By 1992, privatisation was finally on the political agenda, and mentioned in the Queen’s Speech early in May, but while this had been delayed by Margaret Thatcher, for some time the ground had been prepared inadvertently by railway management by introducing the concept of ‘Sectorisation’. This gradually, and sometimes unhappily, replaced the regions with a period of overlap. The change was accompanied by a method of charging known as the ‘prime user’ concept, which meant, for example, that if freight was the main user, it would meet most of the costs of that stretch of line, but the downside was that the line was only maintained to freight standards, and unlikely to be suitable for high-speed passenger traffic.
The big success of sectorisation was in the London commuter area, put under the management of one Chris Green, who created what he termed a ‘single railway for the South-East’, none other than Network South-East, which replaced all of the Southern Region and took over the commuter services and stations of the other regions. London commuters could see Network South-East maps at railway stations, although under Ken Livingstone as mayor of London, when the concept of a powerful US-style city mayor was introduced some years after the disbandment of the GLC, an attempt was made to hi-jack this network under the name of the ‘Overground’. Many commentators feel that breaking up Network South-East into three companies to replace what had been the old Southern Railway and Southern Region, with further companies for services from Paddington, Marylebone, Euston, St Pancras, King’s Cross, Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street, was a major weakness of the privatised railway.
Privatisation finally surfaced in a White Paper published in July 1992. The main points were:
(1) Rail freight and parcels should be transferred entirely to the private sector.
(2) Passenger services should be operated as franchises by private companies, who would be subjected to providing a certain predetermined minimum standard of frequency and service, and would receive grants for uneconomic services, while paying for the right to operate profitable services.
(3) All passenger and freight operators should have the right of access to all parts of the railway network.
(4) The rump of British Rail should survive as the new track and infrastructure authority with a new name, Railtrack, and that eventually this too should be privatised.
(5) The railway maintenance and other technical facilities should also be privatised.
A number of public appointments were to be essential for the operation of the new railway, including the Director of Franchising, the Office of the Rail Regulator and a new Quango, the Strategic Rail Authority, which took over control of the British Transport Police.
The privatisation proposals were subjected to considerable public criticism as well as to political opposition, with the Labour Party threatening to reverse the process on being returned to power. Accustomed to intense interest in each successive privatisation, the government was disappointed to find that this was distinctly lacking in the case of the railways. As the legislation was passing through Parliament, a number of changes were made, of which the most important was that rolling stock and motive power would be sold to companies set up for this purpose and leased to the franchisees, with the entire British Rail ‘fleet’ divided amongst three rolling stock leasing companies, or ROSCOs. This was just part of the alphabet soup cooked up by privatisation, with other acronyms including TOCs, train operating companies, and TESCOs, technical service companies.
Not all of the criticism was aimed at the principle of privatisation as such, but at the fragmentation and division of the railway. The romantics wanted to see the recreation of the old companies, including some, who would have been too young to remember the ‘old’ railway, even wanting a return to the pre-grouping days. One prominent journalist yearned for the return of the old London & South Western Railway, and wondered just what colour the carriages would have been. A trip to a decent public library would have answered his question, while he might have discovered that it hadn’t been the best of railways.
There were also those who pointed out that the levels of subsidy being offered at the start of the process was far higher than that given to British Rail, and inevitably questioned the wisdom of this and speculated on just what BR might have achieved with such sums. A glance at some of the poor decisions taken during the years of the Modernisation Plan might have provided some clues. Supporters of privatisation pointed out that the level of subsidy would decline over the period of the franchises, with many lines expected to move into profit and then make a contribution to the state. Government ministers talked up the prospects for the future, with one minister talking of ‘comfortable services for the businessman and cheap and cheerful services for the secretary’.
As a sop to the travelling public and an incentive to the train operating companies to keep costs to the minimum, as the first franchises were being let, fares were classified into different categories as ‘regulated’ and ‘unregulated’. On the latter, the TOCs could more or less charge what they wanted, but on the former, mainly covering season tickets and standard tickets, annual fare increases were to be one percentage point below the level of inflation, while a TOC that did not operate satisfactorily could find that certain fares, including season tickets, might even be cut as a form of compensation to the regular customer. The decision to cap season increases in some ways was understandable, as a throw back to the concept of the ‘workman’s ticket’, although it did mean that the discount given to season ticket holders as a percentage of the standard single or return fare was to grow, creating hopelessly uneconomic peak periods. Commuter traffic created massive problems for the railways. For example, in 2003, the Strategic Rail Authority estimated that it could cost as much as £1,500 per passenger per annum to provide an extra rush hour train, but that the average season ticket fare per passenger per annum would be just £560! Far less understandable was the decision to cap some long distance ‘saver’ tickets. This risked not simply continuing but worsening an anomaly on some routes where the off-peak return fare was less than that of the single fare, so that conscientious booking clerks would recommend that the would-be purchaser of a single ticket bought an off-peak return instead. In theory it would be worthwhile for anyone wanting a single ticket to wait at the barrier to see if any passengers would throw away their unwanted returns.
It certainly seemed odd that one company would be allowed to buy the entire infrastructure, others the rolling stock and motive power or the freight services, but that the passenger services, which were the public’s point of contact with the railway and which would have the most individual customers, were simply to be franchised off, with the term of seven years being set at the beginning. Seven years was hardly long enough to encourage investment in an industry in which the average life of rolling stock was four or five times as long. In theory, the rolling stock leasing companies could always lease the carriages and motive power to the next franchisee, but what if the next one had other ideas? Even on the old nationalised railway, cascading rolling stock on to other services was sometimes impractical. There were three traction systems available, diesel, overhead electric and third rail electric. Even within these divisions, there were differences in loading gauge. Traffic patterns also varied. When, for example, it was decided that the first generation of electric multiple units with power-operated doors should be transferred from the Southern Region’s Western Division to Merseyside, these four car units had to be cut down to just three cars: the fourth carriage in each case was retained and inserted into a new build of emus of different design, leaving many of the inner suburban services from Waterloo worked by trains with a distinctly odd and uneven roof line.
On 5 November, the Railways Act 1993 received the Royal Assent and passed into law. There was a short period of calm before a major restructuring of British Rail occurred the following 1 April, ready for privatisation to start. Although intended to be sold in its entirety, Railtrack was organised into ten regional zones, although this was reduced to eight in 1995, few of which related directly to a franchise area except in Scotland where there was a perfect match. Only on the Isle of Wight, would the franchisee would also be responsible for track maintenance. British Rail’s passenger services were organised into twenty-five companies ready for the franchising process to start, each with a subsidy profile and some of them also having funding from local passenger transport executives as well as from central government.
The original franchises were:
Anglia Railways
Cardiff Railway
Central Trains
Chiltern Trains
Gatwick Express
Great Eastern
Great North Eastern Railway
Great Western
Inter City Cross Country
Inter City West Coast
Island Line (Isle of Wight)
LTS Rail (London Tilbury & Southern)
Merseyrail Electrics
Midland Main Line
North London Railways
North West RR (Regional Railways)
RR North East (Regional Railways)
ScotRail
South Central
South Eastern
South Wales & West
South Western
Thames Trains
Thameslink
West Anglia Great Northern
The first franchises were let in time for operations to start early in 1996. Many of the names changed, especially when franchises were re-let. North London Railways became Silverlink and then London Midland, while LTS became C2C, to the bewilderment of many, and South Central eventually renamed itself as the Southern Railway, showing scant regard for accuracy.
Tube expansion and the docklands
While the surface railway was under threat in many areas, the London Underground had completed its planned pre-war extension of the Piccadilly and Central Lines, and had eventually electrified the entire length of the Metropolitan Line. Nevertheless, it was becoming clear that much more needed to be done, and that the limits to any intensification of the service on most of the existing lines had arrived, so that only new underground lines could solve problem. Although London did get two new tube lines, it also obtained its first light railway, in docklands, using much abandoned track bed but with its own extensions, including a tunnel to the Bank.
Authorised in 1955, the Victoria Line was the first new tube railway in central London since 1907, and when opened in 1968-69, provided the capital with its first fully automated passenger trains. It provided interchanges with all of the other underground lines and initially ran from Walthamstow via King’s Cross, St Pancras and Euston to Victoria, but an extension to Brixton opened in 1971, giving a route mileage of fourteen miles. Construction of a new line through the centre of London caused considerable disruption, and a steel ‘umbrella’ had to be built over the booking hall at Oxford Circus so that road traffic could continue along the length of Oxford Street and Regent Street. This was the first railway in Great Britain to have driverless trains, with the train controller or guard sitting in the driving cab at the head of the train, not simply to reassure passengers but also so that manual control could be assumed if the automatic control failed.
The pressure at the London end of the Metropolitan and Bakerloo lines also needed to be relieved, by a new line, known initially as the Fleet Line when it was authorised in 1969 to run 2½ miles from Charing Cross to Baker Street to ease pressure on the Bakerloo Line in central London, and then take over the Stanmore branch. In 1972, an extension was authorised along the line of Fleet Street through the City of London and south to Lewisham. It was renamed the Jubilee Line in 1977 by the then Greater London Council, after opening in 1979 between Stanmore and Charing Cross, the eventual extension ran to Waterloo, then to the new developments in London’s docklands, and finally north to Stratford.
Originally planned to have moving block signalling, this was found to be impractical and conventional signalling was used initially. On the new stretches of line, it became the first London tube line to have platform doors. Moving block signalling would have been another significant first for London, not only eliminating line side signals, but also ensuring that the distance between trains increased as speed rose. That it couldn’t work on the Jubilee indicates that the system is very difficult to install as the line, with no branches and with all trains having the same stopping pattern, should have been ideal. The line has been very popular and in 2007 started to receive additional trains while the existing trains were lengthened by having an extra carriage inserted: something that took a working day for each train as the train’s computers had to be reset.
During this time of change, the London Transport Authority was replaced in 1984 by London Regional Transport and, later, by the present Transport for London.
Although London did not actually get an overhead railway as proposed by Paxton, it did get a railway with much of its route elevated above the ground on arches. The Docklands Light Railway gave full rein to all of those commuters who knew how a modern railway should be run, rather than risk leaving it to the professionals. No railway has ever had so many years of wide speculation over the best form of railway for regeneration of the London docklands, with monorail and trains with pneumatic tyres, as in some lines in Paris and Toronto, being amongst the proposals. Eventually, the steel wheel on steel rail won, and the Docklands Light Railway was authorised in 1985 to run from the Minories, with the station named Tower Gateway, to Island Gardens in North Greenwich and from Poplar to Stratford, giving 7½ route miles initially. Although London Transport originally acted as a consultant, the line was independent until later absorbed by Transport for London, and while using standard gauge track, used third rail electrification in contrast to the third and fourth rail of the London Underground network. It used part of the infrastructure built for the London & Blackwall Railway.
Meanwhile, accommodation in the City of London was scarce for offices and for those wishing to live there. The most upstream docks soon found their warehouses converted into flats, while those further downstream were rebuilt to provide Canary Wharf and the rest of the Docklands development, including the City Airport. Without these developments, many foreign banks and other financial institutions that had wanted a foothold in the London market could not have been accommodated. Yet, transport links at first were poor, hence the importance of the Docklands Light Railway and the more traditional Jubilee Line extension.
Built as a light railway with two-car multiple units often working in pairs, the DLR offers fine views over the former docklands and Canary Wharf, but suffers from tight curves. The trains are completely automatic, but an attendant can take control if necessary. Initially, the line proved both unreliable and inadequate for peak period loads, and substantial rebuilding proved necessary. The line was extended to Bank, with transfers to the tube lines, in 1991, and later to serve the City Airport. It now runs under the Thames to serve Lewisham and platforms have been lengthened and the trains to converted to three-car units while additional new trains have also been introduced. The views from the line make the journey worthwhile and welcome change from the tunnel walls of the deep level tubes, but the ride is very poor and speeds are low, while the short carriages give the impression of always being crowded.
Privatisation of Britain’s railways saw the British Rail network divided up amongst a large number of train operating companies, one of which, North London Railways, gradually evolved into Silverlink and then subdivided itself into Silverlink County and Silverlink Metro, with the latter running services along the old North London Railway’s lines, including the North London Line itself and the West London Line. In 2007, Transport for London took over the franchise for these lines and added the East London Railway, originally authorised in 1863 to connect all of the lines running into London from the north, east and south. Although still theoretically a franchise, the franchising authority became Transport for London, following a precedent set for MerseyRail. For this collection of lines, TfL revived an old name, Overground, originally created for buses operated by the Dangerfield group of companies, operating around Enfield, until they were acquired by the LGOC in 1927. The line is operated on behalf of TfL by London Overground Rail Operations Ltd, or LOROL. Silverlink County later became London Midland.
The East London Line utilised the Thames Tunnel built by Sir Marc Brunel between 1825 and 1843. Opened between New Cross and Shoreditch, a distance of 5¼ miles, in 1876, it also provided access to Liverpool Street. At its southern end, it connected with the London Brighton & South Coast, London, Chatham & Dover and South Eastern Railways at New Cross, but failed to provide any substantial link at the northern end. No rolling stock was owned by the ELR, and services were worked by other companies. It was leased in 1882 by a committee of five railways, the LBSCR, LCDR, SER, Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways, with the Great Eastern joining in 1885. It was electrified on the third and fourth rail system in 1913, after which the MR operated the trains, but ownership passed to the Southern Railway in 1925.
The line did not pass to London Transport until nationalisation in 1948. The London Overground network is being extended north to Dalston and south to East Dulwich, based on the East London Line, while a further extension to Clapham Junction is envisaged. Much of the Overground track mileage is also used by freight traffic, but it is intended to convert operations to a high frequency metro-style network.
The Overground is probably a big disappointment for TfL as the original idea under a Labour mayor for London, was that TfL should become the London Regional Rail Authority with powers over all railway services operating into the capital. The then mayor, Ken Livingstone, wanted to be able to order the mainline companies to make adjustments to their services, conflicting with the franchising system under which these were operated. A good example was that all trains running to Waterloo, and those on the old LB&SCR line to Victoria, should be made to call at Clapham Junction so that this would become a major interchange and reduce the pressure on Waterloo and Victoria. The idea is not without its attractions, but it would substantially reduce the number of trains on the lines concerned, creating problems of capacity, and also extend journey times, albeit slightly. As it is, Vauxhall Cross has become an interchange between suburban trains bound for Waterloo, the Victoria Line and the London bus network.
Jumping the gun slightly before gaining the necessary powers, Livingstone had maps produced showing the London area mainline and surface suburban network, dubbing these as the ‘Overground’, well before any prospect of taking over Silverlink Metro was raised. The maps were quietly withdrawn some time later. On the other hand, ensuring that railway travellers, whether Underground, Overground or simply on the surface, know all of the routes and connections available to them, had to be a good idea.
Off to the airport
London’s second airport at Gatwick was the first to be served by its own railway station, although the airport site and station actually moved slightly when it re-opened after the Second World War in the mid-1950s. London’s main airport was nevertheless without any railway connection of its own until the Hounslow branch was extended in 1977; the first deep level tube link to any airport in the world, and in 1986, a loop was added to serve Terminal 4, followed later by a shuttle to and from Terminal 5.
The tube link with central London was doubtless better than nothing, but paled in comparison with the frequent surface trains of the Gatwick Express and, after it was rebuilt and opened as London’s third airport, the fast trains of the Stansted Express. Something better was needed, and this came in the form of a new direct railway from the airport to Paddington, the Heathrow Express. The new service ran from the airport to the mainline into Paddington, and with its overhead electrification it brought electric trains to Paddington for the first time when it began running to the station in 1998. The Heathrow Express was an operation owned by BAA, operators of London Heathrow, and was joined in 2005 by Heathrow Connect, a stopping service to the airport intended for airport workers and others living along the route.
