On 5 Aug, 19:24, Bruce wrote:

When the line was built, Canary Wharf did not exist as anything other
than a disused wharf. *Until the Reichmann brothers came along with
proposals to develop Canary Wharf into what it is today, there was no
need for a station at Canary Wharf at all. *

But a station was indeed built at Canary Wharf, of similar design to
the others on that stretch of line. It was complete, and even had
signs in the original style, but never opened and I think was at least
partially demolished by the time the line opened. Certainly, it had
completely gone soon afterwards.

Trains actually stopped at the location of this never opened station
for some time because it was still programmed into the control
system. Obviously, the doors did not open. Parts, e,g, canopies,
from the original station were stored nearby, and I think some were
later used when other stations were extended.

The DLR was built as an ultra-low cost light railway, and anything
that wasn't needed was not included. *Heron Quays and West India Quays
were both developed early and got stations.

When Canary Wharf station was built, it had to go between the two
existing stations. *That's why the three are so close together.

It was indeed built between West India Quay and Heron Quays, in
exactly the same location as the original, never-opened, station. I
suppose the extension of all of the stations to accept longer trains
brings their platform ends even closer than they would originally have
been.

Heron quays station was also in the middle of nowhere, and then a
building site. This station was almost totally unused when the line
first opened; there was nothing there. I remember an event, food-
related I think, taking place in a tent there, and that was the first
time that I got off there. West India Quay did see rather more use at
that time.

Once
again, the cost of making all three into one much larger station
spanning wide expanses of water would not have been economic.

(*even more so given the skip-stop service on
some Bank-Lewisham service (peaks?)).

In those days, the Lewisham extension hadn't even been planned, let
alone started. *Once again, you seem to think that people designing
the DLR in the mid-1980s should have been able to predict the exact
future course of development decades ahead ...

The truth is that no-one could have foreseen what would eventually
happen at Canary Wharf. *The idea came completely out of the blue. *It
was quite out of keeping with the then-current plans for Docklands,
which were for low- and medium-rise, low density development with the
primary objective of providing jobs for local people who were made
redundant when the docks and other associated local businesses closed.
The DLR was designed to support this objective. *So why on earth build
a grandiose station for a quay (Canary Wharf) which wasn't expected to
be developed?


The future of the Docklands area was indeed far from certain when the
DLR was being designed and built. Some predicted that the development
of the area would come to nothing, and that the DLR would be an
expensive (all of £77m if I remember correctly) white elephant.
Others predicted that a large-scale development would take, and the
DLR would be totally unable to cope. Neither prediction was totally
unreasonable at the time. Certainly, it would have been quite
impossible to fund anything like the current system at the time.