Unexpected – as the poor thing has been rather ill recently – but the lovingly restored 1938 era tube train will be taking trips along the tube network in a couple of weeks time, and you can be on it.

I’ve been on it quite a few times in the past – and it is a lovely trip to take, not just for the train itself with its art-deco interior and 1980s adverts still in place, but also the joy of watching stunned passengers on the platforms as you pass various stations in the old train.

There are five trips on Sunday 12th September.

£25 – 8:50 Ealing Broadway to Harrow on the Hill

£25 – 10:26 Harrow on the Hill to Amersham (via the North Curve!)

£15 – 11:30 Amersham to Watford and back again

£20 – 12:57 Amersham to Harrow of the Hill and back again

£20 – 14:30 Amersham to Harrow on the Hill

You also get free trips on the lovely Sarah Siddons, subject to spare seats being available (normally costs £5).

All tickets should be purchased in advance through the Online Ticket Office online (warning - based on previous experience, use Microsoft Internet Explorer to book tickets) or over the phone on 020 7565 7298.

In addition, free heritage bus service will run every 15 minutes between Amersham Old Town and Amersham station.  This service will link you to the variety of activities taking place as part of their Heritage Day, between 11am and 5pm.

Living in the docklands area, I am on the mailing list for issues with the Docklands Light Railway, and have received the following missive.

A new service will be in place from 10 July with modifications to some routes and frequencies, including increased AM peak frequencies, and changes to some first and last train times.

New timetables will be posted at stations and available online at www.dlr.co.uk from 10 July.

Obviously, more trains in the mornings is good news.

However, call me suspicious if you like – but publishing the changes on the very day they take place sounds like they want to avoid presumptive wailing and rending of shirts over some bad news about one, or more, of the routes.

Not to mention that changing the times of the first trains, but not publishing the details until after the first train has probably left is a bit daft.

The first day of the East London Line extension to West Croydon – in the style of a Victorian Newspaper. Hopefully.

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Readers may recall the recent news of the reopening of the East London Line railway that passes under the River Thames by means of Mr. Brunel’s impressive subaqueous tunnel near Wapping, and may be interested to learn that the second phase of the railway’s relentless expansion has come to its successful fruition.

The railway, which has traditionally terminated at New Cross Gate in South London will now continue past the station where trains were turned around, and will pass down through the picturesque villages of South London to reach the fast improving town of Croydon.

The extension of the railway, by wise council of the management at our unified transport authority will bring a much needed link between the far south of the Metropolis and its North-Eastern regions and can only add to the ever improving public transport options available to the tradesmen and residents in the area.

Residents of the New Cross and Croydon areas will particularly benefit from the education and entertainments now easily and conveniently available at the Horniman Museum, of which readers may be aware, was created by the generous donations of businessman, Frederick Horniman and later improved upon by his son.

Readers will be impressed to learn that the work to upgrade the pre-existing railway line in preparation for the new service needed but a new flyover near New Cross to facilitate the Northbound trains and new signalling works. It is truly a marvel that such a substantial improvement to the railway network can be enjoyed by the populace by so small an amount of effort and expenditure.

The Transport authority seeking to promote the day of festivities that marked the first day of services between New Cross and Croydon declared a holiday from payments for the first 10,000 passengers and offered a commemorative wallet along with a replica of an early ticket as would have been issued by our forebears.

It was noted by your correspondent that the launch was however a much more subdued affair than that which had accompanied the launch of the East London Line from Dalston Junction in the North of the City some weeks earlier. However, the journey was punctuated by much commentary from his fellow passengers, all of whom were of the opinion that the new trains, designed by Messrs Bombardier & Co of Derby were of the highest order and much to be commended.

Particularly of note was the evolution of the long “American style” carriages which were introduced to the country around 100 years ago to a design that enables a person entering the rear of the train to walk through to the very front unimpeded by the usual cumbersome doors and blockages. Such innovations shall surely lead to a more pleasant journey as crowds who rush to catch a train will no longer be confined to the carriage in which they had embarked.

The weather being particularly fine on this launch day, it was also appreciated that while we may have long past done away with the foul stenches of the stream engines, the interior of the trains were never as comfortable as they will now become with the new air cooling systems that has been installed inside the carriages.

Readers who subscribe to the new politics of the socialist classes will be reassured that there is no fare division within the trains, with both gentleman and labourer sharing the same services alike.

The route itself is worthy of note being one of some considerable historic interest. The route closely follows an earlier canal network which was sadly a commercial failure for its designers, but which left a path for the London & Croydon Railway Company to avail itself of the cleared land for the development of the steam railway. The story of the canal was recently reported in detail by Messrs. Diamonds and Geezers in their illustrious publication. We ourselves have recently regaled our readers with news of the experiments with the Atmospheric Railway which, while sadly not a success, it’s attempt caused considerable, and quite justifiable excitement at the time.

