Great video! I've always thought London deserved a video of its substantial non TfL rail network after seeing your video on Tokyo, my favourite on your channel. I've always wondered if London, when combining all rail services, has the world's 2nd most complex network outside of Japan's capital. A lot of it is definitely underutilised though, I think we can do better than some of the 2 train per hour frequencies and questionable connectivity between certain lines due to the railway's competitive capitalist origins. I wonder how the upcoming national elections will change things given rail nationalisation is on the agenda of the (likely) future Prime Minister. Perhaps London will finally have control of all of its suburban railways?

Bravo Reece! Geoff and Jago would approve 👍🏿

The departures board must look crazy

​@@G-546 a lot of those don't stop though, and I think the station is quite separated between the southern part and the south western railway part, but still a very complicated station

I swear Zürich hbf is busier, if you include S-Bahn

@@grassytramtracks Only Gatwick Express trains run through without stopping. If you are taking any train other than an Overground service which have their own dedicated platforms, it is a bit overwhelming trying to figure out where to go.

@@HesterClapp Clapham Junction is mostly through services, except for the Overground. That means that each line serving the station (except the two Overground lines) has departures in both directions, and each platform (except platforms 1 & 2) can deal with a lot more departures per hour.

not more expensive than Covent Garden to Leicester Square (£2.65 iirc for 0.4km)

@@camjkerman looks like you're correct, still pretty expensive for what used to be a free bus ride. Also seems most expensive is from Ty Glas to Broombridge in Cardiff, at £2.60 for just over 0.3km.

What that costs money? It's free to use the monorail in Birmingham airport...

​@@Ryan-rm6uk they already charged people for the bus

​@@legoisthebest001SCR these sorts of people movers at airports are almost always free, except Luton which has to be special

i dont like the 720s, really faulty, plasticy, and cramped. shame theyre one of my local trains (hey at least we get stadlers)

@@alivinghuman1 the stadlers actually break down way way more

Hello fellow TOC staff- SWR guard here lol

720s defo are one of the best new EMUs at the moment. Also hello fellow GA colleague

@@alivinghuman1 I also have 720s locally and I don't see the hate. They're very fast, quite reliable, and great at soaking up capacity!

You must not watch Crime watch then

Finally, we’re important!

@@kmcat I grew up there, it isn't as bad as people say.

@@kmcat We get it, you don't like diverse areas

@@kmcat 😂

Even within london, it can be considerably more than a tube journey in the same zones

Can always count on you to pick up the rest of the pieces though!

Very fitting price for Switzerland since that's about 4 times the price as the Paris region one while being 4 times the size

@@unepintade Thanks for an absolutely brilliant point!

@@grassytramtracks Tube and National Rail fares are the same in TfL zoned areas.

You also missed out Queenstown Road (between Vauxhall and Clapham Junction)

@@rhyswilliams7884 Tbh it's a fairly irrelevant station unless you live or work very near it, whereas Vauxhall and Clapham Junction are bigger interchanges and have a lot more trains stopping.

@@rhyswilliams7884 There is a shot of Queenstown Road at 3:05. It's a station with a fairly useless service as the Waterloo-to-Wimbledon commuter trains have no platforms there and the semi-fast trains from Waterloo-to-Putney also have no platforms there. You only get the slow trains from Waterloo-to-Putney and if there is a problem with them you get to watch all the other trains going past you, while you are stuck there. Ideally we will get more Crossrail-like railway lines to bypass the terminal stations of London and a line that shadows the railway from Waterloo to Putney can replace this station with an underground station that has a high freqency service.

It was a lot of work! Staines is funny, Toronto also has a "Staines" but I was very tired!

Staines is also the home of Ali G 😊

Its awesome!

But also a big fat scam

Yeah, the lack of that type of organization today is unfortunate

Ah, i was just going to make the same point. Thanks.

They are actually 5 distinct stations: Kings Cross (National Rail) St Pancras International (Eurostar) St Pancras (National Rail) St Pancras (Thameslink) Kings Cross St Pancras (Underground)

There used to be two more kings cross thameslink and kings cross york road

@@katrinabryce I'd argue even the tube station has parts in St Pancras (Eurostar/National Rail) and parts in Kings Cross.

Yes, but they are next door and function much like an integrated complex with a single share Tube station, there is a comma in the script!

