I was at Barking this morning and just missed the Gospel Oak train I wanted to take me to Leyton Midland. When I heard an announcement about a C2C service to Stratford and Liverpool Street, I caught that train instead and changed at Stratford to the Central Line. Very convenient. A lot of other people got out at Stratford too.

Barking and Stratford are two of the main passenger interchange stations in suburban London. There is a railway line connecting them but no regular service. I assume the main reason for this is the high frequency of trains between Stratford and Romford. (I wonder if "specials" will be laid on during the Olympics)

It would be a major improvement to the London Overground service if the Richmond to Stratford service could be extended to Barking. Is this completely unworkable?

"Robin9" wrote in message
...

I was at Barking this morning and just missed the Gospel Oak train I
wanted to take me to Leyton Midland. When I heard an announcement about
a C2C service to Stratford and Liverpool Street, I caught that train
instead and changed at Stratford to the Central Line. Very convenient. A
lot of other people got out at Stratford too.

Barking and Stratford are two of the major passenger interchange
stations in suburban London. There is a railway line connecting them but
no regular service. I assume the main reason for this is the high
frequency of trains between Stratford and Romford. (I wonder if
"specials" will be laid on during the Olympics)

I'd assume there is no platform capacity at Liverpool St to allow c2c to run
there routinely, but it is the alternative terminal when there is weekend
engineering work on, such as yesterday and today.

The occasional weekday timetabled services are very much offpeak and are
purely to provide the driver route knowledge for use during engineering
works. Chiltern's daily service into Paddington has a similar rationale.

There is already a cunning plan for the Olympics, which is to stop far more
c2c services at West Ham. (Hence all the recent resignalling works.)

It would be a major improvement to the London Overground service if the
Richmond to Stratford service could be extended to Barking. Is this
completely unworkable?

Probably considered unnecessarily complicated with various flat crossings
needed at busy junctions, and the need to use the fast lines at Stratford.

Paul S