The East London line's a strange one. It goes from nowhere to nowhere, which is why the majority of Londoners have never ridden on it. It's only five miles long, and shorter still outside peak hours. It skilfully avoids central London, almost grazing the edge of the City but not quite. The line has a pitiful nine stations, most of them tiny and unloved. Some of the stations are much too close together, while others are far too far apart. The tracks burrow through some of the poorest swathes of east and southeast London, linking just a few yuppie enclaves along the way. On the tube map the line's represented by a feeble, almost anaemic, orange colour. The trains are only four carriages long, each borrowed from the line's big Metropolitan cousin. And it takes only fourteen minutes to ride from one end to the other. It's sometimes hard to work out why the line still exists.
And yet the line is also both unique and historic. Its origins predate construction of the first official London Underground railway. Its deeper stations retain a real sense of subterranean Victorian character. It provides the only public transport link across the Thames east of Tower Bridge and west of Docklands. And at its heart there's the ThamesTunnel (of which more later), whose construction was quite literally ground-breaking.
Here's a brief East London line history:
(and if you need a map to follow, try here)
1825: Marc Brunel begins construction of the Thames Tunnel between Wapping and Rotherhithe - the first tunnel in the world to be built beneath a navigable river. 1843: The Thames Tunnel opens, but only to pedestrian traffic. It's not a great commercial success, and closes twenty years later. 1869: The newly-created East London Railway uses the tunnel to run trains from Wapping underneath the river to New Cross Gate. 1876: The line is extended north to Liverpool Street, with trains running as far south as Croydon and even Brighton. 1880: A branch line to New Cross opens. 1884: A short spur line is built just west of Whitechapel station to link the East London Railway to the Metropolitan line (it still exists). 1913: The northern link to Liverpool Street station is severed. 1948: With nationalisation of the railways, the ELR passes to London Transport. 1995: The entire line is closed for three years for the urgent modernisation of the Thames Tunnel and for construction of a new interchange with the Jubilee line at Canada Water (opens 1999). 2006: Shoreditch station closes forever.
But it's not just Shoreditch whose days are numbered. In two years time the entire line will shut down (again), this time for at least 18 months, to enable construction work for the East London line extension project to take place. By 2010 this won't be some tinpot little tube line any more, it'll be a fully fledged overground railway joining Dalston in the north to Crystal Palace and Croydon in the south. To be honest that still doesn't sound like a route many people would ever want to use but hey, a new orbital railway connection is not to be sniffed at. And the old Shoreditch station will be long gone, buried forever beneath new inclined tracks leading up to a new station above Shoreditch High Street. Last chance to see. Eight days and counting.
The East London line: past, present and future
The East London line's a strange one. It goes from nowhere to nowhere, which is why the majority of Londoners have never ridden on it. It's only five miles long, and shorter still outside peak hours. It skilfully avoids central London, almost grazing the edge of the City but not quite. The line has a pitiful nine stations, most of them tiny and unloved. Some of the stations are much too close together, while others are far too far apart. The tracks burrow through some of the poorest swathes of east and southeast London, linking just a few yuppie enclaves along the way. On the tube map the line's represented by a feeble, almost anaemic, orange colour. The trains are only four carriages long, each borrowed from the line's big Metropolitan cousin. And it takes only fourteen minutes to ride from one end to the other. It's sometimes hard to work out why the line still exists.
Here's a brief East London line history:
Here's a brief East London line history: