At London Reconnections we don’t want to appear to always be bringing bad or disappointing news but events over the past year meant that we rarely have good things to write about. It makes a welcome change, therefore, to update readers with the success of the implementation of the first stage of Automatic Train Operation (ATO) of the Sub-surface Railway (SSR) and to look forward beyond it. A much needed upgrade New lines are always more exciting than upgrades to existing lines. On the ...

On Sunday 17th March 2019 Automatic Train Operation (ATO) was finally, and successfully, introduced on the Sub-Surface Railway (SSR). Next week, or maybe the week after, we’ll put the significance of this in context and look at future planned developments. Meanwhile, if an illustrated article about signals wrapped in black plastic would interest you, read on… Nice but dull One of the downsides of modern signalling is that it has none of the visual imagery of the signal gantries of ...

We have reported previously on the ongoing problems with the resignalling contract for the Subsurface Railway (the Circle, District, Metropolitan and Hammersmith & City lines). The contract is an important one, for it underpins much of the work currently underway on the Underground. In advance of a TfL Board Finance and Policy meeting later this week a paper on this contract has been published. We look at its contents with a critical eye to see if a sound plan for the future has begun to ...

According to the London 2050 report’s forecasts, the demand for the Underground will rise by 60% in the next thirty five years. That’s a challenging target to address with additional capacity, given the pressures the network is already experiencing. Growth will not be limited to peak hours – nevertheless how do you get 60% more, even as a basic target, with varying additional capacity on different lines? High pressure tubes The capacity differentials between lines will become critical at ...

On 24th March 2015 there was a surprise announcement from the Mayor and TfL about the re-signalling of the Subsurface Railway (SSR). It is largely a re-announcement of what has already been announced numerous times, and it is far from free of doublespeak, but it does also contain some genuinely new information. Unfortunately, despite appearances, most of that information is not really good news for the travelling public of London. The difficulties of resignalling Resignalling tends to be a ...

December, amongst many other things, is a time for timetables. This tends not to get much publicity, particularly for the Underground, as normally there is nothing interesting to report. Superficially little has changed, but beneath the surface there are small but significant changes to the Sub-Surface Railway and some quite significant changes to the Northern Line. Here we take a look at the changes to the Subsurface Railway. We will look at the Northern Line in the near future. Ringing the ...

In part 2 of Uncircling the Circle we looked at London Underground’s proposals for getting rid of the Circle Line in the form of a continuous loop and how they came to fruition. In doing so a document dating back to 2009 was used to explain the revised Circle Line proposals. What was rather skipped over was an arguably altogether more interesting diagram in that document with a vision of how services will run on the Sub-Surface Railway (SSR) by the end of 2018. In this article we look at ...

In Part 1 of “Big Changes” we took a look at London Underground’s proposed plan for running nocturnal Tube services. Here in Part 2 we now turn to the other major change to the Underground that was announced at the same time – the decision to completely overhaul the process by which passengers buy tickets and interact with staff at every station on Underground. There is no doubt that these changes will prove controversial. Indeed astute readers will have already noticed that the ...

Last Thursday at Piccadilly Circus, in front of a small crowd of journalists and television cameras, Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Mike Brown, MD of London Underground, pulled the covers off of a new Tube Map. When realised the contents of that map, which spread swiftly across the internet and media causing a great deal of discussion and debate, will mark as big a change in the daily relationship between London’s transport network and its passengers as the introduction of Crossrail. For ...

In part 2 of Uncircling the Circle we rather skipped over the issue of changing trains at Paddington. This issue was picked up by some readers who pointed out that, once Paddington (Hammersmith & City) station was improved, the situation with the revised Circle Line at Paddington would not be so bad. Although the station has undoubtedly improved, it was commonly felt that the signage still had a long way to go. The picture above shows what is about the only initiative to direct people to the ...

In part one of Uncircling the Circle we described how London Underground and its predecessors had tried, unsuccessfully, to eliminate the Circle Line as a continuous circle from the underground system. We also looked at some very rational reasons why continuous circle operation is a bad idea. Despite that, there is of course always the nagging doubt that this is just something that London, or at least its transport providers, has developed a great irrational antipathy for. To investigate this we ...

In part 2 of The Past, Present and Future of Metropolitan Line Services we finished with details of frequencies for the Metropolitan Line once the Sub-Surface Lines upgrade was complete. With plans for a overview of the ultimately intended service pattern for all the Sub-Surface Lines in mind, we now look at the Circle Line. Never Run Your Trains In A Circle! In the 1960s and 1970s London Transport had a flourishing international consultancy arm which made money by advising other cities on on ...

Whilst the eight car S Stock is now a relatively familiar sight on the Metropolitan Line, the S7 variant will not make its public debut until after the Olympics. It will then be rolled out onto the Circle, Hammersmith & City and District Lines. It is, however, in production at Derby and the photo below gives a good first look at the longitudinal seating layout that they’ll contain. Longitudinal S-Stock Layout With thanks to MA for the photo

Mikey’s Flikr pool is one that we have raided (with his permission) before, as it is often home to some impressive images from London’s Transport history. This week is no exception, with two excellent images of Farringdon & High Holborn featuring, both taken in 1934. These are reproduced below, along with the original accompanying original commentary. You can see the originals on his photostream. As he points out, both images are likely originally London Underground’s own, ...

The Circle and District lines will be closed between High Street Kensington and Edgware Road from today for four weeks, reopening on Wednesday 24th August. This encompasses one of the oldest sections of the London Underground, which was first built and operated by the Metropolitan Railway between Praed Street Junction (near Paddington) to Gloucester Road, and opened on 1 October 1868. The Circle line is well-known for its delays, and 70 per cent of the delays between Notting Hill Gate and ...