One lesson learnt by railway operators with the Heathrow Express and Stansted express was that airport operators had a far better idea of the ideal train for airport passengers than railwaymen. The higher proportion of passengers with luggage and the often larger quantities of luggage carried meant that extra space and wider doors were essential for a suitable service. The original Gatwick Express trains consisted of converted mainline stock that was unsuitable. Nevertheless, one feature of the Gatwick Express that was appreciated by commuters was the fact that it boarded only at the terminus at each end and ran non-stop every fifteen minutes throughout the day. The better-heeled passengers from intermediate stations on the Brighton line soon found it worthwhile, if costly, to drive to Gatwick and catch the Gatwick Express. Sadly for them, a route utilisation study has decreed that there is no longer sufficient space for a dedicated airport service.
One problem with using Paddington as a terminus for the Heathrow Express and Heathrow Connect, is that the station is the worst placed of all London termini for the City and not that good for the West End. The Stansted Express runs straight into the city at Liverpool Street, and the Gatwick Express ran into the edge of the West End at Victoria, with other services to London Bridge and to what was Holborn, but is now City Thameslink, with services continuing northwards to King’s Cross and Bedford.
While the Docklands Light Railway serves London City Airport, passengers to and from Luton Airport have a service to St Pancras, but with a bus link between Luton Airport Parkway station and the airport terminal building.
The presence of London City Airport has been a boom to the business air traveller, underlined by the fact that it is closed overnight and also during Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings. The runway has been lengthened since it opened. Initially there were limits on the destinations served as the aircraft using the airport were slower, due to the need to be able to use the short runway, than those using the main airports, even when turbofan aircraft such as the BAe 146 and its derivative, the Avro RJ series, were used. Air Malta, for example, found that its service to the airport did not offer any great time saving over its flights to Gatwick and Heathrow. Nevertheless, British Airways has introduced transatlantic flights to New York using a small fleet of Airbus A318 airliners with premium-class seating, but the catch is that these have to refuel westbound to be able to take-off from London City.
What the airport does mean is that it is now possible to commute daily from, say, Edinburgh or Amsterdam, to London, and home again in the evening. Possible, but expensive, and so those needing to work in London probably find a pied a terre, now more usually known as a ‘crash pad’, less expensive.
While the construction of a third runway at Heathrow has been given official backing, it will need to go through the tortuous British planning process; others are calling for a new airport in the Thames Estuary. Originally it had been intended to locate London’s third airport at Foulness, not too far from Shoeburyness on the former London, Tilbury & Southend Railway, but the dangers of unexploded shells from the army firing range at Shoeburyness and the fact that the area was a focal point for migrating birds, which don’t mix well with aircraft, and the cost of a high speed connection to London, all went against Foulness and eventually Stansted was chosen. The revised plans are for a Heathrow replacement, with the current mayor of London, Boris Johnson, seeing the site of Heathrow redeveloped as a business park. It would be some business park, and would have to be to justify the continuation of Heathrow’s existing railway links and the collapse of property values once the airport goes. The new airport would be further south towards the Kent side of the Thames Estuary, and could possibly use the high speed service to St Pancras of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, otherwise known in railway circles as High Speed 1, or HS1.
High Speed 1
When the Channel Tunnel opened officially in 1994, the trains ran into Waterloo International, a terminus completed at the northern end of Waterloo Station and using the former Windsor Lines station and the Necropolis Station. The concept of a Channel Tunnel dated from early in the nineteenth century when the French mining engineer, Albert Mathieu-Favier, proposed two tunnels meeting in an artificial island to be constructed on the Varne Bank in mid-Channel. This was meant to be a road tunnel and the island would allow horses to be changed. Much later, one French and two British companies started trial boring on both sides of the Channel, and using compressed-air boring machines they successfully completed a mile-long tunnel that dropped around 160 feet into the chalk beneath the sea. The work stopped because the British Army saw a potential threat to national security.
The concept was not taken seriously again until 1929, when a Royal Commission considered proposals for a broad gauge line from London to Paris, which would have been incompatible with the gauges in use on either side. Nevertheless, it was not until 1955 that it was finally accepted that a tunnel presented little threat to national security.
The original line used largely commuter railway with some new connections to enable trains to get from the Kent coast and into Waterloo, with little scope for true high speed running. A new line was built to St Pancras and the East Midlands Trains services from this grand terminus were displaced to a new and somewhat utilitarian station outside while the Eurostar trains from Paris and Brussels moved into the renovated historic Midland Railway terminus. This left the station somewhat underused, but it was always intended that the costly new line from St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel, High Speed 1, or HS1, should be used to cut commuter journey times from much of Kent, as well as making a significant reduction in the London to Brussels and Paris railway times.
The new service was written into the franchise for Southeastern Trains, which have a new high-speed domestic commuter services operated with Class 395 electric multiple units built by Hitachi in Japan. Commuter services started in December 2009, between Ashford International in Kent and London St Pancras, giving a journey time of thirty-seven minutes, while there are intermediate stations at Stratford International railway station. The trains will start and end their journeys beyond these three stations, reaching destinations such as Margate, Folkestone and Dover, although this involves running on existing lines so the journey time savings will be much less. The new fleet of twenty-nine trains is able to reach speeds of 140 mph, 225 kmph. It is too early to say how successful the new service will be. Existing commuters from Kent to London will usually have their place of work within easy reach of the mainline terminus used by their trains, with as few stops as possible on the Underground, and only a small number would be travelling to North London, for which the new service would be most convenient – but travelling patterns do change once a new service is available. Interestingly, the new service will be standard class only, although with a premium fare for reflect the faster service.
