Station Reviews: Fairlop

In this blog post, we are going to review one of the stations on the London Underground - Fairlop Station. 

Station information:

Station name: Fairlop

Located in: Fairlop, London

Borough: London Borough of Redbridge

Fare Zone: Zone 4

Fairlop station is in Zone 4 of the tube map and is fairly quiet during the day, though I imagine it can get a bit busy during rush hour. It is served solely by the Central Line on the Hainault Loop. I have passed through this station quite a few times and to be honest, there is not anything worth noting in terms of facilities. If you are willing to walk a bit though, there is Fairlop Waters and does occasionally see funfair attractions, during the Half term, Easter and Summer holidays.   

The station opened on the 1st of May 1903 by Great Eastern Railway. It closed on the 29th of November 1947, before reopening again for Central Line services on the 31st of May 1948. The station entrance inside is pretty small, being next to the car park and to access the platforms is through the stairs only, there are no lifts at the station. It's one stop away from Hainault which is the terminus of the route, (and you can actually see a glimpse of the platform in the distance facing to the north) though some Central Line services terminate at Newbury Park occasionally. The longest I have waited at the station is around 15 minutes but, generally the frequencies are around 10 minutes or under - pretty much as standard for majority of the London Underground stations. 

You have one local London Buses route (Route 462) that serves the station, but that runs at an infrequent frequency (around every 15 minutes Monday to Saturday, 30 minutes in the evening and on Sundays) with the bus stops not being too far apart from each other. Aside from that not much else to report, it's a decently quiet station and I haven't had any issues using it. 

Route 462 is the only London bus route that serves Fairlop Station. 

So, yeah. You won't find much to do here in Fairlop but if you happen to pass by, there are frequent Central Line services. It's also not too far away to walk to Fulwell Cross, if you want to go to the shops or require taking a bus further out. 

Thank you for reading and happy riding!

Station Reviews: Goodmayes

Happy July! I know. 7 months into 2021 already. Would you believe it? Feels quick. Thought I should do a station reviews post to keep the blog going.

Goodmayes Station. Based in East London and in Zone 4 of the tube map. One of many stations on the heavily used Great Eastern Main Line, operated by TFL Rail which does the London Liverpool Street to Shenfield service. 

The station itself requires a walk to get there. There are 5 routes that could be used to reach the station  (86, 128, 150, 364 and EL3) - 3 of those routes (86, 128 and 150) require a few-minutes walk to get to the station from the bus stop. Previously the station was operated by Abellio Greater Anglia and there were no barriers but, since the TFL Rail takeover in May 2015, it has been added to the station entrances. 

There's 4 platforms when you enter Goodmayes. 2 for the slow lines (Platform 3 and 4) and other for the fast lines. The slow line platforms will be the ones nearest to you. Platform 1 and 3 are the London-bound while Platform 2 and 4 are Shenfield bound. The fast platforms (Platform 1 and 2) on the right are not really used, unless there is engineering works taking place. To access Platform 2 you would need to go down the stairs (the same one that goes to Platform 3) via the gate on the right, which again has been put in use. The signage is pretty simple here anyway so you should not get lost.

Platforms 3 and 4 are currently being extended to accommodate 9-car in preparation for Crossrail. As of typing, the platforms can fit 8-cars. Usually a mix between the Class 315s and Class 345s. The 315s are in single digits and probably will be replaced by the time you are reading this. I would like to mention that the walkthrough layout on the 315s is quite tight with the 3 and 2 seating being separate to each other. Meanwhile the 345s are walkthrough so you can go from one end of the train to the other.

The frequency is between 7-8 mins within each service, so that helps alot. On weekends it's a bit longer. While that's great there is a problem. On a number of occasions, I have missed the train literally by a second because the train arrives than the earlier expected time - though luckily I also managed to get onto the train before the doors shut. Thankfully the trains stop right near the stairs. 

What I am saying now might sound silly - give yourself enough time to get to the station. Get there early. Even if it's 10 mins just do it, the last thing you want to see while going down the stairs is to see that the train, arrived earlier than you thought and it departs without you.  

On a busyness scale, I wouldn't say it's that busy compared to other stations on the route, but not quiet either. On Platform 3 (towards London) there is a shelter which used to have sliding doors when you clicked a button, though these have been taken out as of today. The shelter still exists (as of typing) seen in the 315 picture below.

Overall yeah. There are a few bus routes serving the station and decent amount of shops around including a Tesco - if you are willing to walk it around the corner. That's pretty much it really.

Used to be very common sight on this line until they were restricted to weekday appearances in 2019 I believe. 

The replacement for the 315s since 2017 - though it
has taken quite sometime to do so! The new face on this line and for Crossrail. 

And that brings another blog post to a close. Expect to see more of the 345s appearing as the 315s will become (or is already) a distant memory on the route.

Thanks so much for reading and happy riding! :)

The sunset was really nice on this day so I thought I should include it.