Contra-Peak Flows out of London

[mrcheek]

On early morning peak services out of Fenchurch Street, youve got a good chance of getting an entire carriage to yourself. But it will gradually get busier as you head out

 

[Cricketer8for9]

The stations nearer the City of London will tend to be exceptions as few people actually live in the City. And Fenchurch St, as it doesn’t have direct Underground connections (and the indirect one brings people in from the same direction that trains head out), will not have a weight of passengers coming from elsewhere to head out east. Plus there tends to be less employment east of London, and what exists is not in the C2C line.

 

[bastien]

I was surprised how busy an evening Salisbury to Waterloo train gets - full and standing after Woking. Then almost everyone got off at Clapham Junction, which suggests they live (or work?) somewhere round the Overground.

 

[Cricketer8for9]

Maybe, but don’t forget the swathe of south London accessible on Southern from Clapham Junction or the stations along the Windsor lines.

 

[Dr_Paul]

Kingston has for several decades been a destination station in the morning, with both up and down services unloading sizeable numbers of passengers, because of the town's retail outlets and administrative offices, town and county council offices and (as we old-timers still call it) the Poly, with an equivalent number of people boarding trains there in the evening. When I was commuting up to Waterloo from Kingston in the morning, this was handy because it was very rare that I couldn't get a seat.

 

[Snow1964]

I was surprised how busy an evening Salisbury to Waterloo train gets - full and standing after Woking. Then almost everyone got off at Clapham Junction, which suggests they live (or work?) somewhere round the Overground.

This is partly due to the longer distance trains only calling at Clapham Junction (and Waterloo) in the London area. There potentially would be people changing at places like Wimbledon if the trains stopped there (its usually quicker via CJ and backtracking than changing at Woking) from Basingstoke and Salisbury. Remember some might also get Victoria line at Vauxhall (it can be slow and crowded trying to get between say Waterloo and Kings Cross on tube).

On South Western lots of offices / workplaces in places like Guildford, Woking, Basingstoke, Brentford, Feltham, Bracknell, Kingston etc.

 

[Tom B]

I was surprised how busy an evening Salisbury to Waterloo train gets - full and standing after Woking. Then almost everyone got off at Clapham Junction, which suggests they live (or work?) somewhere round the Overground.

In the evening peak, could some of this be down to folk going out for the evening up to London? I'm told that Clapham is quite trendy nowadays.