Of course, the reduced journey time between London and Paris or Brussels offers the possibility of international commuting, albeit the time differences between the UK and the Continent mean that the commuting could only really be in the London direction.
Across London North and South-Thameslink
The idea of running railway lines across London is not new. As we saw earlier, there was a plan for a line from Charing Cross to Euston. Such lines were originally conceived with good north-south connections in mind, bringing the Channel ports closer to the Midlands and North West England. They would also have been useful for commuters as not everyone alights from a train to find themselves within walking distance of their place of work. The ultra deep level tube stations built during the Second World War under some of the central London tube stations could also have been used for a limited stop higher speed underground network on the lines of the RER regional expresses across Paris.
Yet, for the most part, railway services across London became fewer as the railways matured. The Great Western services to Victoria must have benefitted some, but not enough to justify their continued existence. There were other lines around London, such the West London and East London, and of course the great connecting link of the North London, which was most useful for goods en route to or from the docks.
The most important line across London, and today the only line to actually cross the centre of London, is that today operated by Capital Connect, formerly known as Thameslink, and indeed this is still the name used for the route of 93 miles, 147 km, from Brighton to Bedford, with onward connections to Leeds. The route is being extensively modernised and will become a vital link in the capital’s railway system, although capacity will be limited.
The line dates from 1 January 1866, when the London Chatham & Dover Railway completed its Metropolitan Extension, extending its lines from their temporary terminus at Ludgate Hill to Farringdon Street, having persuaded both the Great Northern and London & South Western Railways to subscribe more than £300,000 apiece towards the cost of the extension with the promise of through running powers, which they soon exercised, along with the Midland Railway, which started running trains through to Victoria in 1875. The LCDR itself sent trains from Herne Hill through to Kings Cross and then as far as Barnet. With the centre of London already congested, the extension was a considerable success, although not used by anything so ambitious as the Brighton-Rugby services of recent years. Unfortunately, a shortage of space meant that Ludgate Hill offered just two island platforms, which soon proved insufficient for the traffic on offer and, as expansion was out of the question given the high cost of property and the LCDR’s over-stretched finances, an additional station was built on a spur off the Metropolitan Extension, and it was this that was named St Paul’s when it opened on 10 May 1886.
Despite its popularity, passenger services were cut back during the First World War to terminate at Moorgate from the Midland line to the north, and at Holborn Viaduct for what had become the South Eastern & Chatham from the south. One reason for this was that the line was still steam-worked and therefore very unpleasant as much of it was in tunnel, while much of the inner cross-London traffic had been lost to buses and trams. The lines nevertheless proved invaluable for freight, and during the war years even handled ammunition trains! It remained a freight-only line until 1970 when the short section between Farringdon and Holborn Viaduct was closed. There were separate lower level platforms under the main part of Holborn Viaduct station known as the Snow Hill platforms, and these gave the name to the route. A few local trains used Holborn Viaduct, but most were relegated to a low level station with two platforms used by trains running through to Farringdon, and known initially when it opened on 1 August 1874 as Snow Hill, but changed to Holborn Viaduct (Low Level) on 1 May 1912.
It was not until 1988 that the Snow Hill tunnel was re-opened to passenger trains after seventy-two years, with timetabled cross-London services starting on the full Thameslink network in May 1988. By this time, after overhead electrification completed in 1982, the northern section was run as the Midland City Line service from Bedford along the Midland Main Line to London St Pancras and the City Widened Lines to Moorgate. From the south, services terminated at Holborn Viaduct. South of the river, it divided into two routes with main line running through London Bridge to East Croydon, Gatwick Airport and Brighton. The other route was a branch line serving the inner suburbs.
Initially, trains went via Bromley to Orpington and Sevenoaks, but this was later changed to run via Elephant & Castle and Streatham to West Croydon. After West Croydon the line ran through Carshalton Beeches to Sutton then to Epsom, Leatherhead, and Effingham Junction, finally terminating at Guildford. However, this route crossed the commuter networks of what were to become several different rail companies and the onset of privatisation made the route increasingly difficult. Around 1994 the second branch was cut back to West Croydon. Then, around 1995, a major overhaul occurred when the route was changed completely. Thameslink no longer served the West Croydon route and instead a new route to Sutton was opened up over existing track through Mitcham Junction with the line then continuing on a loop up to Wimbledon and then rejoining itself south of Streatham. It should be noted, however, that morning peak trains only ran in a clockwise direction around this loop, inconvenient for commuters.
When British Rail was privatised, Thameslink was franchised to a subsidiary of Govia. On 1 April 2006, the franchise passed to First Capital Connect. The branding of most trains, stations, and signs has been changed to reflect the name of the new company, but criticism of the loss of what had been widely regarded as an apt name for these services forced First Capital Connect to refer to it as the ‘Thameslink route’.
In the meantime, the importance of the route had been recognised and starting in 1991, British Rail, then Railtrack and finally its successor, Network Rail, started to expand and upgrade Thameslink which was becoming to suffer severe overcrowding at peak hours. Originally called Thameslink 2000, it is now known as the Thameslink Programme. It was left to Network Rail, after the demise of Railtrack, to tackle the main elements of the work once funding was authorised on 24 July 2007. Construction began on 24 October 2007, with Luton Airport Parkway the first station to be extended. The provisional completion date is 2015.
