What the ELL has done is move all those commuters off the Southern trains onto shorter trains which have the capacity to have more people standing up than before.

The shorter wait for trains at FH has also been useful, although as we've seen despite the ELL extension is that there's always room for improvement.

I remember the days of 4 trains per hour badly spaced out, 30 min wait for trains on Sundays and the like.

The only thing I miss from the 'old' days is was the through daytime service to Charing Cross which I think was axed in 1995/6?