Unblocking the Croydon Bottleneck

If they can sort this out and restore trains at peak back to EC it will be great. I’m alwahs stuck between Norwood Junction and EC. However, I imagine this will take lots of work and may in the short term make things worse

I think it is unlikely that any of the additional routes would be used for stopping services to London Bridge, even in the morning and evening peak when there are particularly few stopping services. More likely they would improve the journey for passengers on the fast lines.

And don’t be surprised if they decide our trains need to be sacrificed to allow any work to take place.

But I am very cynical when it comes to rail ‘improvements’.

And don’t be surprised if they decide our trains need to be sacrificed to allow any work to take place

How do you expect people to work on the lines with trains running? I would have thought stopping them for big engineering works was a fairly obvious necessity.

I think they set an expectation with all the London Bridge disruption that things would get a lot better after that was completed. Sadly the trains seem worse than ever and the timetable changes mean I can’t even get directly to East Croydon in the morning rush hour.

Perhaps if the trains did delivery some actual improvements we could be more hopeful.

I’m in the same boat as you. It’s a shambles if you need to get somewhere via Croydon

Having seen the flyover at New Cross Gate for the Overground and the Bermondsey dive-under near London Bridge, it is so obvious that some sort of flyover at Norwood Junction or perhaps even a double-decker railway station would reduce congestion.

I think they already intend to add an additional platform at East Croydon.

The whole London-Brighton mainline needs capacity improvement, badly. The new London Bridge and Bermondsey dive-under are just a part of that. It is going to take time, and a whole lotta money, but at the end of it, I don’t think there is any reason why we shouldn’t get full stopping services again (eventually). More detail (than most would ever want) here:

The improvements will allow London Overground to stable trains outside Norwood Junction station. It should also allow them to operate 6tph to West Croydon. (This would be created by switching an extra 2tph to Crystal Palace to WCY instead).