In retrospect, it seems strange that such an important north-south link remained unused by passenger trains for so long, especially when one recalls the Victorian plan for a through line from Charing Cross to Euston.
All change on the Underground
London Regional Transport disappeared in its turn in 2000 to be replaced by yet another new body for the capital’s transport, Transport for London, TfL. While the GLC was long gone, a new elected body, the London Assembly, was created and for the first time a directly-elected Mayor of London was instituted. The first of these US-style mayors was Ken Livingstone, regarded as ‘far left’, even within the Labour Party.
Outright privatisation of the Underground was rejected and would in any case have been politically impossible with Livingstone in power and Labour back in government. Instead, in January 2003, it became a Public-Private Partnership, PPP, with the infrastructure and rolling stock divided between two companies, with one, Metronet, for the sub-surface lines and the other, Tubes Lines, handling the deep level tubes under thirty-year contracts, whilst London Underground Limited remained publicly owned and operated by TfL. As with the main line railways, this was controversial, and the doubters doubtless felt vindicated when Metronet went into administration on 18 July 2007, with its responsibilities passing to TfL. While efforts were made at central government level to find a new operator, at the time of writing TfL seems determined to retain control of the sub-surface lines. Tube Lines seems to be holding steady, but the collapse of Metronet cost the taxpayer some £2 billion, although some of this was offset by payments of £70 million apiece by the five main shareholders in Metronet.
A card for all seasons
The birth of London Transport coincided with a growth in longer distance commuting. Brighton was already a dormitory for the more adventurous, but as faster services spread along the South Coast, other places became important as well. Of course, at first it was the intermediate stations that benefitted most as the non-stop London and Brighton electric trains were no faster than the steam trains that had preceded them, although more consistent, and it was on semi-fast and stopping services that the improvement in journey times was most marked.
Many season ticket holders had an underground journey added to their ticket, saving the need to re-book. While London Transport did issue season tickets for its railway services, it did not do so for bus services. One-day cards for unlimited travel on central buses, the ‘Red Rover’, country buses, the ‘Green Rover’, and all buses, including Greenline coaches, and underground, the ‘Gold Rover’ were available, usually bought at underground stations or travel offices, but the Green Rover had to be bought on the bus, and a lengthy process it was as the ticket had to be punched to mark the date of issue.
A step towards providing an integrated ticketing system was the ‘Travelcard’ which covered all London Transport, and later Transport for London, services and those of the then British Rail within the London Transport zone. There were five Travelcard Zones initially, and cards were issued for a single zone or any number of zones, including an all-zone Travelcard. Buying a longer distance return ticket on the underground after 9.30 am would mean being issued with an all-zones Travelcard – something which was very useful if one arrived at London Heathrow Airport for example.
Far more ambitious was the Oystercard, an electronic ticket, first issued in 2003, and which card-holders ‘top-up’ with money to pay for bus and railway fares, with a maximum ‘stored value’ on the card of £90. An earlier system which effectively acted as a prototype and proved the technology was the Octopus Card, launched in Hong Kong in 1997. Unlike credit cards, Oyster does not actually provide credit and funds have to be added to it. It is valid on the Underground, buses, the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), London Overground, Croydon trams and some main line railway services, although here use is sometimes restricted because of a lack of reader machines at many railway stations. The number of travel zones in London was increased from five to nine with the launch of Oystercard.
The blue, credit-card size Oyster is a stored value smartcard which pays for variety of single tickets, period tickets and travel permits which must be added to the card prior to travel. It can hold up to three season tickets at any one time, so that regular commuters still enjoy the savings of a season ticket as well as the benefits of having an Oystercard. Passengers pass the card over electronic readers when entering and leaving the transport system in order to validate it or deduct funds, except on flat fare services where a single pass on boarding is sufficient. The cards are topped up or recharged at numerous sales points, by credit transfer or by online purchase. Usage has been encouraged by offering substantially cheaper fares on Oyster than payment with cash, so that a £4 minimum fare central zone Underground magnetic card ticket is just £1.60 with Oystercard. On the buses, a flat fare of £2 using a paper ticket is reduced to £1 with Oystercard, with the cost of any number of journeys capped at £3.30 a day. By March 2007 more than 10 million Oyster cards were in circulation, more than the population of Greater London, and more than 80% of all journeys on services run for Transport for London used the Oyster card.
The benefit of the card to Transport for London and its contractors is that it eases accounting and reduces cash transactions. Originally the rights to Oystercard lay with TranSys, the operator, but Transport for London purchased the right to use the name indefinitely in 2008.
In 2005, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, tried to persuade train operating companies to allow Oyster on all of their services within London, but a dispute about ticketing prevented this plan from going ahead. After further negotiations, Transport for London offered to fund the train operating companies with £20m to provide Oyster facilities in London stations; this resulted in an outline agreement to introduce PAYG acceptance across the entire London rail network. The danger is that someone who boards a train and then alights at a station without an Oystercard reader is liable to be charged for a far longer journey than has actually been made. The railway objections are understandable as the system does not really allow for such fares as off-peak day returns, for example.
