London Overground have published their Olympic timetable. The 0248 train from Canada Water I mentioned only runs tomorrow night for the opening ceremony.

However, the last train to HOP/FH still leaves at 0148 from Canada Water.

Any chance of later trains after the Olympics? It's impossible to have a reasonable night out in London and get home via train.

This post was last modified: 26-07-2012 05:44 PM by rshdunlop.

Wish I'd gone on SE23.com to check on Southern last night. HOP station staff told me yesterday afternoon that Southern would also run until 2pm. When I came back from the opening concert in Hyde Park, of course the last train from London Bridge had left at 00.36 as stated here earlier. Grmpf. No real harm done, I just went on the Jubilee/Overground combo instead, but still...
Loved the late Overground, wish we could keep late services until, say 1am.

I'm going out this evening and loving the fact I can come home on the Overground instead of waiting for the 176 night bus.

There's definitely scope to campaign to LOROL for later services if the trains running after midnight are a success which I have no doubt about even with non Games passengers.

This post was last modified: 28-07-2012 01:11 PM by rbmartin.

I cant comment on rail services but apparently our postal service has been cut due to the Olympics with the last post leaving the post office at 3pm instead of 5.30pm. Not something thats been well advertised.

At yesterday's Lewisham transport liaison committee meeting the LOROL representative came under a fair amount of pressure on this issue from the combined forces of Cllr John Paschoud, Cllr John Muldoon, Barry Milton (Syd Soc), and myself (FH Soc).
All of us felt that this experiment was worth continuing, not necessarily until 3am, but maybe an extra 30-60 minutes on Friday and Saturday nights, and with a frequent service even after 10pm.

After the usual excuses the LOROL representative said that they would feed back our suggestions. At the moment they are focused on the extension to Peckham (ELL2) which will start running on 9th December 2012.

It looks like I was right. The transport system worked magnificently during the Olympics and Paralympics. Trains to venues were packed but that is not unusual for major events and the rest of London carried on as usual (just a bit quieter).
I think the transport industry is in the process of learning a number of lessons about running an efficient transport system from the Olympics.

Is there any other mechanism through which we can let LOROL know how much we'd like a later service? We went to the Hyde Park closing concert with our kids and it was so nice not having to check our watches and worry about getting the last train. And the trains were plenty busy, right into the wee hours.

Later trains is something that the Forest Hill Society have raised with LOROL at their passenger board, and we will do again next month.

You could write to them directly at overgroundinfo@tfl.gov.uk if you want to share your views.

With the opening of the new ELL branch in December and the successful running of late trains during the Olympics, the next few months may be a good opportunity to emphasise this message.

Generally Railtrack like to have the railways cleared before 2am to carry out any necessary overnight maintenance, and ideally this includes switching off the power a while before 2am. But with the short distances that the ELL travels, this should not rule out a few later services before the trains need to make a speedy journey back to the New Cross Gate depot.

At present the last Overground service gets to Forest Hill at 00:10am. We did manage to get them to add a service which reaches New Cross Gate at 00:36am, to meet with the Southern Train heading out.

So the last ELL train arrives at West Croydon at 00.27am, the last Southern Service to get there is at 00:55am.
To Crystal Palace the last ELL service arrives at 00:07am, the last Southern service arrives at 00:59am (not via our line).
There would appear to be an opportunity to run services at least 30 minutes later.

I've travelled on the line after 11pm three times during the Games. While it's clear that the message from TfL via their Get Ahead of the Games scheme worked, all the services I travelled on were busy with a mix of games and normal recreational passengers. Like the poster above, it was great to be able to get to CW and not dread having to wait 20 minutes for a train to FH.

Clearly the current late night service from Canada Water of a twenty minute gap followed by a ten with the final train at 2356 is unacceptable.

Michael's suggestion that the final train should be from CW at 0026, I agree is workable. They don't even have to turn the trains back at West Croydon, Crystal Palace is nearer and would involve a short journey back to the depot at New Cross.

This post was last modified: 12-09-2012 03:33 PM by rbmartin.

Yeah, turn back at Crystal Palace, we'll all have got off by then!

I forgot to mention in my previous post that the frequency of the late-night trains was a big boon as well. I will follow Michael's suggestion and contact LOROL directly. Thanks for the info, Michael.

I can only agree! Had quite a few late (1pm and later) journeys during both the Olympics and Paralympics and was really impressed with the service. Trains were busy, and not just with games volunteers and spectators, a lot of people coming from the West End were using late services as well.