Inner South London Line

The Inner South London Line is an 8.5 mi horseshoe-shaped Inner London railway route from Victoria to London Bridge via Peckham Rye. "Inner" distinguishes it from the Outer South London Line which runs from London Victoria to London Bridge via Gipsy Hill. The line is in Travelcard Zone 2 apart from the termini, which are in Zone 1. Passenger rail services are currently operated by Southern. It is planned that by 2012 the line will be incorporated into the London Overground network, diverting westbound services away from Victoria to Clapham Junction to form an orbital rail line around London.

History
The London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR) was authorised to build the line by the South London Railway Act 1862. It re-used the existing Wandsworth Road to Brixton section which had been constricted as part of the LCDR main line. This existing line was quadrupled and the line was extended to London Bridge. The northern pair (now known as the Chatham lines), with no stations, was used by the LCDR; the southern (now known as the Atlantic lines) was used by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR). Several stations were shared by the two companies. The company pioneered rail electrification in the UK which was authorised in 1903 and the first electric train operated on 1 December 1909. For the following three years, steam trains alternated with the electrics: the latter operated a 15-minute interval service from 7.30am to midnight. In the first year of electric operation, passengers carried almost doubled, from 4 million to 7.5 million after falling dramatically following the opening of the tramways in South London which has led to a drop in passenger numbers of 1.25 million in only six months. The original electrification used the overhead system at 6700 V AC, supplied by the power station at Deptford. The line was converted to Southern Railway standard third-rail 660 V DC on 17 June 1928. The South Cross Route, one side of the London Motorway Box the innermost ring road of the unbuilt 1960s London Ringways plan, would have paralleled the South London Line between Wandsworth Road and Peckham Rye stations.

Services
Passenger rail services are provided by Southern, who operate a shuttle service along the horseshoe-shaped route running south from London Victoria, curving east across the suburbs of south London to Peckham Rye, where the route heads north and terminates at London Bridge. Additional services run along part of the line operated by Southeastern on the Victoria-Dartford and the Chatham Main Line routes; these services only call at Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye on the South London Line. Off-peak services are typically 2tph from smaller stations such as Clapham High Street, with a 4tph frequency from Denmark Hill.

East London Line extension


A 2.5 km link is planned to the East London Line (part 2 of East London line extension) which will run from Surrey Quays to Clapham Junction on the Inner South London Line by way of Queens Road Peckham, Peckham Rye, Denmark Hill, Clapham High Street and Wandsworth Road. Work is scheduled for completion by May 2012 in time for the 2012 Olympics. A new station at Surrey Canal Road was also planned however this was put on hold in 2009. When the East London line is connected to the North London line at Dalston Junction, this will complete an orbital rail route around Central London, fulfilling the Orbirail concept. The extension will use an alignment between Rotherhithe and Peckham which has been disused since 1911 via the now defunct Old Kent Road station.

Victoria to Bellingham service
After conversion of the South London line to a London Overground route, many stations on the line will no longer have direct rail services to Victoria or London Bridge. To compensate for the loss of direct services, it was proposed to introduce a new Victoria-Bellingham train service which would run from London Victoria along the South London Line as far as Peckham Rye, before branching off onto the Catford Loop Line to Bellingham. The proposal was originally abandoned due to funding issues but now appears to have been resurrected (as of March 2010) after lobbying by various pressure groups and local MPs.

Criticisms and campaigns
Suggestions have been made for new stations to be opened on the new Overground line. Campaigners in Lewisham are calling for funding to be made available for the construction of a station at Surrey Canal Road. This route of the South London line crosses over Loughborough Junction and Brixton stations, and the ELL extension proposals have been criticised for missing opportunities to create new interchange stations with Thameslink services and the London Underground Victoria line respectively. Under initial proposals, no stations were planned at these locations as the line is on high railway arches, making the cost of any station construction prohibitive. Suggestions were made that the old East Brixton railway station could be re-opened between these two stations as an alternative to providing direct interchanges. The loss of direct rail services to Victoria or London Bridge after the transfer to London Overground has been the subject of public campaigns. Local pressure groups are campaigning to retain these direct services. A survey by London Travelwatch found that 88% of passengers on the line felt they would be inconvenienced by the changes (although the survey also noted that respondents were generally unaware of the ELL/Overground proposals or of any possible benefits they might bring). The original decision (since resurrected after pressure groups and local MPs urged the Mayor to reconsider and secured funding from the Secretary of State for Transport) to abandon the Victoria to Bellingham proposal (intended to replace some of these direct services) has also been criticised. Transport for London was the subject of critical commentary for the decision — especially as it had diverted funding for the Bellingham proposal to support construction work on the London Overground extension project — and for publicly attributing this decision to the Department for Transport. Following consultation with London Travelwatch, TfL compiled a shortlist of possible solutions to address the concerns of transport campaigners. The options include various combinations of additional stops for fast trains, increased service frequencies, and the Victoria-Bellingham route. The list of options is being considered by TfL, Network Rail and the DfT and a decision will be announced in May 2010.

Other proposals
In March 2008 Ken Livingstone, then Mayor of London, suggested that Transport for London was interested in bringing additional rail lines in South London into the London Overground network but this proposal has not been developed further since the change in mayoral administration.