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What’s wrong with the Piccadilly line?

orestad

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10 Aug 2025
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London
The state of the Piccadilly has gone from poor to horrid, particularly the Uxbridge - Acton Town branch.

Whenever delays start coming up, that branch is first to get on the chopping block and have the services severely reduced or just not show up at all. Last week when there were minor delays due to a fault somewhere on the east side, no trains were going to Uxbridge or Rayners Lane from King’s Cross. When they were, it was well over 20 minutes since the last one presumably. It felt more like a suspension of that branch rather than minor delays on the entire line.

Fire alerts have been common place on the Piccadilly recently too, this week there being an Acton Town fire alert which made them throw their hands up in the air and not have any trains come in or come out from King’s Cross StP, especially any towards Uxbridge or Rayners again. I understand fire alerts can cause bad delays, but I don’t believe there to have been an actual fire at Acton Town which would’ve made no trains pass through the station. Usually they just pass through at a slow speed. If I’m wrong though, please do enlighten me because I am genuinely curious as to why that fire alert basically suspended the service.

Most of the time now whenever I do get an Uxbridge service, they change it either last minute on the stretch from Hammersmith to Acton or soon after leaving King’s Cross to a Heathrow service. I genuinely have no theories as to why they do this and it completely baffles me - surely it’s not to regulate the service because there is a regular service from Heathrow, far more regular than Uxbridge!

Services from the west end from the Uxbridge branch don’t even go to Cockfosters anymore, they just now go to Arnos Grove and it’s very annoying. If I wanted to go Cockfosters then I’d have to change at Acton Town which is a pain in the arse because I’d have to join a busy service from Heathrow. This week, though, the first train going into central London which should be the 5:27 from Sudbury Hill now only goes to Acton Town which poses the same issue of having to change at Acton Town and it delays my journey even more. No communication was put out to say that this change could be due to the strikes, only that regular service will resume on Friday and Wednesday. I do wish they wouldn’t prioritise the Heathrow services so much like they’re the golden child because I do also want to get home on my end of the branch and hate having to fight with this line pretty much every day.

If anybody’s got any knowledge as to why these things have started to happen more often on the Pic, then I’d greatly appreciate it.
 
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The exile

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Services from the west end from the Uxbridge branch don’t even go to Cockfosters anymore, they just now go to Arnos Grove and it’s very annoying. If I wanted to go Cockfosters then I’d have to change at Acton Town which is a pain in the arse because I’d have to join a busy service from Heathrow.
Er, no, you wouldn’t. You could change at any station between Acton Town and Arnos Grove. By the time the trains get beyond Finsbury Park I suspect the loading difference between a Heathrow starter and one coming from your neck of the woods is minimal compared with the difference caused by the length of time since the preceding train.
 

Dstock7080

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1 June 2026, fire discovered on 44 points, just west of Acton Town pfm.2 15.45.
Trains held while visual assessment was performed.
Trains held westbound on approach to station for 8-9mins.
All trains then routed via pfm.1.
DRM Duty Reliability Manager on site requested LFB.
All responders arrive 16.15, traction current discharged.
Fire extinguished, all staff returned to platform, traction current restored 16.45. After period of monitoring by LFB, all clear given for trains to run 17.05.

If travelling to Cockfosters and an Arnos Grove train appears, why change at a busy Acton Town rather than a quieter Arnos Grove?
05.27 ex-Sudbury Hill is now scheduled a Rayners Lane-Arnos Grove train.
From 2022-2026, there were no trains between 05.18 and 05.39 at Sudbury Hill.
 
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orestad

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London
You could change at any station between Acton Town and Arnos Grove.
Fair enough, I could. I’m used to changing at Acton Town for everything so my immediate assumption was to change at Acton Town. Beyond Acton Town it gets busy so not ideal to change in central London, but yes, fair enough, changing at Arnos Grove is a fair shout.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==

05.27 ex-Sudbury Hill is now scheduled a Rayners Lane-Arnos Grove train.
From 2022-2026, there were no trains between 05.18 and 05.39 at Sudbury Hill.
That’s not true, I take the 5:27 every morning when I’ve got early shifts. After that it’s the :39, :49 and then the :58.

TfL’s own journey planner also begs to differ.
 

