Lewisham DLR services to see reduced train lengths

DLR services between Bank and Lewisham are to be cut from three to two cars from today owing to delays with new trains.

The shortened service will run until Sunday 4th January to avoid running older stock.

Whilst it may be understandable to shorten train lengths when services are quieter over the Christmas and New Year period to squeeze out more life from 1990s stock, enacting it this coming week seems a tad early and perhaps speaks to the wider problems of keeping older trains going.

After all, a number of older trains have already been scrapped and those in service don’t have a long shelf life in them without costly work being needed.

Looking at numbers using Lewisham station between Tues and Thursday last year using daily TfL station figures shows that during an during an equivalent week there was a slight reduction in usage from the previous week in December (from the high 7,000s or touching 8,000 on one day midweek to the low 7,000s) before numbers dropped substantially just before Christmas.

We’re talking around a ten per cent fall in passengers squeezing into trains cut by a third.

Problems

New stock on the DLR was supposed to enter service by April 2024 though the first didn’t begin public operation until September 2025. Three began running until an incident saw them all withdrawn.

An issue with braking during wet weather was given by TfL.

Earlier delays with new stock introduction cost TfL had already cost with additional payments being made to manufacturer CAF to store completed trains in Spain whilst continual closures for testing prevented passenger operation and limited fare income.

in December 2024 TfL stated “our positive relationship with CAF has enabled us to flex the delivery timetable and agree plans for additional train storage to effectively manage the impact of delays, although this has come at additional cost.”

Testing has been ongoing for longer than expected. As a result services such as those between Canary Wharf and Stratford had been shortened to try to keep older trains in service for longer and limit their running mileage and avoid the need for expensive maintenance.

Another impact has been cutting services from Beckton to Canning Town or Stratford halving services along the route.

All in all its a bit of a mess, and TfL have not been able to confirm when the latest issue will be fixed and the roll-out resume.

When the new stock is finally in place they’ll be a large net addition in overall trains. In total 54 are on order with 33 reaching the end of their lift – if not already scrapped.

Combined with walk through carriages it’ll bolster the entire network’s capacity by more than 50 per cent.