East London and District

New Cross to Shoreditch
Richmond to Upminster
Wimbledon to Edgware Road
High Street Kensington to Olympia

The East London Line was filmed just a couple of years before its closure and total metamorhosis. Nowadays, forming part of the London Overground, here we can see the old Metropolitan stock as many of us remember them running on the East London Line. Services alternated between the two southern termini of New Cross and New Cross Gate. Our journey on board an ‘A’ stock train begins at the former and takes us through the very oldest part of civil engineering on the underground network, Marc Brunel’s 1843 tunnel under the Thames. Peak services continued to Shoreditch, which is where our journey ends.

Our second journey starts at Richmond, where we board a “D”stock, train, now also history, having been replaced by S stock. Our train takes us over the District Line’s main artery from Earl’s Court along the bottom half of the Circle line to Tower Hill, beyond which the line joins up with the Hammersmith and City line to Barking. We then continue all the way to Upminster alongside the c2c tracks. This most intensive route sees trains running with intervals of only two to three minutes in peak times. The journey time from Richmond to Upminster is approximately 90 minutes.

The Edgware Road branch then follows: Starting at Wimbledon, we travel on board a “C” stock train, at the time, deployed on the Hammersmith and City line as well as the District line's Wimbledon branch.  At first, our train takes us over the former Southern Railway branch to Putney Bridge. Then, after Earl’s Court our train turns north along the western side of the Circle line through Notting Hill Gate to terminate at Edgware Road – the only station shared by District, Hammersmith and City and Circle lines.

Finally there is by far the shortest route on the District: Kensington High Street to Kensington Olympia, at one time running only during exhibitions but in 2005 running daily.

All four routes are shown virtually in real time on this DEV.