To be a bore, the line is extra quiet thesedays for a few reasons. - Service used to run to/from Paddington. Now it doesn't even run to Broadway. - West Ealing entrance got moved towards Drayton Green which means it maybe isn't worth getting the shuttle 1 stop (it involves an extra zone, the latter is in 4) - Service doesn't get held if connecting Liz is late, nor vice versa - Hanwell (which is quite busy thesedays) is another alt option for many who might otherwise use CBP or DGN
@@Eurobrasil550 Yeah I forgot who I was talking to lol. Another point is that, back in the day, the train went to/from Platform 14 at PAD 99% of the time. From there, you used to be able to get to the H&C Line platforms with no barriers - just up one stairs, walk 15m and then down another. So that was pretty neat and enabled you to get to places pretty quick.
@@metamodernbarbellI used to be a regular commuter for a year living in Ladbroke Grove commuting to Greenford for work at GSK using this very route but in reverse way back in the day. As you say very convenient
How is Hanwell station near Castle Bar or Drayton Green? The Bunny Park sure but both of those stations are the other side if the main road (and over the hill for Castle Bar).
Castle Bar Park is round the corner from Ealing Rugby too, so on match days there will be an uptick in passengers. Their attendances are not huge but I have seen it a bit busier on matchdays
I think the other shuttle lines to do in London are the Emerson Park line (which everyone knows), Stratford - Meridian Water (a lot of recently built stations there), and Bromley North (which I haven't seen anyone cover yet)
@@MichaelCampinThat one usually has through trains at both ends these days, to and from Fenchurch Street and Southend Central via Stanford-le-Hope and Pitsea.
@@ianmcclavin so Upminster used to have 2 connecting lines, one to Romford via Emerson Park Halt, usually a 2 car DMU and the line to Grays via South Ockendon and Lakeside but an EMU. So are they now going to Grays via Upminster from Fenchurch Street as well as Grays via Dagenham Dock since HS1 was built
When I used that line, in the 90s, to get from my high school playing fields in South Greenford to Ealing Broadway, it was a 1 car train which we called... the push n pull. 🙂
I've been there! I looooved going to Drayton Green on my trip to london in early august. I walked most of the line, getting out at West Ealing and just visiting each station. It was so quiet! I loved it a lot.
A very useful line, running north/south across the borough, and used to have much bigger numbers when it ran through to Paddington, also it joins up the two westbound branches of the Central line, it’s also being used to trial battery powered trains with fast charging plates at either end. No Sunday service should be mentioned, as that distorts the stats……
Point to point ideas: Mill Hill (London) - Mill Hill (Blackburn) via Mills Hill (Greater Manchester) And Newcastle Metro at Monument, Newcastle, Heworth & Sunderland
You could cover the whole network on 3 trains. South Hylton - Airport. Airport to monument, walk for 10 minutes to st james (or get a train for 1 stop), train alllll the way around to south shields. It would only take a few hours.
When Greenford services started running into Paddington (previously they had terminated at Ealing Broadway) there was a big increase in passenger numbers using the branch. Sadly the service has been rendered next to useless now that it terminates at West Ealing, because not all Crossrail trains even stop there.
It was at Greenford Football Club about 8 or 9 years ago, where I first came across those now ubiquitous Green Ring-Neck Parakeets that have made London their home :)
Thanks for a great video - that route is so bonkers I had to try it myself. Interestingly Greenford station is one of the very few stations where pax can take an escalator UP to the platforms ! Even more bonkers perhaps! 😂
If you are at Castle Bar Park, it is probably going to be quicker to get the E11 bus to Ealing Broadway than wait for the train to West Ealing. Or if you are not right next door to the station, there will be a different option that is even better than walking to that station. That branch line should be handed over to TFL, and they should either run a much more frequent Overground service, make it a branch of the Central Line, or make it a branch of the Elizabeth Line. If they made it a branch of the Elizabeth line, they should run some of the trains that currently terminate at Paddington down the branch.
Until the Elizabeth Line adaptation started, the Greenford to West Ealing sevice used to exrend regularly to Ealing Broadway and Paddington; nowdays only the last journey of the day does so. In the 80's, Ealing Broadway used to be the terminus, with trains shunting into a siding which has since been removed, dovetailing in and out of Paddington connections. The West Ealing terminus is therefore a relatively recent "innovation."
The whole Hertford Loop line is quite interesting. Just a shame it got cut down to only 2 tph due to COVID and hasn't been restored since despite it being promised - there was a train every 10 minutes off peak (!) before.
