South London Line
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The South London Line is an 8.5 mile (13.7 km) horseshoe-shaped Inner London railway route from Victoria to London Bridge via Peckham Rye. It is operated by Southern. The line is in Travelcard Zone 2 apart from the termini, which are in Zone 1.
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[edit] History
[edit] Construction
It owes its existence to the South London Railway Act 1862, which allowed the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR) to take part in this project. The line already existed from Wandsworth Road to Brixton as part of the LCDR main line: the new line was quadrupled between these points and extended to London Bridge. The northern pair (now known as the Chatham lines), with no stations, was used by the LCDR; the southern (now known as the Atlantic lines) by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR). Several stations were shared by the two companies.
[edit] London Ringways
The South Cross Route, one side of the London Motorway Box the innermost ring road of the unbuilt 1960s London Ringways plan, would have paralleled the South London Line between Wandsworth Road and Peckham Rye stations.
[edit] Electrification
The line was a pioneering railway electrification scheme. The opening of the tramways in South London had led to huge passenger losses for the railways - 1.25 million in only six months - and the LBSCR electrified the South London line in an attempt to reverse the tide: it had obtained powers to do so in 1903. On 1 December 1909 the first electric trains began operating. For the first three years, steam trains alternated with the electrics: the latter operated a 15-minute interval service from 7.30am to midnight. In the first year of electric operation, passengers carried almost doubled, from 4 million to 7.5 million.
The electrification used the overhead system at 6700 V AC, supplied by the power station at Deptford. The line was converted to Southern Railway standard third-rail 660 V DC on 17 June 1928.
[edit] Future plans
From Surrey Quays tube station to Wandsworth Road (and thence to Clapham Junction) the South London Line is part of Phase 2 (not yet funded) of the proposed East London Line southern extensions that are planned to form part of the London Overground. There are plans to open one, possibly two, stations on the line at Surrey Canal Road station[1] and Brixton railway station or East Brixton railway station.
In March 2008 the Mayor of London suggested that Transport for London would hope to bring the South London Line into the London Overground network in the near future.[2]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/projectsandschemes/networkandservices/eastlondonrailway/2119.aspx
- ^ http://www.london.gov.uk/londoner/08mar/p3b.jsp?nav=around
[edit] External links
- 'The South London Line And Its Traffic'PDF (1.03 MiB) - a reproduction of a September 1953 article from The Railway Magazine, courtesy of the Southern E-mail Group.
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