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This
Year's Committee & Officers |
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Chair |
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Graham Larkbey |
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Treasurer |
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Jeffery Harvey | :
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Secretary |
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Glenn Wallis |
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Committee |
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Jerry Gold & Martin Hazel |
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BGORUG is the rail users' group for the service between Barking and
Gospel Oak. We have been in existence for over 50 years, originally
known as the Barking & Kentish Town Line Committee, firstly to fight
the line's closure, as proposed in the infamous Beeching Report, and
then changing our name to the Barking & Gospel Oak Line Committee
in 1981 when the service was withdrawn from Kentish Town and rerouted
to Gospel Oak to link up with the North London Line, another line
that was proposed for closure by Beeching.
Once the threat of closure was removed, the group set about getting
improvements to the run-down stations and train service along the
Forgotten Railway, as passengers and staff called it, although it
emerged in the early 1990s that British Rail were still considering
closing the South Tottenham - Woodgrange Park section to avoid the
cost of maintaining the many near life expired steel bridges in that
section of line.
Recent users who have only known the line since Transport for London
(TfL) started to fund incremental improvements to the train service
frequency from 2005 onwards, before taking full control of the passenger
service in 2007 as part of the new London Overground brand, will be
excused for finding the preceding two paragraphs hard to believe.
The transformation has included:
- Effectively
doubling the train frequency and providing new trains from 2010
- Re-staffing
the stations (yes, British Rail withdrew the last station staff
in 1992) and
- Refurbishing
them (the last improvements were funded by Barking & Dagenham,
Camden, Newham, Haringey, Islington and Waltham Forest councils
in the late 1990s),
- Putting
the line on the Tube Map as part of the London Overground network
- Introducing
Oyster Pay-As-You-Go (thereby reducing some fares) has brought about
a massive increase in the numbers of passengers using the line,
and it has become a victim of its own success.
So the Barking
- Gospel Oak Line User Group, as we were by then, found itself with
a new fight on its hands, that of getting TfL to continually upgrade
the service to cope with the amazing numbers of passengers that now flock
to use it.
Known since April 2013 as the Barking - Gospel Oak Rail Users' Group,
we have scored some notable victories:
-
Persuading TfL to increase late-evening services from 2 trains per hour to 3 from mid-January 2018.
- Getting
earlier first trains and later last trains and extending improved
off-peak train frequencies and an all-year round Sunday service
(it used to be summer only!) 1992 - 2007. TfL again funded some
of these improvements.
- Together
with London TravelWatch, securing TfL funding for extra peak period
trains to relieve overcrowding 2005-2007
- Persuading
TfL to add earlier first and later last trains 2007-2010
- Persuading
TfL to provide additional passenger shelters at some stations
in 2012
- Defending
the provision of rail replacement bus services during engineering
work
- Achieving
the goal of a 20-year campaign to link Walthamstow Queen's Road
and Walthamstow Central stations with a footpath.
- The culmination
of a 6-year campaign to electrify the last diesel only railway
in NE London with the announcement of Government funding in 2013.
This was reflected in the winning of the prestigious national Railfuture Rail User Group Award
for Best Campaign in November 2013. Secretary Glenn Wallis also received
a personal award from Waltham Forest Council.
BGORUG has demonstrated
that it is an effective, campaigning organisation with the needs of
the passengers of the line at its heart. Achieving this level of success
does not come without cost. Apart from occasional grants from local
councils, we rely on our members subscriptions to fund our work. Please
join us! Annual membership is only £5.00 and members receive regular
news with three meetings per year with representatives of the operating
company, TfL, London Travelwatch and British Transport Police attending
to report and listen directly to members' concerns.
Membership Applications: You can
download a membership application from here.
Print off the form and complete the required details and post with
your cheque to the Treasurer. Alternatively you can pay electronically,
but we ask that you either post the completed form or email the required
details to the Treasurer.
If you have
any photos,
comments or suggestions on how to improve this site
please e-mail info@barking-gospeloak.org.uk.
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Barking
- Gospel Oak Rail User Group (BGORUG)
