The TfL website does a very poor job in providing any information
about planned engineering works on the London Overground (LO) lines.
Users of the North and West London Lines in particular know full well
that there are often engineering works at the weekend.

The Silverlink Metro website used to offer a clickable calendar so you
could choose a date and find out what, if anything, was going on that
day in terms of planned works - the calendar was basically the same as
that offered by 'one' railway and c2c (which are National Express
companies, as Silverlink was).
http://www.onerailway.com/tickets_ti...ervice_updates
http://www.c2c-online.co.uk/template...es.aspx?id=121


The London Overground section of the TfL website meanwhile offers no
running information whatsoever:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/proj...ices/5011.aspx

OK, so perhaps that's the wrong place to look and one should consult
the "Live travel news" section for such information. Let's go there
instead, and click on the "Rail" tab:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/livetravel...l/default.html

So there's a new prominent link a the top inviting us to "View live
travel news for the new Overground network" - this sends us off to the
LO JouneyCheck website. JourneyCheck is used by many train companies
and whilst it's not something I've ever really used much I'm told it
can be very helpful. Perhaps it is helpful - but only for *live*
travel information - not *future* information.

So let's click on the sub-tab for "This weekend". The same link to the
LO JourneyCheck service appears at the top - but we don't want that,
we're looking for future information. Thus you have to ignore the text
that says "Other London rail operators" - the implication being 'other
than London Overground' - and look down this list for an entry for
London Overground. Voila - there it is, an entry on what's planned for
this weekend (and for the 17 & 18 Nov it's not much, just a platform
change at Clapham Jn).

BUT what about information beyond this weekend - bearing in mind that
Silverlink would provide details of works happening several weeks
ahead. Let's click on "Planned works" and again ignore the "Other
London rail operators" text and look for an entry for London
Overground. Yes, there is one, but it is just the exact same
information about this weekends works, and *nothing* more. Thus the
potential LO traveller cannot find out any information beyond what is
happening this weekend - and even finding that information out was
less than straightforward.

This is something of a retrograde step, and I sincerely hope it will
be rectified. The Tube's "Planned works" section isn't ideal in that
one has to open a PDF of a six month lookahead to get more advanced
information, but there are normally good posters at LU stations
detailing forthcoming works on relevant lines and PDFs of relevant
leaflets detailing planned works on particular lines are sometimes
available on the web. There are also those posters that showing
graphically on a highlighted Tube map what planned closures are
happening in zone 1 for the current (or next) month. AFAICS there are
no such posters at LO stations yet.

And yes, I have sent a message to TfL about this.

In the meantime the best place to obtain information would actually
appear to be teh National Rail website's "Future Enginnering works"
page at:
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/servic...AndFuture.html

A text search for "Overground" will quickly highlight the entries
which will affect London Overground services.

Perhaps TfL don't think Londoners think further ahead than the coming
weekend...