The Greenford Line hails from a time when the early railway companies like Great Western Railway (not the modern company using it's name) were building far too many branches for the mainlines to cope with. The original priorities were picking up and dropping off freight and having railways let them get more customers. Those companies even build some railways to block rival railway companies from building near to their "territory". The original plans for Paddington were going to be a bit like Crossrail, as the Metropolitan Railway Company built the top half of what we now call the Circle Line to take broadgauge trains. So, there could have hypothetically been trains running up the Greenford Line that went beyond Paddington, if GWR and the Metropolitan Railway had not fallen out. The big problem with having lots of brachlines is that it is difficult to timetable trains to meet up and go onto the mainline and get into the area that most people want to get to. From what I have seen there are three ways around this that seem to work: 1) Giving one or more branchlines to other railways, 2) Using automated train control to squeeze more trains into the central section, 3) Creating an isolated system (that doesn't interface with other trains). The original GWR went for Option 1 with the line from Paddington to Hammersmith. That line is now called the Hammersmith and City Line and is now also used by Circle Line trains. And it's been much better off since GWR gave it away. (A similar thing happened twice with the line to Stanmore. First the Metropolitan Railway Company gave the branch to the Bakerloo Line. Then recently the Bakerloo Line was split in two and that branch was given to the Jubilee Line. The service that branch gets today is better than it ever got under the two previous operators, as all the trains now go to Stanmore.) Option 2 was used for Thameslink. Thameslink got some very expensive automation software for the core, so that trains could run automatically through the most congested section. The trains are driven manually outside of the core (and can be driven manually inside the core if necessary) but the automation makes all the trains slow down and speed up automatically, so that you don't have individual trains stopping at red signals and a few extra trains can be squeezed through. Option 2 could also have been used by Crossrail, but the government cheaped out and forced the people setting up Crossrail to design trains that can work with three different types of signalling systems. (I'm guessing this is the primary reason for some Crossrail trains turning back east at Paddington.) The best example of Option 3 is probably the Victoria Line (aka "The Ninety Second Railway"). Whenever people talk about not having the capacity to run more trains in parts of the country outside London, I always think of the Victoria Line as an example of why this is a nonsense claim. But the key thing that makes it possible for the Victoria Line to almost hit one train every 90 seconds is that it does not interact with any other railway lines. So there is no difficult scheduling conflicts to work out. They even got rid of the trains that used to turn back to London, part way up the route, to make the service more simple to operate (so that more trains could be crammed onto the line). From what I understand the Greenford Line trains routinely running through West Ealing to Ealing Broadway, or beyond, have been binned off to allow Crossrail to absorb and expand the Heathrow Connect service. Essentially one group of passengers has been given a terminating platform, so that other passengers get more trains. (There is still the Parliamentary service from Paddington in the evening. And I've heard there is also a weird bus at Ealing Broadway that is an unadvertised "Railway Replacement Bus" that replaces another train that used to go along the line and off to somewhere beyond Greenford.) Annoyingly, even though the Greenford Line is now mostly run as an isolated system (option 3), and could have many more trains, they are only giving it one train every half hour. I wouldn't say the new GWR is "running a service". I'd say they are "running down the service". Poor passenger stats would appear to make the DfT think that the service doesn't need extra trains. But we have seen with London Overground, that going to four trains per hour makes more people use a line. The Victoria Line has a couple of cheats, to make the frequency higher. Firstly they run trains at 30 MPH, which lets you run trains closer together. Secondly they get the drivers to "step back". With the Greenford Branch now only having a single platform at each end, it would probably be harder to get more than one train every ten minutes without running the risk of a train-related problem gumming up the entire system. But they certainly should be able to do at least 15 minutes. Option 1 is something that should have been considered at the same time as Crossrail. I don't think it would have been good to have made Greenford a branch of Crossrail, as the trains are far too long for the Central Line station and splitting the line would eat up capacity that should go to Heathrow or Reading. But there are two railway lines that currently terminate at Ealing Broadway, that could easily have been extended on to West Ealing and then joined onto the Greenford Branch to greatly extend out either the District Line or the Central Line. With the District Line using big trains and the Central Line using low trains, I think it would have made more sense to extend the Central Line to Greenford. That would also allow all Central Line trains to run from West Ruislip via Ealing Broadway during engineering works. (Sadly someone in the local council, seems to have allowed a few big buildings to be built smack next to the railway path. So the easy win would not be quite so easy. A TBM couldn't go underneath a tower block, without the risk of it falling over. You would probably end up needing to build an elevated railway line from Ealing Broadway to West Ealing (with ramps at each end). It is entirely do-able. And worth doing. But it took people nearly 100 years to get people to stop blocking Crossrail. Whatever we do, GWR should not be in charge of this railway any more. The Grenford Line service isn't as bad as the intentionally unusable service that GWR runs once a week at Pilning, but it's the same sort of massaging of stats to justify not improving things.) The chairman of GWR could have demanded that all Crossrail trains stop at West Ealing to make the Greenford Line connection more useful. The chariman of GWR could be trying to run a service that links up with Crossrail and the Central Line. This is a bit of unloved track and should be passed over to TfL.