Yes Class 700 and 717 are Siemens Desiro City trains. One is designed to operate on Suburban only route. The other is modified for underground running as well. Plus the Class 700 is powered by overhead lines but Class 717 is a DC third rail powered train. Class 700s come in 8 car 700/0 sub variant and 12 car 700/1 sub variant and a total of 116 Class 700s are operated by Govia Thameslink. Class 717s are 6 coach kinda like London Underground trains that run upto Moorgate. Both trains have AC standard class seating and coaches have 4 doors, 2 at 1/3 length of coach and the others at 2/3 length of coach.

Kingswood is actually on the Tattenham Corner branch, with services to/from London Bridge

Mitcham isn't spelled Mitchem

And it's "Finsbury Park", rather than 'Finchley Park".

@@AnubhabKundu The 700 is a dual mode train that runs on both 750VDC 3rd rail and 25kv AC OHLE, they do the power changeover at the City Thameslink station (it sits between Blackfriars and St Pancras/Kings Cross), north running trains are on the wire, south running trains are on 3rd rail. You can always tell which mode a 700 is on without looking, they make the "Desiro warble" only when running on 3rd rail. The 700 is also significantly faster when running on the wire.

And not entirely unique to London!

@@RMTransit indeed, across the entire UK and I’m guessing the entire world

@@MinegateTransport Well, not so much the Entire world, but it does pop up in a few different places.

The subway lines in downtown Brooklyn are similar - a huge tangle of overlapping lines thanks to three different companies building lines in competition with each other.

For 2) we did this because it breaks the “third rail south of the Thames” rule!

It's still wrong. There is no 25kV AC on the SWR network, even north of the Thames

@@joelcolyer2240 what he is meaning is that third rail is typical south of the thames, but those parts of the network are technically north of the thames.

And how about Southeastern, where the trains switch from 25KV AC (overhead) to 750V DC (third rail) when switching from HS1 to conventional railways?

@@annabelholland I mentioned that in the video!

Yes, the northern Euro airport expresses are rather unique in having such high speeds (there are a few others yes)

Let's not forget the Shanghai maglev (although someone will probably chime in saying "tHat's nOt a TrAIn!" lol

​@@mdhazeldine it's as much a train as any other multiple unit. There might be room to argue that it's not a Railway, if one is being particullarly picky about the definition of Rail, but if your definition of train excludes the vehicle pictured on the wikipedia page, well, you're also excluding most/all multiple units, which becomes a problem. (mind you, a definition of 'train' that doesn't include railcars or individual locomotives that aren't pulling anything is entirely in line with every other use of the word 'train', which pretty consistantly refers to things that 'follow along behind' (camel train, artillery train, subordinates being 'in train', wagon train, road train, the train on particularly fancy dresses, etc.)

Heathrow Express only runs in a tunnel on the Heathrow spur, once it gets onto the GWML it's on above ground mainline track. It's value for money is debatable but having used it personally, you do get to Paddington in half the time vs the Liz Line and the HE trains have a lot more luggage rack space. You can close the value gap a bit by booking an HE ticket well in advance and paying for a round trip (you can use your return ticket anytime within 30 days). HE is also nice in that you pull right into the main Paddington train hall like the GWR trains, so you get that extra experience as well. Paddington is also my favorite London station.

Yup, you're a sub 10 minute tube ride from Paddington to the Houses of Parliament.

Can you imagine how huge a single central station would need to be? Waterloo alone has 25 platforms. Turns out there actually was a plan at one point to do this, but it never happened (probably a good thing really).

The London termini were mostly built in the 1830s and were designed to serve trains going in a certain direction. Kings Cross - East Coast Mainline towards Leeds, York, Edinburgh; St Pancras - Midland Mainline towards Sheffield and Derby (and now HS1); Euston - West Coast Mainline towards Birmingham, Manchester, Crewe, Preston, Liverpool and Glasgow; Paddington - Great Western Mainline towards Bristol, Penzance and Cardiff; etc.

Paris has a similar sort of arrangement

@@mdhazeldine There are only 25 platforms at waterloo because the trains have to stop and turn around. The S Bahn trunk line in Munich is handling 30 trains per hour on a single track but that's because the line runs right under the city centre from east to west.

