A few weeks ago I went to Epping from Leyton, and it seemed to take absolutely ages getting there with the Central line. My idea was to have an express service from Epping, calling at Loughton, Woodford, possibly Leytonstone and Leyton, Stratford, and then from Stratford I’m not really sure. I would say terminate it at Liverpool Street but there probably isn’t space there, so maybe Fenchurch Street could be a possibility? Another idea was to have it as a branch of the Elizabeth line, but that would presumably impact other sections of the line. A final idea I had was to run it over the North London line, calling at Hackney Central and Highbury & Islington, where it would run until Caledonian Road and Barnsbury (but not stop) and then split into two branches: one to either King’s Cross or St Pancras (if either have space) and one on to Camden Road, then using Primrose Hill link to South Hampstead, Kilburn High Road and Queen’s Park, then a new link to Old Oak Common when it’s built. The third idea would probably mean the Watford DC line could then be closed and taken over by the Bakerloo.
I’m not sure if any of these ideas are any good, please provide me with more suitable ones if there are any!
In principle I kind of agree. The journey inwards is quite torturous, and has become more so over the years as Epping has become something of a railhead for a much wider part of Essex, a role for which it isn’t ideally suited.
However an express service just isn’t viable without building extra tracks, which just isn’t going to happen. Even just to do a peak-flow express service you’d need a third track probably from Loughton to Leytonstone, which in turn would mean rebuilding four stations. To make things work smoothly you’d probably have to introduce grade-separation at Woodford Junction, which would cost a fortune if it’s viable at all.
There’s also the issue that many of the intermediate stations are busy in their own right, the only quieter ones are Theydon Bois and Buckhurst Hill. So realistically an express service would have to be something like Epping-Debden-Loughton-Woodford-Leytonstone. If you wanted to omit Debden and Loughton then there will need to be a decent stopping service from as far back as Epping, which is going to make pathing seriously difficult.
I guess you could do Epping, Theydon Bois, Debden, Loughton, then fast to Leytonstone, if you had a third track, in the peak direction only. That would work from a passenger flow point of view so long as there was a decent enough solution to local journeys. But enormous cost to save a few minutes on a few journeys. And bear in mind that it is going to add zero capacity, as that’s essentially fixed by the central London section.
Inwards of Leytonstone there’s essentially zero prospect of any non-stopping. Leyton is too busy, Stratford and Mile End are complete non-starters, so that just leaves Bethnal Green. And that’s before one considers the infrastructure work necessary.
With the enormous cost, one has to question the benefit. Indeed if you’re going to spend a lot of money, would be more worthwhile to look at splitting off Epping altogether and returning it to national rail?
