Retro: the East London Line

The below is a lightly-tweaked bit of flotsam written in 2008, by me and my chum @urpert.  It was published in the excellent London journal Smoke thenabouts.  I'm putting it here to correct some of my criticism in implying that the East London Line is only of use for those going from Anerley to Shoreditch.  Indeed, the new ELL has the best and most functional rolling stock of any London train line.  Furthermore, the reopened line can, of course, also be used to go from Brockley to Wapping.  

Standing at a pre-Christmas Whitechapel Station with a very cold face and beery breath, I checked my watch again and continued waiting for the train to arrive. Taking only 15 minutes end-to-end, and comprising just 8 stations, the East London Line seemed a far more manageable pub crawl than a suicidal multi-binge on the Circle Line, or hours spent trying to find the Monopoly's Coventry Street to get a pint there. Furthermore, the ELL was shortly to be parked in the sidings until June 2010, so this was one of the last few days that I could think of a reason to use the stunted little tartrazine-coloured line. However, with fewer trains than even the piss-poor (and pink) Hammersmith and City bothers to run, this crawl involved more sobering up and standing around than I'd expected.

My only other experience of the ELL was after an ill-advisedly large lunchtime curry on Brick Lane. Waddling around with a madras-packed phantom pregnancy, I decided that it'd save vital footsteps to catch a train south from Shoreditch, rather than stagger to Aldgate East. This, bafflingly, required waiting for the station to reopen after its lunch break. I then stood, alone, on the single platform with nothing to look at but a mysterious tunnel through which the trains didn't run. The tracks, sprouting grass and in a trench of neglected Victorian brickwork, looked like a giant unloved Hornby set. Only after some time did an errant Metropolitan Line train, having perhaps taken a wrong turn at Chesham [posh] and ended up in Tower Hamlets [grim], finally arrive to carry my pendulous, spiced belly back towards civilisation.

I'll have a standard curry, please.

Perhaps the ELL is one of those amusing but crap quirks of London history, like Lambeth North station or the entirety of Notting Hill. Running awkwardly along the right hand side of the Journey Planner, the ELL was the only Tube line not to enter Zone 1; it thoughtfully prevented itself from becoming overcrowded and/or useful by being the only Tube line not to serve a real London terminus. Which was done deliberately to take the piss out of Fenchurch Street, one presumes.

Useful.

Of interest to the historically-inclined, the ELL bravely chuffed through the pioneering Thames Tunnel, as carved by Brunel's Dad using only his bare forearms and a teaspoon (or something). As a wizened, salt-of-the-earth East Londoner, the ELL has lived through many world-shaking events, including World War II and the Thatcherite moulding of once-proud Surrey Docks into the plexiglass portal to foulness of Surrey Quays Shopping Village and Lifestyle Experience^TM.

A ring-road symphony of PoMo in brown.

What a nice vernacular hat that tower is wearing.

When it re-opens in 2010, the ELL will be subject to some inventive re-branding by TfL, placing stations in Underground-starved South London literally on the map. Unlike the late-90s Jubilee Line extension, no fresh tunnelling is required to complete the ELL; rather, it will be made by linking together existing bits of mainline track and changing over some station signs to form the tangerine flagship of the London Overground (currently boasting indirect services to hateful parts of North London, at least twice daily). This first phase of the extension will link Croydon [pregnant chavs] to Hoxton [foolish haircuts] and beyond, via Canada Water's curiously literal interpretation of the Journey Planner's right-angle interchange with the Jubilee Line.

The alleged second phase of ELL construction, which currently has no money and no schedule for building, will allow estate agents to abuse us with the notion that there will shortly be a Tube line running directly from Clapham Junction to Islington. This will delight the stupid and/or northern bumpkins who believe these are the only two places one can live in London. Of course no-one, ever, will actually make that journey; not deliberately, anyway. At least being on the East London Line will be more useful than being on the much-vaunted 'Meridian Line', which presumably led to a lot of disgruntled commuters in Hither Green ['up and coming'] finding themselves stuck with no useful transport links to anywhere other than Dartford [edgy] or Orpington [neglected].

Textbook example of drunken lamppost photography.

Incidentally, New Cross and Canary Wharf are in the background.

Finally ensconced in a naff 70s New Cross armchair in a tediously expensive student pub, I drank my tediously expensive 'World Lager' (Heineken) amid faintly embarrassed students with asymmetric haircuts, each of whom wished the ELL had already been completed so their barnets could be conveyed on the fast, efficient service to Hoxton. I admired the view of the New Cross station shed, the flashing light atop Canary Wharf blinking lonely morse into the night, and thought of the imminent demise of the forked orange lifeline of a very small area of South East London. I drained my glass and set off towards the Romulus of the ELL's princely twin termini, New Cross Gate, one last time.

 Farewell, old friend. I am pissed and you were orange.