It's so quiet that I think the trains themselves long for a run on it, hours of trundling up and down without having anyone ruin its interior. I can find no other explanation for why the train on the Windsor and Eton Central branch line this afternoon suddenly had an unaccountable daydream and announced to a trainload of bewildered tourists that it was going to Greenford. (Very Thomas the Tank Engine, I'm so sorry.)
Two Car Train. Pah!. Have you never been in The North? One Car, if you're lucky... AND a half hourly service!, this is a thing unheard of round here... >chunter
I grew up a few houses away from Drayton Green station, in the 70s & 80s when it was an ole slam-door single carriage service. It was always a relatively quiet station too back then. 🙂
I used the line regularly in the 1980s when Castle Bar Park was the closest station to the GWR Sports Ground which is now the apartments you mention or the Ealing Rugby ground another commentator has mentioned.
Thanks for that, one of my local lines! It only survives because it's a goods and diversionary route, if it was passengers only it would have been closed and lifted years ago! I also strongly suspect that it's well subsidised by Ealing Council. 🙂
Did that line once on a diverted Virgin West Coast train from Birmingham to London Euston. You should have pointed out the semaphore signals on the former Great Western main line to Birmingham that you can see from the London bound Underground Line.
If you lived reeaally close to Drayton Green station, it would be logical to memorise the Greenford branch timetable so you can conveniently hop on it to travel anywhere, despite the service only being half-hourly. But I guess there’s also a proportion of people living near Drayton Green who literally *never* use the station. Btw at the start of the vid you mentioned that as consequence of the Elizabeth Line, Liverpool Street is now the UK’s busiest. But this made me wonder, how are the Elizabeth Line passengers who use Liverpool St from the Moorgate station end of the platforms counted? Is the entry/exit counting system really smart enough to know that I’ve tapped out at Moorgate but definitely have come from the Liv St Elizabeth Line platform?
Hi Nick, Please do the Marlow or Henley lines (or both) they are lovely lines, seeing the 165 reminded me of when i worked on Thames Trains. Interestly one of my jobs was Station Manager at Ealing broadway, which the greenford staions (and Acton to west dryton) come under. I worked for them first on trains and then moved to station managent (Ealing B & then Oxford) from 1998 to 2002. great times, great TOC and amazing people.
On a non train related note. The way you ( people from the north ) say castle sounds nicer, even though I'm from London and would say it more like carstle 😊
It really bothers me that this service is GWR because it's unconnected from the rest of their network now the Elizabeth Line is here. Should be an Overground line really in the same vein as Romford to Upminster.
Even as someone who used to have to connect between Ealing and Greenford for work this branch line is useless (even more sonnow it only goes to West Ealing). No connection to central London and the E1 is nuch nore effective as a shuttle for anyone going between the two town centres. (The E11 even runs directly above the track between Castle Bar and Drayton Green)
While you're in the Greater London area, how about a pointless journey from either Catford to Catford Bridge or Epsom Downs to Tattenham Corner? If you go for the latter, I'd love to provide (relatively) local knowledge.
...and now the next one to tick off, the Bromley North branch line! Which is one of London's shortest/quickest branch lines with a total end-to-end journey time of 5 minutes. And with the Class 465s on that line, the whole thing will feel like a weird case of "Deja vu" from the Greenford branch you've just visited.
Way back when in 2011 me and my friends were touristing in London visiting a friend who’d recently moved there. We went on a bit of a walk in the parkland around the river Brent, not having a particular route or destination in mind. At some point we reached that point where you start thinking about the way home. We saw a station nearby on the map and thought we’d head that way and navigate our way through the transport network back to base. That station was South Greenford. And the next train was in 46 minutes. We were baffled. We were in one of the biggest cities in the world with one of the best transport networks and we found ourselves within visual range of Wembley Stadium at a station with an hourly service?! We elected to wait. It was rather boring as you’d imagine. But the reward was neat. A DMU showed up and chugged along all the way to Paddington (where it terminated back then). It was great. We had the train to ourselves and for a large part of the route we were running alongside busy tube and mainline trains in our own silly little private shuttle. We’d inadvertently stumbled on one of the quirkiest and most endearing services in Greater London. I understand the reasons behind it but it’s a shame it doesn’t run all the way to Paddington anymore.
Hearing Castle Bar park pronounced either way sounds weird to me, as I am much more familiar with the town of Castlebar in Ireland, pronounced much differently!
You shold consider visiting the exmoth line from exeter. I quite liked that route when I used to live there, since it was one of the last lines to have pacer services.
Castle Bar Park is also the closest station to Ealing Trailfiinders' rugby ground (best team outside the Premiership) so it gets a few visitors on home game days.
You missed out on the heritage sign under the footbridge on platform 2 at Castle Bar Park. The line crosses the River Brent between Castle Bar Park and South Greenford so it might not be an easy walk between the two. The front carriage on the Romford - Upminster shuttle is very quiet as well (it's much busier in the Upminster - Romford direction). What happend to previous champion Birkbeck?