A variation on the Oystercard is the the free travel pass issued to London residents who are aged over sixty years or are disabled, and which uses the Oystercard. Travel is free at all times on the Underground, Overground, Docklands Light Railway, buses and Croydon Tramlink, and after 9.30 am on some railway routes, while for travel outside these times they need a standard Oystercard or other form of ticket.
The success of the card has been matched by adding new services to it so that it can be used for some non-travel transactions. Plans to introduce an Oystercard for public transport throughout Wales have been mooted, but the geographical limits to the scheme have generated some objections.
The railway companies are introducing their own smart card system, known as the ITSO (standing for Integrated Transport Smartcard Organisation) smartcard. When these are eventually introduced, it will be possible to load one ‘stored journey right’, or e-ticket for railway travel outside Greater London on to the card at ticket offices or self-service machines. There is not enough space on the card for more information to be stored. Travellers starting their journeys outside London will be able to use Oystercards in certain cases, if they are regarded as ‘trusted customers’. The gates or ‘validators’ will calculate the applicable fare on arrival in London.
It is likely that credit held on ITSO smartcards will be usable for pay as you go journeys, but there may be limitations on fare capping, and combining season tickets and pay as you go usage.
ITSO is being slowly introduced with trial schemes in Yorkshire as the ‘Yorcard’ and in both Wales, where a principality-wide scheme is proposed, and in parts of Scotland, while the companies supporting this initiative include ticket machine manufacturers such as Almex and many bus and railway operators such as First Group, Arriva and Stagecoach.
Across London east and west - Crossrail
Thameslink used a disused railway line to revive long-lost connections across London and extended these beyond the suburbs. No such route existed running east to west, possibly because in the early days of the railways, river traffic was still significant, but the Metropolitan and District Lines also provided an east-west route, albeit one that was slow and often required a change of trains. Nevertheless, Paddington failed to offer good fast onward connections to the City and to the new development at Canary Wharf, and it eventually became clear that something faster and more direct was needed, especially with the example of Parisian RER regional expresses putting London’s railways at a disadvantage. The new project became known as ‘Crossrail’, and it has become a matter of controversy concerning both the route and even the question of whether the money spent on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link would have been better spent and benefitted more travellers if it had been devoted to Crossrail.
As a new railway, it required parliamentary approval and the Crossrail Act was passed on 22 July 2008. The plan is for the line to be completed by 2017, with 200-metre long ten-car trains running at two-and-a-half minute frequencies on two routes, the first of which will be a tunnel linking Liverpool Street with Paddington, while there should also be a Chelsea-Hackney line. Costing an estimated £16 billion, it was originally intended to be a joint venture between the Department for Transport and Transport for London, but the latter has now assumed full control and the line will be integrated with the London Underground and the national railway network, with Oystercard being valid, and Travelcards will also be used except for journeys to Heathrow, which will continue to have special fares. The trains will run past Paddington to Heathrow and Maidenhead, and beyond Liverpool Street to Shenfield and Abbey Wood, replacing many existing local services. Plans exist to extend the services westwards to Reading and eastwards to Ebbsfleet, with a station at Woolwich. In the centre, there will be a need for underground stations at Paddington, Bon Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street, Whitechapel and the Isle of Dogs.
In contrast with the early railways, which landowners and others viewed with concern, if not outright fear, many have viewed their community being left off the Crossrail map as a disaster. Early plans considered routes such as Paddington to Richmond and Kingston-upon-Thames, or to Aylesbury, High Wycombe and Watford, or in the east a service to Dartford.
One problem is that the original plan anticipated generous contributions being made by property developers who would see the value of their investment rise with the completion of Crossrail. The economic problems which first became apparent in 2008 have placed such contributions in doubt.
In 2009, work began at Tottenham Court Road station, a particularly difficult site where it is expected to take seven years to complete.
The project still attracts controversy, especially from railway goods operators, who see much of the existing spare capacity in the London area being without additional capacity or new connections being made. In contrast with the early days of the railways, it seems that there will be little impact on housing.
Safety on the privatised railway
The separation of infrastructure, track, signals and stations, from the train operating companies, except on the Isle of Wight, has been widely criticised, although to-date nothing has been done about it. However, safety on the privatised railway, while not without its incidents and even some major accidents, seems on balance to be far better than in earlier years. To a great extent, this is due in part to the design of modern rolling stock, which does not concertina, does not have the bodywork swept off a chassis or underframe, and is less likely to ride up over the adjoining carriage. It is also true that in many railway accidents, luck still plays a part. If the train does not hit a lineside structure or another train when it leaves the track, the chances of serious injuries or fatalities are much reduced. On the other hand, there is the tendency amongst many journalists to immediately and instinctively blame the privatised railway for everything. An accident at Great Heck on the East Coast main line was caused by a motorist whose vehicle and trailer ended up on the line in front of an oncoming express train, which was derailed into the path of a freight train travelling in the other direction, and was not the fault of either train operator or the infrastructure owner.
Just a few months separated the first accident to follow that at Clapham Junction, and the railway had still to be privatised. This was at Purley Station, a popular commuter destination, on 4 March 1989, when a train driver missed the distant signal and then over-ran a home signal at danger, hitting the train in front, killing five people and injuring another ninety, leaving part of one of the trains hanging down an embankment.
