District Line and S stock

I had my first experience of the new and long overdue dot-matrix train describer at Barking station, platform 6, last Sunday. The trains (or more correctly, services) were all described as 'District Line'. I thought, Ok, maybe it's not a good idea to describe them as Ealing Broadway, Richmond or Wimbledon as the correct thing to do is to get the first train and change where appropriate (typically Earl's Court). However, the first train along was a C stock train bound for Hammersmith via Edgware Road.

Admittedly such trains do run on the District Line Wimbledon / Edgware Road Branch, but this was clearly a Hammersmith & City Line Train.

When the new S stock trains entirely take over, the platform and train descriptions will become more important as the type of train stock will not give a clue to its route. The trains on the Metropolitan line will be 8 coaches  long, and those on the District, Circle and H&C will be 7 coaches long. As things currently stand the Met doesn't come to Barking, so even that hard to spot difference won't help.

I say as things currently stand, because there is talk of returning the Met to Barking and running the Ham & City out of Aldgate. This is all rather academic, because all these lines are joined together and all the trains can run any route, in theory. When the trains are all S stock they can run Upminster to Uxbridge if they want.  As they run on largely the same tracks they use largely the same platforms, so changing is dead easy. All they must avoid is service patterns that confuse the customer.

Barking and east London hit hard by weekend tube/railclosures

This weekend there is no District line between Upminster and Embankment, no Jubilee line beween Green Park and Stratford until 1230 No Barking & Gospel Oak line and no Circle line. The Hammersmith and City line, which runs on the same tracks as the District between Barking & Aldgate East, a is running.

I know the work's got to be done, but it is taking a long time. The District line east of Barking seems to be closed weekend after weekend. Last weekend when it was only closed east of Dagenham East I thought the end was in sight.

As to the B and GO, we had a 4 week closure in September and we now have works pretty much every weekend until September. We welcome improvements of course.

Weekend rail closures adversely affect Barking

This weekend (6-7 September):

There is no District line service between East Ham and Upminster (this also applies to weekend of 13-14 September)

There is no Hammersmith & City line service between Whitechapel and Barking

There is no c2c service between Barking and Laindon via Upminster.

The fastest way to travel between central London and Barking is by c2c services.

This is in addition to the Barking and Gospel Oak line being closed from 1-28 September.