It does get pretty busy at certain times of the day esp the mornings with people going to West Ealing for the Lizzy Line and mid to late afternoons when everybody is coming home from work and school. Anyhow welcome to my neck of the woods.
Is there any other station with as many nouns in its name as Castle Bar Park? It's a castle, a bar, a park AND a station, which is all very impressive!
Did they ever consider integrating the branch into the Elizabeth Line and creating a higher frequency, more direct route into central London? Might have been a better long term plan.
Greenford can't really have its platforms extended, The Elizabeth line already has poor service at some stops (Hanwell 4tph, Twyford and Reading 2tph) in the western section, compared to the eastern one, so it would probably make service worse. Really the line doesn't need more frequency, it needs an extension into London Paddington instead, at least during peak hours.
As ahuman says, it's impractical and the branch doesn't really do anything useful either. Just get the bus to Ealing Broadway and get the Elizabeth line from there.
You being at Waterloo reminds me i should tell you of a great idea for a pointless journey: Exeter St Davids - Exeter Central via London: -GWR from Exeter St Davids - London Paddington -tube to Waterloo -SWR from London Waterloo - Exeter Central
@@grassytramtracks Exeter is slightly steeper than the Lickey, but i believe the steepest is between Blackfriars and City Thameslink. Assuming the national rail network is meant of course, plenty of steeper funiculars and suchlike. @Trainspotting_Mayhem could have from Paddington to Waterloo via West Ealing - Greenford - Bank ...
2:58 Why do the tannoy speakers face downwards, rather than at an angle firing along the platform? Downwards speakers will only cover a very small area.... Not that anyone is going to grumble when it's the least used station in London... at least it has a tannoy system, CCTV, and departure boards!
It seems very strange becuse anywhere else they have a one-car train and a single track - but looking at your video, it seems like the track not that long ago has been replaced or had reballasting carried out.
I wonder how this compares to the line between Battersea Park and Wandsworth Road. It sees i think 3 Overground trains per day, one outbound early morning, and one inbound and one outbound at about 11pm. But of course, both stations are served by other services, so it'd be hard to tell.
"When I think of London trains I don' t tend to think of two car diesel trains"... Chiltern might like a word with you 😅
Ha ha I didn’t think of this 😂
You would think that the top link express engines are smaller than some of the stopping fleet (class 168is smaller than some class 165s)
To be a bore, the line is extra quiet thesedays for a few reasons.
- Service used to run to/from Paddington. Now it doesn't even run to Broadway.
- West Ealing entrance got moved towards Drayton Green which means it maybe isn't worth getting the shuttle 1 stop (it involves an extra zone, the latter is in 4)
- Service doesn't get held if connecting Liz is late, nor vice versa
- Hanwell (which is quite busy thesedays) is another alt option for many who might otherwise use CBP or DGN
Not boring at all quite interesting facts, at least to me!
@@Eurobrasil550 Yeah I forgot who I was talking to lol.
Another point is that, back in the day, the train went to/from Platform 14 at PAD 99% of the time. From there, you used to be able to get to the H&C Line platforms with no barriers - just up one stairs, walk 15m and then down another. So that was pretty neat and enabled you to get to places pretty quick.
@@metamodernbarbellI used to be a regular commuter for a year living in Ladbroke Grove commuting to Greenford for work at GSK using this very route but in reverse way back in the day. As you say very convenient
@@StarboundUK Ha, did you pay for Zone1 though (you don't need to answer that)
How is Hanwell station near Castle Bar or Drayton Green? The Bunny Park sure but both of those stations are the other side if the main road (and over the hill for Castle Bar).
When the Greenford Branch was Paddington-Greenford it was really busy. Less so now.
Head to Marylebone and get a small little 2 car diesel train out of a London mainline terminus, that's even odder!
exact same class of train, too
A lot of Overground lines were like this before the Overground. If you build it, they will come
Castle Bar Park is round the corner from Ealing Rugby too, so on match days there will be an uptick in passengers. Their attendances are not huge but I have seen it a bit busier on matchdays
I think the other shuttle lines to do in London are the Emerson Park line (which everyone knows), Stratford - Meridian Water (a lot of recently built stations there), and Bromley North (which I haven't seen anyone cover yet)
Bromley north has been covered if you look around as live not that far from it so know it well
Upminster to Grays via South Ockendon
@@MichaelCampinThat one usually has through trains at both ends these days, to and from Fenchurch Street and Southend Central via Stanford-le-Hope and Pitsea.
@@ianmcclavin so Upminster used to have 2 connecting lines, one to Romford via Emerson Park Halt, usually a 2 car DMU and the line to Grays via South Ockendon and Lakeside but an EMU. So are they now going to Grays via Upminster from Fenchurch Street as well as Grays via Dagenham Dock since HS1 was built
does the tattenham corner branch count as a shuttle, i wonder
I think it should be pronounced as castle!