We hope and desire that the latest change to this important transport link will prove more successful than its predecessors, and look forward to the third phase of the railway which will link it with that great transport hub of Clapham Junction just two years hence.

This coming Sunday, the second phase of the East London Line conversion to being part of the London Overground will be completed as trains will cease to stop at New Cross Gate and will instead run down to West Croydon.

TfL are extremely excited and will be offering 10,000 free tickets to early travellers as an incentive to try out the sexy new trains on old train tracks. The boss will also be around at West Croydon at 10am to smile for the media.

Thinking this is the marking of the beginning of a new era of London Overground travel, I received the weekly weekend disruptions email this morning and the list of cancellations to the London Overground is surprisingly rich for such an auspicious date.

Indeed, it looked at first glance, as if most of the Overground was being closed down – maybe they need the staff to cover the opening weekend down to Croydon?

A few mock-up maps of the network – all based on TfL maps, which obviously are their copyright (blah,blah,blah).

Despite my slight whinge, I will be on an early train this coming Sunday, although thanks to the aforementioned engineering works, I doubt I will make it all the way up to Dalston Junction and will probably hop on at Canada Water. Such laziness!

What the network will look like on SATURDAY
Just missing the bit between Gospel Oak and Stratford

What you would THINK the network will look like on Sunday
Ohh! There’s a shiny new bit at the bottom of the map.

What the network ACTUALLY looks like on Sunday
OK, new bit at the bottom is still there, but what happened to the rest?

Oh, before you get too depressed – this is the network in its full glory from next month

“I apologise for the cramped conditions” was how the first train on the newly extended East London Line was introduced to its excited passengers. For yes, the majority, if not indeed the totality of the passengers were highly excited.

A moderate collection of “sad train geeks”, such as your correspondent, who also spied the pseudonymous editor of London Reconnections at Dalston Junction station and a rather larger collection of TfL suits finally getting to travel on a train line they have been working on for the past few years.

Now in a preview mode with limited offerings, once it gets up to full steam, you can expect the rush hours to be equally cramped as we had today, although I doubt commuters will get an apology over the tannoy from the Managing Director of TfL London Rail, Ian Brown.

Anyhow – after hanging around in the ticket hall, an announcement that the first ELL train was now ready and people passed through ticket barriers with the excitement of children about to meet Father Christmas. Down in the surprisingly spacious platform, people held aloft camera phones, and press people held more substantial cameras, trying to get photos of a new train in a new train station, all the time being serenaded by a musical combo.

To reasure everyone that this was indeed the first train – both ends of the train had a large sign affixed to confirm it is the first passenger train in April 2010.

Technically not the first though, as a driver testing the trains last week opened the doors at a public station and passengers, seeing a train with open doors, blithely chose to get on – only to be evicted at a later point when train staff realised the test train had gained a bit of unexpected baggage.

A short speech over the speakers from the aforementioned boss, and then the train was off to cheers and applause.

As we pulled into stations along the line, people determined to take the first train, if not quite so determined as to get to Dalston Junction joined us – and to add normality to a special train – some people actually got off and hurried away to less frivolous pursuits.

Leaving the shiny new stations, we returned to the older existing line at Whitechapel. Then passing through the Brunel tunnel by train, just as I had passed through it on foot a few weeks ago – and it was a slight disappointment that they didn’t light up the tunnel (as they can) as the inaugural train passed through.

Now into South London, down to New Cross and that was the trip over. A special trip today that will soon become mundane for everyone else.

The speed of the trip from North to South London was surprisingly swift, although possibly more noticeable to me due to a very fraught and time consuming trip to get to Dalston Junction thanks to several problems on the tube and DLR.

Taking the train back, in addition to be considerably less packed as the media and suits departed, the air conditioning in the train was now very noticeable and gratefully received on a warm lunchtime.

A downside that I expect will have people scratching heads in some confusion about the planning decision, as well as rubbing them in pain is that one of the curved bars for standing passengers to hold on to has a curve that is just 6 feet from the floor – leading to a bump for your correspondent when standing under it.

In addition, the “tube maps” on the trains are complete for the full running of the network – something which Diamond Geezer noticed this morning doesn’t apply the station and website maps, yet.

More photos over at my Flickr account as usual.

Will upload more in a day or two – work was rather fraught this afternoon and I only messed around with the key photos.

Official Note from TfL:

The line will open at first under “Preview Running” status which will offer a limited service of eight trains per hour from 7am till 8pm, Monday to Friday from Dalston Junction to New Cross Gate stations. On Sunday 23rd May, a full service will start operating from Dalston Junction to West Croydon.

Other Blog Reports:

Going Underground

Martin Deutsch

Lewminesce

Londonist

Brockley Central

Diamond Geezer