@@richard-riku Well that maybe true, but London has something around 150 terminating platforms at it's main stations, so even if you made them ALL through platforms and combined them into 1 station, you'd still need probably around 40-50 platforms, and the amount of traffic that would generate, all concentrated in one place would be insane. It would completely overwhelm the London Underground and some people would have to take longer journeys to get to their destination, so you'd then need shoulder stations to help distribute the load. So.....while it would be better to have more through platforms, I still think it would be unworkable to have just one huge station.

Thank you! I wish I could say I'd lived there!

Correction of a correction. St Pancras. Pancreas is an organ producing insulin.

@robertbutlin3708 I for whatever reason always thought its Pancreas! My view of the world is forever changed

Yup depends on the TOC, EMR and Great Northern both serve Peterborough, but EMR runs out of St Pancras and GN runs out of Kings Cross, both still use the ECML to get there. Thameslink crosses under KC/St Pancras and has its own merger track onto the ECML just north of Gasworks tunnel coming out of KC as it also uses the ECML to get to Peterborough and Bedford. The main differences are speed and stopping patterns, TL and GN mostly run stopping services and run on the slow line at 90mph max, EMR usually runs express and run on the fast line at up to 125mph.

Thanks for your help :)

"Staines" is spelt "Stains" which is honestly, a more accurate name.

I travelled on it a few times; my father commuted on it regularly

This was noting that HS1 is unique because it’s south of the Thames and uses Catenary, and SWR uses third rail north of Thames

@@RMTransit Oh yea good point. My bad

And North London mostly went OHLE because it was electrified at a much later date, north London was diesel territory until very recently. Even the Gospel Oak to Barking Overground line was running DMUs until a few years ago, line electrification was done when Barking Riverside was built.

@@mrvwbug4423 Electrification was completed in 2018, before the Barking Riverside extension opened in 2022. Wiring was more challenging than anticipated and the project ran late and over budget I recall. Marylebone is London's last fully diesel terminus. Chiltern Railways has started procurement for a new fleet and want some innovative solutions to enable the urban section into the city at least to be low emissions. There's no commitment to wiring so a bi-mode solution possibly incoproating batteries for the run into the terminus. On the Aylesbury line the route is parallel to the LU Metropolitan line and for a large part of that the Chiltern Railways diesel trains actually run over LU tracks, electrified using LUs 4 rail supply. New battery EMU trains could pick up power for propulsion and charging while on the move over such tracks. Of the 61km, 24km is already electrified. The routes to Oxford and Birmingham are completely unwired today.

I mentioned in the video with Geoff!

what ?

There's a train from London Bridge to Victoria roundabout the south London loop. I take it occasionally rather than use the tube.

@@wozzablog What train should I look for to make that journey (starting from Victoria)? Thanks.

@@ballyhigh11 Look for the southern train ending at London Bridge if you're getting on at Victoria :)

That was my experience with Uk rail in a nutshell, you need to do a lot of research on fares to avoid getting shafted.

The locals now call it St. Aines upon Thames….

The Elizabeth Line and GWR also go south of the Thames at Maidenhead. At Reading (South of the Thames), Platforms 1-3 and 5-15 are overhead power and platforms 4-6 are 3rd rail power. Elizabeth LIne usually uses platforms 13 & 14, sometimes 12 & 15.

Very true!

@@katrinabryce There are 15 platforms at Reading?! Flippin 'eck!

@@Muzakman37 It is the busiest station in the UK outside London by number of departures. Birmingham New Street is a close second.

Greenford-West Ealing (or is the fast charging battery train running now?), London Bridge - Uckfield, and some of the services out of Euston (Chester/North Wales, the token Shrewsbury) are diesel in London too.

Probably there are numerous examples. CP Class 2240 in Portugal are used on one of Greater Lisbon's suburban lines and in Regional and Inter-Regional services across the country, those Inter-Regional services would be called Intercity in the UK. Stadler FLIRTs get used for a variety of services around the World too, just not sure if within the same country. And we could be picky and go into the service patterns of Dutch Intercity trains.

TL has their own station for KC/SP and they merge onto the ECML just north of gasworks tunnel.

The separation between KX and StP is purely in the eye of the beholder. It is a complex of 8 stations tagged variously as KX (Anglia and East Coast mainline), StP (Thameslink, Kent high speed, East Midlands), StP International (Eurostar) and KXStP (LU Tube and Subsurface) but basically one place.