When I used that line, in the 90s, to get from my high school playing fields in South Greenford to Ealing Broadway, it was a 1 car train which we called... the push n pull. 🙂
I've been there! I looooved going to Drayton Green on my trip to london in early august. I walked most of the line, getting out at West Ealing and just visiting each station. It was so quiet! I loved it a lot.
Before clicking into this video I knew it would be about my dinky little local line! Glad you came to visit!
Great video as usual Nick. They have 'Caa-stle' Bar down south, and we have New'castle' here up north
I'll give you a "Ca-stle Bar Park" down here Nick, if you don't mind me doing a "New-car-stle" and "Car-stleford" when I'm up north! :o)
A very useful line, running north/south across the borough, and used to have much bigger numbers when it ran through to Paddington, also it joins up the two westbound branches of the Central line, it’s also being used to trial battery powered trains with fast charging plates at either end. No Sunday service should be mentioned, as that distorts the stats……
Point to point ideas:
Mill Hill (London) - Mill Hill (Blackburn) via Mills Hill (Greater Manchester)
And Newcastle Metro at Monument, Newcastle, Heworth & Sunderland
going anywhere on the T&W Metro is pretty simple though. All of that can be done on one train.
You could cover the whole network on 3 trains. South Hylton - Airport. Airport to monument, walk for 10 minutes to st james (or get a train for 1 stop), train alllll the way around to south shields. It would only take a few hours.
When Greenford services started running into Paddington (previously they had terminated at Ealing Broadway) there was a big increase in passenger numbers using the branch. Sadly the service has been rendered next to useless now that it terminates at West Ealing, because not all Crossrail trains even stop there.
It was at Greenford Football Club about 8 or 9 years ago, where I first came across those now ubiquitous Green Ring-Neck Parakeets that have made London their home :)
Thanks for a great video - that route is so bonkers I had to try it myself. Interestingly Greenford station is one of the very few stations where pax can take an escalator UP to the platforms ! Even more bonkers perhaps! 😂
I've used it several times to cross from the Lizzy Line out of Heathrow to the Central Line. Very handy for me!
Quietest railway line with the noisiest trains 🤣
If you are at Castle Bar Park, it is probably going to be quicker to get the E11 bus to Ealing Broadway than wait for the train to West Ealing. Or if you are not right next door to the station, there will be a different option that is even better than walking to that station.
That branch line should be handed over to TFL, and they should either run a much more frequent Overground service, make it a branch of the Central Line, or make it a branch of the Elizabeth Line. If they made it a branch of the Elizabeth line, they should run some of the trains that currently terminate at Paddington down the branch.
I like the diesel-hydraulic multiple units on this line!!
Until the Elizabeth Line adaptation started, the Greenford to West Ealing sevice used to exrend regularly to Ealing Broadway and Paddington; nowdays only the last journey of the day does so. In the 80's, Ealing Broadway used to be the terminus, with trains shunting into a siding which has since been removed, dovetailing in and out of Paddington connections. The West Ealing terminus is therefore a relatively recent "innovation."
Should try the Northern City line between Moorgate and Drayton Park. Essex Road in particular can be very eerie, especially being underground
The whole Hertford Loop line is quite interesting. Just a shame it got cut down to only 2 tph due to COVID and hasn't been restored since despite it being promised - there was a train every 10 minutes off peak (!) before.
I’m excited for whenever my old childhood stock arrives into service on this quiet railway line
My grandson has to say that Drayton Green is a very nice station although it’s the least used station in Greater London 😊
I work in Greenford and use this train everyday. Castlebar Park and South Greenford both have low platforms. It's a high step up to get on the train.
Westway Cross or GSK?
Surely the E1 and E11 are easier for central Greenford?
The Greenford Line hails from a time when the early railway companies like Great Western Railway (not the modern company using it's name) were building far too many branches for the mainlines to cope with. The original priorities were picking up and dropping off freight and having railways let them get more customers. Those companies even build some railways to block rival railway companies from building near to their "territory".
The original plans for Paddington were going to be a bit like Crossrail, as the Metropolitan Railway Company built the top half of what we now call the Circle Line to take broadgauge trains. So, there could have hypothetically been trains running up the Greenford Line that went beyond Paddington, if GWR and the Metropolitan Railway had not fallen out.
The big problem with having lots of brachlines is that it is difficult to timetable trains to meet up and go onto the mainline and get into the area that most people want to get to. From what I have seen there are three ways around this that seem to work:
1) Giving one or more branchlines to other railways,
2) Using automated train control to squeeze more trains into the central section,
3) Creating an isolated system (that doesn't interface with other trains).
The original GWR went for Option 1 with the line from Paddington to Hammersmith. That line is now called the Hammersmith and City Line and is now also used by Circle Line trains. And it's been much better off since GWR gave it away. (A similar thing happened twice with the line to Stanmore. First the Metropolitan Railway Company gave the branch to the Bakerloo Line. Then recently the Bakerloo Line was split in two and that branch was given to the Jubilee Line. The service that branch gets today is better than it ever got under the two previous operators, as all the trains now go to Stanmore.)
