page_title: East London line
section_title: The London Underground era
hierarchical_section_title: East London line / History / The London Underground era
context_page_description: The East London line is part of the London Overground, running north to south through the East, Docklands and South areas of London. It was previously a line of the London Underground.
  Built in 1869 by the East London Railway Company, which reused the Thames Tunnel intended for horse-drawn carriages, the line became part of the London Underground network in 1933. After nearly 75 years as part of that network, it closed on 22 December 2007 for an extensive refurbishment and expansion, reopening as part of the Overground network in April 2010. Phase 2, which links the line to the South London line with a terminus at Clapham Junction, opened on 9 December 2012, creating an orbital railway around inner London.
context_section_description: In 1933, the East London Railway came under the control of the London Passenger Transport Board. Although the infrastructure was still privately owned, passenger services were operated as the "East London Branch" of the Metropolitan line. The railways were nationalised in 1948, and became part of the British Transport Commission along with the Underground. Goods services continued to use the line until 1962, with occasional passenger trains from Liverpool Street until 1966. The short length of track connecting Shoreditch to Liverpool St was removed in 1966. The service to Shoreditch was reduced, with Whitechapel becoming the northern terminus for much of the time; by the time Shoreditch station closed in 2006, it was only open at peak times on weekdays and most of Sundays (for Brick Lane Market).
  Services to and from stations further west were curtailed during the early part of the Underground era. The service to Hammersmith was reduced to peak hours only in 1936 and withdrawn in 1941, leaving the East London branch as an isolated line. Its only passenger interchange to the rest of the Underground was at Whitechapel, with interchanges to main line trains at the two New Cross stations. In the 1980s and 1990s, the line gained two important new connections: Shadwell became an interchange with the Docklands Light Railway in 1987, and a station was added at Canada Water in 1999 for interchange with the Jubilee line.
  The identity of the East London line changed considerably during the London Underground era. On Tube maps between 1933 and 1968 it was depicted in the same colour as the Metropolitan line. In 1970, it was renamed the "Metropolitan line — East London Section", in Metropolitan line purple with a white stripe down the middle. In the 1980s it became a line in its own right (though it was still grouped operationally with the Metropolitan line) and from 1990 its colour on the map changed to orange.
  Maintenance passed to the Metronet consortium in 2003 under a public-private partnership, although the operation of trains continued to be the responsibility of Transport for London (TfL). According to TfL, the line carried 10.7 million passengers per year before its temporary closure in 2007.
caption: A train of A stock stands at Surrey Quays
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