I tend not to get distracted by operators and franchise owners. These are not factors as I make my way from south east London to the Surrey hinterlands.

The franchise system of TOCs is abhorrent. Ideally it should all go back to a Network Southeast division of British Rail and run with a unified branding and more integrated fares and travel cards. Even if the DfT wants to have concessions for the operations of different sections, just like TfL does, that would be more efficient and less confusing, and better service for the passenger. TfL manages the Overground but it doesn't actually do the operations, everything in TfL is a concession. The Underground is a concession to LUL, an operator owned by TfL itself, but everything else like the Overground, Elizabeth, DLR and buses are concessions to private operators. The proposal for Crossrail2 is to actually take some of Southwestern's suburban lines and make them crossrail branches with a new tunnel from Wimbledon via Clapham Junction into Tottenham Hale where it would take over service currently on Greater Anglia. One of the challenges of giving these services to TfL, just like with the Elizabeth line, is that these branches terminate outside of the London boroughs and that implies agreements with funding. I think crossrail services could be jointly managed by TfL and the Network Southeast mentioned above, it would solve a lot of issues.

@@f.g.9466 I always thought that TfL run the buses, trains (Overground but not Elizabeth line as that is ran by the MTR, which is what the name for the Hong Kong metro) and the Underground themselves. Maybe even TfL Rail (pre Crossrail) was run by the MTR. Regarding the franchising system, maybe that is why our ticket is so expensive, although the cost from Cambridge to Norwich (using Greater Anglia, East Midlands Railway or CrossCountry) is £24 return for a total distance of 220 km/140 miles (110 km one way), which is a price of 11p per km/16p per mile. A single ticket is often only a pound cheaper than a return meaning the same journey one way costs £23. [edited to add imperial units]

@@annabelholland It's a tendering system, the operators bid for routes and then provide the buses, drivers and other staff. TfL does all the planning, control and management, including specifying service levels. Next time you see a London bus look out for the operator logo: Go-Ahead/Metrobus, Arriva, Metroline, Staggecoach, First London, even RATP (Paris transport), etc, etc, there's at least ten of them. With rail services TfL provides the rolling stock. The Overground is currently operated by Arriva but MTR was the previous operator. DLR is operated by Keolis (mostly owned by SNCF, also operates Manchester Metrolink) and Tramlink is operated by First. The Underground is operated by L.U.L. which is a subsidiary of TfL and that one is not subjected to tendering. And yes, MTR has been operating TfL Rail/Elizabeth line since the beginning (2015), the contract expires next year, hence the recent news of TfL inviting bids for the new contract. I guess there are a lot of factors contributing to the high prices of tickets in Britain. In the end it all boils down to lack of funding from the government that lets private ventures extract money from public transport. From the franchises to the archaic ticketing system, to Rolling Stock Companies (ROSCOs) which are the worst feature of our railways. All of the rolling stock is owned by ROSCOs (private companies/banks) so the operators or agencies are forced to lease from them. That's not a bad price at all! Where I'm typing now the services to London (66Km each way) start at 14p/Km, and to Brighton (24Km each way) are 19p/Km. The awkward ticketing system is made to reward return tickets though, that single ticket should be £12, something the government had promise to fix but didn't deliver.

I think it's why most of us just use google maps or city mapper. It just suggests a fairly decent route. Most of us also use contactless as habit. Fares are not co-ordinated (off the TFL network) and though expensive; feel like suburban prices. You just sort of get used to it and zip about the city.

True, but I'm guessing Reece doesn't see that as a London suburban service - the North Downs line is very useful, but it runs more of a regional service, akin to a Swiss InterRegio. Gatwick-Reading trains certainly don't get people into Central London or from one part of Greater London to another - I think a service would have to do at least one of those to count as a London suburban/commuter train. The closest it gets is Redhill, Guildford and Wokingham - admittedly these stations are all served by London comnuter trains but that doesn't make every train that stops at them a London commuter train!

I have considered making one, but I am not sure what the story will be

Not the only line where it can be very, very, very much cheaper to book a long time in advance, as you'll know if you travel between Liverpool Street and Norwich at the weekends.

CittyMapper actually works great even outside of London. Currently typing from Sussex and it gives me all the local bus routes and train routes to other destinations outside of London.