Almost four years later than planned, London finally welcomed its newest cross-London railway line – the Elizabeth line – yesterday (Tuesday, May 24). Running initially in three separate sections, the two outer sections either side of Central London, have been operating under the interim brand name ‘TfL Rail’ since May 2015. Having a name for the transition service helped better manage expectations around the Crossrail project and gradually get Outer Londoners familiar with the eventual Elizabeth line service.
At 1.36am on Tuesday morning, just a few hours before the first Elizabeth line departures on the new section, the final TfL Rail train pulled into Shenfield station in Essex, two minutes early. The signage and announcements have all been changed, the blue placeholder roundels have become permanently purple, ‘TfL Rail’ disappeared from passenger railway jargon.
In its seven years of operation, TfL Rail saw the introduction of the hi-tech Class 345 ‘Aventra’ Elizabeth line trains, the expansion of contactless payments to Reading, massive station improvement works and 26 new stations added to the Tube map. It also took on all of the public-facing criticism of the transitional service to the Elizabeth line as a result of the construction project to build it, the Crossrail project – with all the closures needed for testing and engineering works that went with it.
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(Image: Callum Marius)
MyLondon spoke with the operational director of the Elizabeth line, TfL’s Howard Smith to find out what happens to the ‘TfL Rail’ brand name. He told us back at a trial in February : “TfL Rail, ultimately, will become a thing of the past. It was an interim brand. For the Class 315s [the initial TfL Rail trains which remain on some Liverpool Street-Shenfield services], probably at the beginning of 2023, they’ll finally disappear.”
On the first Elizabeth line train from Paddington to Abbey Wood yesterday, MyLondon caught up with him again for an update. He confirmed it’s ‘Elizabeth line’ all the way, explaining: “We’re running through the rest of this week, then there’s the Jubilee weekend, where there’s a lot ahead and then after that we’ll be turning our minds to the future stages of connecting the railway up east and west that’s coming later this year.”
Once those east (Liverpool Street-Shenfield) and west (Paddington-Heathrow/Reading) sections are connected to the central section (Paddington-Liverpool Street-Abbey Wood), then TfL Rail will be well and truly dead as the Elizabeth line will have direct trains to all of its destinations. TfL does still technically hold the rights to the brand name ‘TfL Rail’ though, so judging by its success could revive the brand for the interim pre-Crossrail 2 or Crossrail 3 service on lines those new projects would take over should the plans ever materialise.
(Image: Callum Marius)
By boosting the number, length and frequency of trains on the lines it operated, TfL Rail saw passenger numbers and revenues jump. In 2017, 47 million people used the Liverpool Street-Shenfield section alone. Stratford became the busiest station in the country last year and TfL Rail had the most resilient rail passenger figures in the capital during the height of the pandemic as it helped key workers continue to get to the numerous hospitals en-route, the huge vaccination centre at Stratford and Heathrow Airport.
TfL Rail maintained some of the best passenger reliability figures in the country, frequently beating London’s other train operators with over 95 per cent of trains running on time over its tenure. For the Elizabeth line to be a success, TfL will have to ensure delays from the other side of London do not spill over to the opposite side of the capital, as those routes had been relatively self-contained under TfL Rail, reducing the risk of delay interference. An integrated control room in Romford for the Elizabeth line has been running both TfL Rail and Elizabeth line pre-operations in the past few year to ensure it is ready. Fares were also generally cheaper (closer to Overground) then on other National Rail services in London thanks to fare routeing changes and wider introduction of Oyster/contactless.
If you’re still a big TfL Rail fan, you can get some last minute collectors items occasionally popping up on the London Transport Museum website, or take a ride on the remaining Class 315 trains which work a return journey between Liverpool Street and Shenfield each weekday rush hour period until the through service to Paddington/Reading/Heathrow is introduced.
What were your impressions of TfL Rail? Tell us in the comments below!
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