Tuesday, 29 July 2008

East London Line phase 2 works to go ahead

According to this planning application, "funding has been secured" for enabling works for the phase 2 extension of the East London Line (network map) to be done before the line reopens.

To be clear, this isn't the full scheme, but it does involve building a rather substantial grade separated junction, like so:
You can view a much larger version of that picture, and a reverse angle shot in this document (sans annotations), and an explanation in this one.

The junction is located at the northern tip of the Silwood triangle (near Surrey Quays station), which currently looks like this:
That's taken from the footbridge marked on the diagram above, with the East London Line on the left, and temporary works sidings on the right, on the path of the phase 2 extension.

The work proposed to do before phase 1 opens in 2010 (and before phase 2 is given the green light) includes building the underpass, replacing the footbridge, and building earthworks to take the phase 2 tracks down the side of Silwood Triangle, but no further.
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6 comments:

  1. Anonymous29 July 2008 at 08:15

    That's great news! It's absolutely useless to build such a costly project unless you're building the second phase, right?

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  2. Anonymous29 July 2008 at 11:32

    Maybe. Not building the junction in this way would have effectively precluded ever building stage two.

    Stage two will probably be built, but this junction isn't a clue as to timescale. The Victorian railway network is littered with just such examples of costly earthworks for junctions that never came to pass. As is the 20th century motorway network!

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  3. Anonymous29 July 2008 at 13:42

    Interesting that this junction needs to be grade separated, but the branch to New Cross is via a flat junction. Can only assume that as the latter has only 12 tph at the junction, the 4 trains from NX can easily be merged into the 8 tph on the Crystal Palace & West Croydon branches without too much difficulty. So the increase up to 16tph at Silwood Junction must make all the difference?

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  4. Anonymous29 July 2008 at 18:19

    Well done TFL! It doesn't say where the funding for the enabling works came from but it might the the carrot that gets the DfT to cough up the money to complete phase 2 as part of the SLL being kicked out london bridge. To be honest if these works were not completed before the opening of phase 1 I wasn't sure how they were going to justify closing the line again to complete the connection to phase 2 at a later date.

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  5. Anonymous29 July 2008 at 18:33

    The substantial funding came from the tax you pay. It might therefore not be a cause for celebration if stage two doesn't materialise.

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  6. Anonymous29 July 2008 at 22:10

    It's great to see there's a tangible momentum towards the upgrading of the London urban transport network.

    Unfortunately where I live currently (Paris) there isn't this level of commitment...

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