Option 2 was used for Thameslink. Thameslink got some very expensive automation software for the core, so that trains could run automatically through the most congested section. The trains are driven manually outside of the core (and can be driven manually inside the core if necessary) but the automation makes all the trains slow down and speed up automatically, so that you don't have individual trains stopping at red signals and a few extra trains can be squeezed through. Option 2 could also have been used by Crossrail, but the government cheaped out and forced the people setting up Crossrail to design trains that can work with three different types of signalling systems. (I'm guessing this is the primary reason for some Crossrail trains turning back east at Paddington.)
The best example of Option 3 is probably the Victoria Line (aka "The Ninety Second Railway"). Whenever people talk about not having the capacity to run more trains in parts of the country outside London, I always think of the Victoria Line as an example of why this is a nonsense claim. But the key thing that makes it possible for the Victoria Line to almost hit one train every 90 seconds is that it does not interact with any other railway lines. So there is no difficult scheduling conflicts to work out. They even got rid of the trains that used to turn back to London, part way up the route, to make the service more simple to operate (so that more trains could be crammed onto the line).
From what I understand the Greenford Line trains routinely running through West Ealing to Ealing Broadway, or beyond, have been binned off to allow Crossrail to absorb and expand the Heathrow Connect service. Essentially one group of passengers has been given a terminating platform, so that other passengers get more trains. (There is still the Parliamentary service from Paddington in the evening. And I've heard there is also a weird bus at Ealing Broadway that is an unadvertised "Railway Replacement Bus" that replaces another train that used to go along the line and off to somewhere beyond Greenford.)
Annoyingly, even though the Greenford Line is now mostly run as an isolated system (option 3), and could have many more trains, they are only giving it one train every half hour. I wouldn't say the new GWR is "running a service". I'd say they are "running down the service". Poor passenger stats would appear to make the DfT think that the service doesn't need extra trains. But we have seen with London Overground, that going to four trains per hour makes more people use a line. The Victoria Line has a couple of cheats, to make the frequency higher. Firstly they run trains at 30 MPH, which lets you run trains closer together. Secondly they get the drivers to "step back". With the Greenford Branch now only having a single platform at each end, it would probably be harder to get more than one train every ten minutes without running the risk of a train-related problem gumming up the entire system. But they certainly should be able to do at least 15 minutes.
Option 1 is something that should have been considered at the same time as Crossrail. I don't think it would have been good to have made Greenford a branch of Crossrail, as the trains are far too long for the Central Line station and splitting the line would eat up capacity that should go to Heathrow or Reading. But there are two railway lines that currently terminate at Ealing Broadway, that could easily have been extended on to West Ealing and then joined onto the Greenford Branch to greatly extend out either the District Line or the Central Line. With the District Line using big trains and the Central Line using low trains, I think it would have made more sense to extend the Central Line to Greenford. That would also allow all Central Line trains to run from West Ruislip via Ealing Broadway during engineering works. (Sadly someone in the local council, seems to have allowed a few big buildings to be built smack next to the railway path. So the easy win would not be quite so easy. A TBM couldn't go underneath a tower block, without the risk of it falling over. You would probably end up needing to build an elevated railway line from Ealing Broadway to West Ealing (with ramps at each end). It is entirely do-able. And worth doing. But it took people nearly 100 years to get people to stop blocking Crossrail.
Whatever we do, GWR should not be in charge of this railway any more. The Grenford Line service isn't as bad as the intentionally unusable service that GWR runs once a week at Pilning, but it's the same sort of massaging of stats to justify not improving things.) The chairman of GWR could have demanded that all Crossrail trains stop at West Ealing to make the Greenford Line connection more useful. The chariman of GWR could be trying to run a service that links up with Crossrail and the Central Line. This is a bit of unloved track and should be passed over to TfL.
Only one outbreak of 61016, that's how quiet it is \m/
It’s so funny as soon as you got off someone gets on
Brilliant video sir.
First 20 views. Let's go!
Great vid as always Nick! Love learning about these tiny lines I would otherwise never have known about!
Nice video, do still need to visit Castle Bar Park
It's so quiet that I think the trains themselves long for a run on it, hours of trundling up and down without having anyone ruin its interior. I can find no other explanation for why the train on the Windsor and Eton Central branch line this afternoon suddenly had an unaccountable daydream and announced to a trainload of bewildered tourists that it was going to Greenford.
(Very Thomas the Tank Engine, I'm so sorry.)
This was very Thomas the Tank Engine and I love it. There something about locomotives that make them feel so alive.
