Hello! We're back! We're back out, on the railways, this time we're in east London
as we do a brand new video, secrets.. of the Docklands Light Railway
The dome structure at the entrance is an original 1987 feature
but if you walk down to the back to the platforms
Then you'll get
to a secret back entrance which leads out onto Mansell Street.
We're at Limehouse station where the DLR connects to the National Railway here
and there's this little bridge which links
the two stations together, but weirdly,
the bridge only connects you to trains going into London
and not the ones leaving.
I'm not gonna go through the barrier.
If you're a regular commuter on the DLR at East India,
this may be the point where there's a thing that you
pass through every day but you've never seen.
On the eastbound platform come to the end, and at the side of the building ...
there's this line, next to a sundial
there's the line along the ground as well
What this is, is the meridian line.
GMT Zero, and by standing here,
I'm in the western hemisphere,
and by standing here ... i'm in the eastern!
Now with Oyster and Contactless being the preferred way to pay,
the DLR doesn't need any ticket offices, does it...
or does it?
So we've come to London City Airport
Again, this is one of those stations that you've never been to
because you've never caught a plane from London City Airport
but here's a great thing: it's the only DLR station
that's got a ticket office!
Which is closed....
We've come on a day it's closed.
It would appear that not many flights land on a Saturday afternoon.
Whilst we're at London City Airport
waiting for our next train,
I'm looking at the map of the DLR
It wasn't always like this, so here's a quick timeline to explain how it developed over the years
The DLR had just 15 stations when it first opened in 1987
The extension to Bank was built first with Canary Wharf opening later the same year
Before it then headed out east to Beckton with Pudding Mill Lane being added to the original Stratford branch
The railway then extended south tunneling under the Thames from Island Gardens to Lewisham
followed by another new branch which first terminated at King George V until another new tunnel was completed to take the DLR to Woolwich
Langdon Park Station was added during this time too and then
finally the new extension to Stratford International was built
And we've come to the eastern end of the DLR
at Beckton so you don't have to. I admit, I've only been here twice before in my life
And here is the secret thing that we found out about it. Did you know that when a train leaves for London
It actually leaves heading eastbound and then does a massive U-turn so that trains are then heading west towards London
Now, we still get confused at Canning Town where there are high-level and low-level DLR platforms
So always check the departure board for the next train.
As you can see here, trains to Beckton as well as Woolwich can leave from two different platforms
And on to Abbey Road where you can't help but raise a small chuckle at some of the terrible
Beatles song titles which they've squeezed in to a sign telling you that you are at the wrong station
if you're off to the famous zebra crossing
But the station actually gets it name from being on the spot where Stratford Langthorne Abbey used to be
Come to the end of the northbound platform, the southern end and there's a stone showing you where it used to be
We took a quick ride through the lit-up tunnels to Stratford International
to see platform 2 that the trains hardly ever use and then back south through Canary Wharf
This one isn't so much a secret because I think a lot of people know this already
But a really quick tip, if you ever change from the DLR to the Jubilee Line at Canary Wharf
Don't use Canary Wharf DLR which is just 30 seconds away
Instead, change here att Heron Quays
To get down to the Jubilee, someone measured it and it's been proven to be slightly quicker
One of the best old bits of the DLR was the best old bit before the DLR came along
The original Island Gardens station
before it was rebuilt and resited for the Lewisham extension
used to sit on top of this old railway viaduct. Part of the Millwall extension railway from the 1900s
A lot of the DLR was actually built by using infrastructure in places where previous railways had once run in London
And then it was on to our favourite named DLR-stop
Don't snigger
So we're at Mudchute station. Huh. Mudchute
And as that train leaves platform one heading south, you got platforms two and three here heading north
except here's the weird thing. At Stratford International we pointed out the rarely used platform,
But it was rarely used. Here they built a whole new platform and a track
at Mudchute for reversing trains where no trains ever ever call... ever
Whatever you do... Don't wait for a train at platform 3.. at Mudchute
We headed back up the line through Blackwall trying to wait, trying to find
trying to squeeze our way in to the one seat in a DLR where everybody loves to sit
And the thing that we love about Docklands Light Railway the most
The fact that if you manage to bag the front-seat, which is quite hard to do, then you can pretend
that you're driving the train