and Barking. The station canopies were gradually demolished, ticket offices closed and staff withdrawn from stations.
New link to Gospel Oak
During 1981, the situation began to improve when electrification and upgrades to the line out of displaced the line from Kentish Town. A new link to Gospel Oak was built and the hourly service from Kentish Town was replaced by the current route from Gospel Oak with two trains per hour. The service remained relatively unreliable, largely due to the age of the rolling stock used, which were initially Class 115 and 108 units, replaced in the early 1990s by Class 117 and 121 units.Private operators
Initially part of British Rail Network SouthEast, the line was privatised in 1994, the track being owned by Railtrack with the passenger service provided by the North London Railways franchise. This passed to National Express in 1997, which operated the line under the brand name Silverlink until November 2007. Under Silverlink, the slam door trains were replaced by Class 150 units in 2000, which improved reliability significantly. There were minor improvements in station facilities but no major investment to upgrade the line and boost capacity, and the stations remained unstaffed.London Overground
During the opening years of the twenty-first century, many lines within London were running at full capacity, and as a consequence the line took on a new strategic significance as a bypass, relieving load on other lines by allowing passengers to travel between north and east London directly.The Railways Act 2005 abolished the franchise and gave the operation of passenger services to Transport for London. During 2005, TfL started funding a small number of additional peak time and late evening services to relieve the worst overcrowding.
In November 2007, TfL took full control of the line, after which it introduced improved late night and weekend services, and staff, ticket machines and Oyster equipment at all stations. The frequency was increased to three trains per hour during morning and afternoon peaks and the line was included on the Tube map for the first time.
The line was closed throughout most of September 2008 for upgrade work carried out by Network Rail. Capacity was increased from six trains per hour to eight. By replacing the overbridges carrying Sussex Way and Albert Road, and lowering the track in some other locations, it was made possible for W10 loading gauge goods trains to operate. Electrification was not included.
In 2010, eight new Class 172 Turbostar diesel trains replaced the Class 150 units, with two 23-metre coaches and the option to introduce a third coach. The service frequency was increased to four trains per hour in January 2011.
Electrification
During 2008, electrification was ruled out by the Mayor of London on grounds of cost and difficulty of electrifying a line with so many viaducts and bridges, but the Network Route Utilisation Strategy published by Network Rail in October 2009 showed a benefit–cost ratio for the scheme of 2.4:1. During 2012, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, indicated that funding was "a matter for the Department for Transport".In 2011, Network Rail proposed electrification in Control Period 5, however, in July 2012, Justine Greening, the Secretary of State for Transport, stated that electrification was not included in the High Level Output Specification for CP5, and that any funds would need to be provided by TfL. In August, the Mayor wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport to seek a way forward, and "she committed her officials to support work with TfL, Network Rail, train operators and other industry parties to see if a viable way can be found to bridge the funding gap."
During November 2012, the magazine Modern Railways reported that the Department for Transport had ruled out the work on the basis of an estimated cost of £90 million, in contrast to an estimate of £40 million by TfL.
In June 2013, it was announced that £115 million of funding for electrification would be made available as part of upgrades to rail infrastructure included in the government's 2013 spending round. At the same time Transport for London announced that they had obtained a £90m commitment from the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Transport.
In September 2015, Network Rail awarded the £56.9 million contract to electrify the line to J. Murphy & Sons. There were part closures from June to late September 2016, followed by a full closure from October 2016 to February 2017. In February 2017, Network Rail announced that whilst the line would re-open as scheduled, they were not able to complete all the work planned due to "incorrect" designs and late delivery of materials. Further evening and weekend works until late June 2017 were already planned, followed by around four months of commissioning work before the electric wires could be turned on so that Class 710 trains could run. Although the line was completely electrified by mid-January 2018, delays prevented the introduction of new electric trains until 2019.
The line was electrified using the NR Series 2 OLE range.
New trains
On account of the completion of electrification in 2018, new electric Class 710 trains were supposed to run from March 2018. However, the delivery of these trains was delayed by the manufacturer; at one point, officials were not even willing to divulge an anticipated service date for the Class 710 sets.Due to the Class 172 units being needed by West Midlands Trains, three Class 378 units were moved from other parts of the London Overground and shortened down from five to four carriages to provide an interim service until the class 710 units entered service. However, six trains are needed to be able to run a full service, so from 15 March 2019 the frequency on the line was halved to two trains per hour.
Increases in passenger numbers led to severe overcrowding at peak times, but it was not possible to increase peak frequencies without reducing the number of goods trains, as the line could accommodate only eight trains per hour in each direction. The two-coach Class 172 diesel trains in use between 2010 and 2019 were incapable of handling the increased number of passengers experienced after the incorporation into the London Overground. Between 2016 and 2018 the line was electrified by Network Rail; this work was delayed due to a number of design, track works and delivery problems. At the same time, platforms were lengthened to accommodate the new four-coach electric Class 710 trains. These trains were intended to be introduced in the spring of 2018, but the delivery was delayed by the manufacturer, the first two entering service on 23 May 2019, but the existing two trains per hour service was maintained until the full timetable was restored in June of that year. The full fleet entered service in August 2019. Because the delay caused timetable cutbacks and continued overcrowding, TfL offered a month's free travel, financed by the manufacturer Bombardier, to compensate passengers for the months of disruption they experienced.