I’ve been down this line… but non-stop on the old once-a-day chiltern service from south ruislip! RIP to it
Brilliant video Nick, I'll have to visit this line sometime. :)
Two Car Train. Pah!. Have you never been in The North? One Car, if you're lucky... AND a half hourly service!, this is a thing unheard of round here... >chunter
I grew up a few houses away from Drayton Green station, in the 70s & 80s when it was an ole slam-door single carriage service. It was always a relatively quiet station too back then. 🙂
Amazing video nick cant wait to see more vidoes!
I used the line regularly in the 1980s when Castle Bar Park was the closest station to the GWR Sports Ground which is now the apartments you mention or the Ealing Rugby ground another commentator has mentioned.
Thanks for that, one of my local lines!
It only survives because it's a goods and diversionary route, if it was passengers only it would have been closed and lifted years ago!
I also strongly suspect that it's well subsidised by Ealing Council. 🙂
Could you explore the Oxted line, my local?
Did that line once on a diverted Virgin West Coast train from Birmingham to London Euston. You should have pointed out the semaphore signals on the former Great Western main line to Birmingham that you can see from the London bound Underground Line.
A Wrexham to Llandudno line 🥰
Are you coming on the Class 323 farewell tour?
If you lived reeaally close to Drayton Green station, it would be logical to memorise the Greenford branch timetable so you can conveniently hop on it to travel anywhere, despite the service only being half-hourly. But I guess there’s also a proportion of people living near Drayton Green who literally *never* use the station.
Btw at the start of the vid you mentioned that as consequence of the Elizabeth Line, Liverpool Street is now the UK’s busiest. But this made me wonder, how are the Elizabeth Line passengers who use Liverpool St from the Moorgate station end of the platforms counted? Is the entry/exit counting system really smart enough to know that I’ve tapped out at Moorgate but definitely have come from the Liv St Elizabeth Line platform?
Could say its also Londons Loudest Railway Line with the noise of the 165s
Chiltern mainline? The Class 68s that haul the 68+Mk3+DVT sets are notoriously loud aren’t they?
I never thought the Elizabeth Line would help Liverpool Street take Waterloo's crown
Well it does contribute to the stats and Liverpool Street was already 3rd or 4th
Try the Abbey line in Hertfordshire
St Albans Abbey to Watford Junction, has 7 stations and is quite a tranquil line
Hi Nick, Please do the Marlow or Henley lines (or both) they are lovely lines, seeing the 165 reminded me of when i worked on Thames Trains. Interestly one of my jobs was Station Manager at Ealing broadway, which the greenford staions (and Acton to west dryton) come under. I worked for them first on trains and then moved to station managent (Ealing B & then Oxford) from 1998 to 2002. great times, great TOC and amazing people.
He could do them both in the same day.
Beautiful countryside on those branch lines.
@@DavidRobinson1978 yea definitely
@@itsthatsebguy93 definitely could
On a non train related note.
The way you ( people from the north ) say castle sounds nicer, even though I'm from London and would say it more like carstle 😊
It really bothers me that this service is GWR because it's unconnected from the rest of their network now the Elizabeth Line is here. Should be an Overground line really in the same vein as Romford to Upminster.
Even as someone who used to have to connect between Ealing and Greenford for work this branch line is useless (even more sonnow it only goes to West Ealing).
No connection to central London and the E1 is nuch nore effective as a shuttle for anyone going between the two town centres. (The E11 even runs directly above the track between Castle Bar and Drayton Green)
Try Castlebar in Ireland 🇮🇪
If your interested in branch lines you should go between Ashford international and Hastings and ore line 👍
Very Nice nick this is my local station.
Does anyone know why they don't run the battery trains here anymore? I wanted to go and see them, but I'm worried I've missed my chance
You should come to the Marlow branch line
While you're in the Greater London area, how about a pointless journey from either Catford to Catford Bridge or Epsom Downs to Tattenham Corner? If you go for the latter, I'd love to provide (relatively) local knowledge.
Definitely Castle and Bath
...and now the next one to tick off, the Bromley North branch line! Which is one of London's shortest/quickest branch lines with a total end-to-end journey time of 5 minutes. And with the Class 465s on that line, the whole thing will feel like a weird case of "Deja vu" from the Greenford branch you've just visited.
Great Western Railway should get more Class 230s to run on the Greenford Branch Line. I have been to stations on the Greenford Branch Line.
next time your glasgow bound i will buy you a tea
*super T
Way back when in 2011 me and my friends were touristing in London visiting a friend who’d recently moved there. We went on a bit of a walk in the parkland around the river Brent, not having a particular route or destination in mind. At some point we reached that point where you start thinking about the way home.
We saw a station nearby on the map and thought we’d head that way and navigate our way through the transport network back to base.
That station was South Greenford. And the next train was in 46 minutes. We were baffled. We were in one of the biggest cities in the world with one of the best transport networks and we found ourselves within visual range of Wembley Stadium at a station with an hourly service?!
We elected to wait. It was rather boring as you’d imagine. But the reward was neat. A DMU showed up and chugged along all the way to Paddington (where it terminated back then).
