Our DLR normally works to a very high performance level, but I am afraid when it does go wrong they have form in not admitting it, either locally or at the top TfL level. Diverting the Woolwich-Bank trains to Mudchute keeps pretty much the same length of journey time and thus avoids changing the diagrams significantly, which seems the principal concern rather than passenger convenience. It seems also that the Lewisham-Bank run has been cut back to every 10 minutes rather than every 5, and is notably crowded. However, if there can only be a limited number of trains at the west end, there's little opportunity to do anything else. I haven't been through on a Woolwich train doing this, but I hope they are telling people to change at Canary Wharf for Bank rather than Poplar, avoiding changing twice, and where you can normally walk through a Stratford terminating train wholly on the level.
Mudchute has a dreary little park, a fine view of the Canary Wharf high rises in the distance, and ... that's about it.
A previous lack of communication was on Millennium night itself, December 31 1999, when a complete power failure on the west end (quite possibly the same transformer which now, 22 years later, has finally blown up) from about 23.30 left trains stranded mid-section on the viaduct between Limehouse and Tower Gateway/Bank, and as we (enforced) walked home at about 2am along Cable Street next to the line, visiting each station to see what was going on, we passed darkened inbound stalled trains full of fed-up passengers who had now missed all the festivities. Next morning TfL and Mayor Livingston trumpeted how wonderfully the Underground and buses had managed through the event, completely glossing over this breakdown, so all the media did as well. It took a post from me some years ago on here to find an engineer of the time who described what had happened.