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announcements

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Fair enough, I could. I’m used to changing at Acton Town for everything so my immediate assumption was to change at Acton Town. Beyond Acton Town it gets busy so not ideal to change in central London, but yes, fair enough, changing at Arnos Grove is a fair shout.
The reason being the trains sometimes change their destination, so the advice would be to board the first train and change later. The amount of times I've been on an Arnos Grove terminator and it has changed later on to a Cockfosters. Similarly, just because you've waited for a specific Cockfosters train at Acton Town, it doesn't guarantee it won't terminate early at Arnos Grove (or even Wood Green!) later on.

Even if the train remains an Arnos Grove for the duration of your journey, quite often when you reach Arnos Grove, there is already a Cockfosters train already on the adjacent platform ready to change across platform to.
 
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orestad

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what isn’t true? I said the 05.27 is now an Arnos Grove train:


Prior to 12 January 2026 that train didn’t exist.
You said ex-Sudbury Hill so the general assumption is that that train doesn’t run from Sudbury Hill anymore and since you said 5:27 Rayners Lane - Arnos Grove, the general assumption again is that it’s Rayners Lane’s departure time, not Sudbury Hill’s. You also said 2022-2026 there wasn’t a 5:27 service (“ there are no trains between 5:18 and 5:39 leaving Sudbury Hill”). So again, general assumption is that you meant there wasn’t a Sudbury Hill train at 5:27.

And yes, before January it used to be the 5:17 and I’m well aware of that. There was a schedule change in that month and it pushed that train 10 minutes later to what is now the 5:27.
 

Chiltern 165

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particularly the Uxbridge - Acton Town branch
I second this.

Whenever I look at one of the status boards theres always something going on with that section
having to change at Acton Town
Depending on your location on the brand, a better solution is to take the Metropolitan line to Kings Cross and change for the Piccadilly there - the Metropolitan generally has nicer trains and service than the Piccadilly.
 

gfa

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I'm over on the east side and have found the service to be pretty good recently - rarely large gaps. I don't envy you on the west side - it seems to be closed more weekends than its open over there.
 

Dstock7080

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I'm over on the east side and have found the service to be pretty good recently - rarely large gaps. I don't envy you on the west side - it seems to be closed more weekends than its open over there.
Several east closures coming up, including a 3-day midweek Tuesday-Thursday Uxbridge/Acton Town-Cockfosters in August
 

gfa

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Several east closures coming up, including a 3-day midweek Tuesday-Thursday Uxbridge/Acton Town-Cockfosters in August
Not looking forward to that but thankfully have backup NR (as does most of the east side). Bit annoying though as its almost double the price!
 

81A

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Likely (and the engineering works certainly are related to) more unreliable due to the upcoming transition from 1973 stock to 2024 stock. I believe maintenance is being run down on the old 73 stock (and a few have been scrapped) due to their upcoming withdrawal but none of the new 24 stock trains are in service yet.
 

Alxxxs

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Taking Piccadilly Line from Sudbury Hill to Cockfosters is so weird geographically given the huge curve through Central London. Surely there needs to be a faster more direct bus if not a tram. In fact, even cycling between them is a bit faster than taking the tube.
 

The exile

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You said ex-Sudbury Hill so the general assumption is that that train doesn’t run from Sudbury Hill anymore
Whose “general assumption”? Yours presumably. Time ex station is a reasonably widespread usage for “the train leaving station at time”.
 

317 forever

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Taking Piccadilly Line from Sudbury Hill to Cockfosters is so weird geographically given the huge curve through Central London. Surely there needs to be a faster more direct bus if not a tram. In fact, even cycling between them is a bit faster than taking the tube.
245 to Wembley Park, 79 to Edgware and 384 to Cockfosters seems likely to be the quickest route by bus.
 

orestad

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Whose “general assumption”? Yours presumably. Time ex station is a reasonably widespread usage for “the train leaving station at time”.
I wasn’t aware of that term at all. ‘Ex’ in front of a word indicates that it’s non existent, especially as we were on the topic of non existent trains. I think wording just has to be more careful in those situations so misunderstandings don’t arise.
 

Cesarcollie

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I wasn’t aware of that term at all. ‘Ex’ in front of a word indicates that it’s non existent, especially as we were on the topic of non existent trains. I think wording just has to be more careful in those situations so misunderstandings don’t arise.

It‘s a perfectly acceptable usage. Comes from the Latin ‘ex’ - which means ‘out of’ or ‘from’. So pretty common in transport applications, though probably less widely used nowadays other than maybe internally. ‘Out of’ is the same origin which has led to the other meaning (eg ex Prime Minister).
 

orestad

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Like I said, I wasn’t aware of the term at all. I didn’t say it wasn’t unacceptable. Can we please leave that part of the discussion in the past and move forward instead of circling around it?
 

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