Driver inattention was a factor in a number of other accidents in the years that followed. On 8 January 1991, two were killed and no less than 240 injured when a train hit the buffers at Cannon Street. One reason for the number of injuries was the practice of London commuters to be standing at the doors, with them open, ready to jump out before the train actually stopped. The accident led to a renewed push to get rid of ‘slam door’ rolling stock, and also to drivers being forced to crawl into stations rather than brake steadily from the approach speed. Slam door rolling stock had one big advantage, which was that passengers could board and alight from trains quickly, and the change to sliding door rolling stock has seen journey times increase on many routes. The line from Guildford via Cobham to Waterloo now takes longer than in 1929.
Another serious accident was just south of Watford Junction, on Thursday 8 August 1996, when an evening train operated by North London Railways, the predecessor of Silverlink, from Euston passed a red signal and collided with an empty train, killing one person and injuring another sixty-nine. The driver of the train was charged with manslaughter, but later found not guilty when the case reached court.
Even more serious was that at Southall when a Great Western Trains HST running from Swansea to Paddington went through a red light and crashed into a freight train due to driver inattention on 19 September 1997. The accident might have been avoided had the automatic train protection system, APT, been switched on, but the system was troublesome and many drivers preferred to work without it. The leading power car leapfrogged over a heavy goods wagon, but the carriages immediately behind were derailed and six passengers were killed and another 150 injured.
Still more serious was another accident on the lines in and out of Paddington on 5 October 1999, with a head-on collision shortly after 8 am between another London-bound Great Western HST and a Thames Trains diesel multiple unit leaving the station. The first carriage of the DMU was completely destroyed and the driving car of the HST was badly damaged, with fuel vapour from a fractured tank or fuel lines ignited when the driving car struck the overhead wires installed for the Heathrow Express. In the accident and the resulting inferno, thirty-one passengers were killed and another 400 injured; many seriously. The cause of the accident was that driver of the departing train passed a signal at danger, possibly in part due to his inexperience, but also because his view of the signals was found to be obstructed by overhead gantries, for which Railtrack was held responsible
In fact, Railtrack, which was re-nationalised under somewhat controversial procedures shortly after a serious accident at Hatfield, and became Network Rail, was held responsible for a number of serious accidents, and the situation has not improved as quickly as many believe it should since re-nationalisation.
On 17 October 2000, a Great North Eastern Railway InterCity 225 (the reference is to 225 kmph, or 140 mph) from King’s Cross to Leeds, was derailed by a broken rail that seems to have been left undetected for some time, and a restaurant car struck the supporting mast for the overhead wires, or catenary. The four fatalities and many of the thirty-five injured were travelling in the restaurant car, and the casualties would have been far worse had it not been for the structural integrity of the Mk 4 carriages. The fault was laid firmly at the door of Railtrack which had been subcontracting maintenance, a system which is being reversed, but slowly, by Network Rail.
The year 2002 was another very bad period for accidents, again caused by track defects. The first of and the worst of the two accidents was on 10 May at Potters Bar when a West Anglia Great Northern electric multiple unit from King’s Cross to King’s Lynn via Cambridge was running at 97 mph as it approached the station, but as the last carriage passed over a set of points, these failed and the carriage was diverted onto the adjoining line and then derailed, flying into the air and onto the station platform, sliding along it. The first three carriages came to a stand just to the north of the station, having passed through it. Six of the seven people killed in the accident were in the carriage, which had knocked masonry off a bridge onto the street below where the seventh victim was killed. Another seventy people were injured. Despite claims by the maintenance contractor of sabotage, the accident investigation discovered that the bolts holding the stretcher bars had been loosened and gone missing, causing the points to move as the train ran over them. The potential fault had been reported by an employee who was travelling on a train the previous evening when he noticed excessive vibration, but the inspection team had gone to the wrong end of the station.
Later that year, the second accident occurred at Southall East on 24 November, when a high-speed train was derailed due to a broken fishplate (the strip of metal that connects two jointed rails), with ballast being thrown through the windows injuring thirty-one passengers.
Terrorism hits London’s transport
While London had experienced terrorist attacks in the past, including those of Irish nationalist groups, the capital’s transport had not been specifically targeted. This changed on 7 July 2005, when no less than four Islamic suicide bombers exploded their charges on the Underground and bus network. The day became known as ‘7/7’. The three bombs exploded on the Underground were all detonated within fifty seconds of one another, at 8.50 am, while the fourth bomb followed almost an hour later, on a double-deck bus as it passed through Tavistock Square. In all, fifty-six people were killed, including the bombers, and another 700 wounded.
The first bomb on the Underground was on a Circle Line Underground train as it travelled west between Edgware Road and Paddington. The second bomb also damaged a passing eastbound train and a wall that later collapsed. The third bomb exploded on a Piccadilly Line tube train as it ran between King’s Cross and Russell Square, and damaged the tunnel linings as well as two carriages of the train. The fourth bomb exploded on a No 30 bus, with the bomber sitting upstairs, towards the back, so that most of the victims were also at the rear of the bus on both decks. The bus was running off its normal route as it had been diverted following the other bomb attacks.
Transport for London immediately cancelled all Underground services and withdrew bus services from the centre of London - something that did not happen during the Second World War. The loss of life was considerable, but could have been even worse had all of the bombs been detonated on the deep level tube lines rather than just the third bomb. The lack of space between the trains and the tunnel walls would have meant that the bombs would have been much more lethal than on the sub-surface Circle Line. Some believe that the bus bomber had in fact intended to travel by train, but for reasons not known, had delayed boarding a train and opted for a bus instead.