It was great. We had the train to ourselves and for a large part of the route we were running alongside busy tube and mainline trains in our own silly little private shuttle. We’d inadvertently stumbled on one of the quirkiest and most endearing services in Greater London. I understand the reasons behind it but it’s a shame it doesn’t run all the way to Paddington anymore.
Hearing Castle Bar park pronounced either way sounds weird to me, as I am much more familiar with the town of Castlebar in Ireland, pronounced much differently!
Try the twyford to Henley on Thames branch line
Hi Nick, will you be at the opening of the Ashley Down Station in Bristol on Saturday? It'd make for an interesting video I think!
Just saw that the line has no Sunday services. Would be perfect for a class 153!
And South Greenford station is north of Greenford town centre ...
Did you see the inclinator at Greenford Station?
They have been experimenting with fast-charging battery trains on that line.
hi, so how do you feel that 507016 has been withdrawn and scrapped
You shold consider visiting the exmoth line from exeter. I quite liked that route when I used to live there, since it was one of the last lines to have pacer services.
Castle Bar Park is also the closest station to Ealing Trailfiinders' rugby ground (best team outside the Premiership) so it gets a few visitors on home game days.
You missed out on the heritage sign under the footbridge on platform 2 at Castle Bar Park. The line crosses the River Brent between Castle Bar Park and South Greenford so it might not be an easy walk between the two. The front carriage on the Romford - Upminster shuttle is very quiet as well (it's much busier in the Upminster - Romford direction).
What happend to previous champion Birkbeck?
It does get pretty busy at certain times of the day esp the mornings with people going to West Ealing for the Lizzy Line and mid to late afternoons when everybody is coming home from work and school. Anyhow welcome to my neck of the woods.
As a southerner (born in Hertfordshire) I would say “castle” like the locals
If this was Paris, this line would be the Central Line bis, and the passenger numbers would be higher.
Is there any other station with as many nouns in its name as Castle Bar Park? It's a castle, a bar, a park AND a station, which is all very impressive!
i live near hanwell station, so i am relatively close to drayton green and the branch
Did they ever consider integrating the branch into the Elizabeth Line and creating a higher frequency, more direct route into central London? Might have been a better long term plan.
Greenford can't really have its platforms extended, The Elizabeth line already has poor service at some stops (Hanwell 4tph, Twyford and Reading 2tph) in the western section, compared to the eastern one, so it would probably make service worse. Really the line doesn't need more frequency, it needs an extension into London Paddington instead, at least during peak hours.
As ahuman says, it's impractical and the branch doesn't really do anything useful either. Just get the bus to Ealing Broadway and get the Elizabeth line from there.
Greetings from Australia. Great video Nick. This is 100th comment. lol
Point to point - Brough to Broughty Ferry
6:59 London Marylebone to Aylesbury/Aylesbury Vale via Harrow is just like that as well as having two or three coach diesels on average
My local train line
You being at Waterloo reminds me i should tell you of a great idea for a pointless journey:
Exeter St Davids - Exeter Central via London:
-GWR from Exeter St Davids - London Paddington
-tube to Waterloo
-SWR from London Waterloo - Exeter Central
definitely pointless and bloody expensive. Is this the steepest rail line in britain?
@@rockerjim8045 that's the Lickey Incline in Worcestershire
@@grassytramtracks Exeter is slightly steeper than the Lickey, but i believe the steepest is between Blackfriars and City Thameslink. Assuming the national rail network is meant of course, plenty of steeper funiculars and suchlike.
@Trainspotting_Mayhem could have from Paddington to Waterloo via West Ealing - Greenford - Bank ...
Did it about 3 months ago and it was just as quiet. Did the walk in reverse (Castle Bar Park - Drayton Green)
another london quiet line would be Grove Park to Bromley North
Do commuters use it to get in/out of London?
Bromley North shuttle is less used.
Castle Bar sounds much better than Castle Bar
Shame that you didn't get a converted underground D stock to ride on that has been undergoing trials on that line!
think a trip with my train loving grandson is in order.
Point to Point ideas
St albans City to St albans Abbey
Hertford East to Hertford North
Both in Hertfordshire
2:58 Why do the tannoy speakers face downwards, rather than at an angle firing along the platform? Downwards speakers will only cover a very small area....
Not that anyone is going to grumble when it's the least used station in London... at least it has a tannoy system, CCTV, and departure boards!
It seems very strange becuse anywhere else they have a one-car train and a single track - but looking at your video, it seems like the track not that long ago has been replaced or had reballasting carried out.
Every place should probably be called what the local people call it.
It's actually pronounced Casteley Bear Park
I wonder how this compares to the line between Battersea Park and Wandsworth Road. It sees i think 3 Overground trains per day, one outbound early morning, and one inbound and one outbound at about 11pm. But of course, both stations are served by other services, so it'd be hard to tell.
The bin bags were pretty full for not being used that much
Can you go on the Hamton court branch