[originally posted to uk.railway]
[x-posted to uk.transport.london]

On May 6, 6:52*am, Stephen Furley wrote:
The day before I started the course in Wokingham last week I was told
that I was being sent on another one for four days this week. *Nothing
for several years, then two in two weeks.This one is in London, close
to Ladbroke Grove Underground station, *I decided the best way to get
there was train to Shepherds Bush, and then walk from there. *I
haven't used the West London Line recently, the last time was just
after Imperial Wharf station opened, and that was only as far as
Kensington Olympia. *The trains used to not be full, except during
major events at Earls Court, and even then there were not usually many
people standing. *I was expecting to have to stand from Smitham to
Clapham Junction, but not on the West London. *On Tuesday I was on a
Southern train terminating at Shepherds Bush, and was a few minutes
late getting to the venue, so yesterday I went earlier and caught a
London Overground train, going through to Gospel Oak. *Both were very
heavily loaded; a match for anything on the peak-hour Southern. *What
has changed the situation s much in such a short time? *Shepherds Bush
station was open when I last used the line, though I didn't go hat
far, indeed, I'd never been through the station until Tuesday. *There
were quite a few schoolboys who got out at West Brompton, but
presumably they would have been using that station for some years.

The obvious answer would seem to be the opening of the Westfield
Centre, but I wasn't travelling in either direction during shopping
hours, and few of the evening passengers showed any evidence of being
shoppers. *I suppose some of them could have been staff at the Centre,
the times would have been about right for that, but if the trains are
so full at the times I used them, what are they like when they are
full of shoppers, and shopping?

Shepherds Bush station itself is very busy, and very crowded; is it
going to be able to cope in future? *If so many people are using the
station even outside shopping hours, surely this indicates that the
station was needed before; why was it not built until almost seventy
years after Uxbridge Road closed?

Are the trains this full all day?

I don't know at quite what time of day you used the line, and when you
last used it, but the WLL has become increasingly popular over the
past several years (i.e. looking back over the past decade - and
bearing in mind that the Clapham Jn to Willesden Jn service was only
re-introduced in the mid-90's). It's become pretty well used
throughout the day - both London Overground (LO) (formerly Silverlink
Metro) and Southern services - and during the peaks it has been packed
for some time. Note that this was the case *before* the opening of
Shepherd's Bush station and the subsequent opening of the Westfield
shopping centre - the latter has of course particularly led to further
increases in off-peak traffic on the line.

From today's perspective it's easy to say that the line used to be
something of an underutilised resource for passenger traffic,
considering how popular it is today - it;s success mirrors that of the
North London Line (and indeed, as you know, some peak trains run
through past Willesden Jn onto the NLL - more such through running is
to come throughout the day once NLL improvements are finished) -
indeed it almost seems blindingly obvious that passenger services on
this line would be a hit, and bemusing to think that they didn't exist
before the mid-90's. However travel patterns change, demographics
change, traffic congestion changes the picture, etc etc etc. In the
past there wasn't either the demand or the perceived demand for such
trains, with people using buses and cars for making such orbital
journeys, or routing themselves through central London, or just not
making such journeys at all.