Custom House is an

interchange station An interchange station or a transfer station is a train station for more than one railway route in a public transport system that allows passengers to change from one route to another, often without having to leave a station or pay an additional ...

by the

Royal Docks Royal Docks is an area in the London Borough of Newham in the London Docklands in East London, England. The area is named after three docks – the Royal Albert Dock, the Royal Victoria Dock and the King George V Dock. They are more corre ...

, in

Custom House A custom house or customs house was traditionally a building housing the offices for a jurisdictional government whose officials oversaw the functions associated with importing and exporting goods into and out of a country, such as collecting ...

in the

London Borough of Newham The London Borough of Newham () is a London borough created in 1965 by the London Government Act 1963. It covers an area previously administered by the Essex county boroughs of West Ham and East Ham, authorities that were both abolished by ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

for

Docklands Light Railway The Docklands Light Railway (DLR) is an automated medium-capacity rail system, light metro system primarily serving the redeveloped London Docklands, Docklands area of London and providing a direct connection between London's two major financi ...

(DLR) – on which it is branded Custom House for ExCeL – and

Elizabeth line The Elizabeth line is a railway line that runs across Greater London and nearby towns, operating similarly to the Réseau Express Régional, RER in Paris and the S-Bahn systems of German-speaking countries. It runs services on dedicated infras ...

services. It is situated in Travelcard Zone 3. It takes its name from the old Custom House, which formerly stood nearby, and ExCeL London which it serves. It is adjacent to the site of an older Custom House station built by the

Eastern Counties Railway The Eastern Counties Railway (ECR) was an English railway company incorporated in 1836 intended to link London with Ipswich via Colchester, and then extend to Norwich and Yarmouth. Construction began in 1837 on the first at the London end. Co ...

in 1855 and closed in 2006. These were replaced by new

platforms, which opened on 24 May 2022, along with the rest of the central section. As a result of the Crossrail project, the Custom House DLR station was closed from February 2017 until 7 January 2018.

History

Heavy rail station

The original Custom House station was opened in 1855, by the

(ECR) on the Eastern Counties and Thames Junction Railway (ECTJR) line which was built to link the Eastern Counties Railway at Stratford with the developing London docks of the mid-nineteenth century. The ECTJR was formally absorbed by the ECR in 1847. By the 1860s the railways in East Anglia were in financial trouble, and most were leased to the ECR; they wished to amalgamate formally, but could not obtain government agreement for this until 1862, when the

Great Eastern Railway The Great Eastern Railway (GER) was a pre-grouping British railway company, whose main line linked London Liverpool Street to Norwich and which had other lines through East Anglia. The company was grouped into the London and North Eastern R ...

was formed by amalgamation. Thus Custom House became a GER station in 1862. On 14 October 1872 a branch to Beckton Gas Works opened to freight, the line diverging just to the east of the station. Passenger services commenced 17 March 1874 generally running from Stratford (Low Level platforms) or Stratford Market stations. On 3 August 1880 the branch to Gallions was opened by the St Katherine's and London Docks Company although initially trains terminated at Central before being extended to Gallions in November of that year. The dock company acquired three former London & North Western Railway 2-4-0T locomotives to operate a shuttle service between Custom House and Gallions. The station was situated between housing to the north and exchange sidings for the dock system to the south (which opened in 1877). It was rebuilt in 1891 and was a three platform affair with a bay platform at the east end for Gallions Branch services. The station building was on the north side of the line and linked to the southbound platform by a footbridge. There was a shelter on the up platform and a signal box at the east end of the station. Following the Railway Grouping of 1923 Custom House station became part of the

London & North Eastern Railway The London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) was the second largest (after LMS) of the " Big Four" railway companies created by the Railways Act 1921 in Britain. It operated from 1 January 1923 until nationalisation on 1 January 1948. At tha ...

. During the Second World War the station was bombed in the

London Blitz London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 14.9 million. London stands on the River Tha ...

on 7 September 1940. The Gallions and Beckton branches were also heavily bombed and the passenger service was withdrawn at this time. Following nationalisation in 1948 Custom House became part of British Railways (Eastern Region). Passenger numbers fell during the 1950s and 1960s as the docks declined and car ownership grew. Eventually the service was reduced to a shuttle between Stratford (Low Level) platforms and North Woolwich generally operated by two car DMUs. In 1969 the station building was demolished and replaced by a shelter. In 1978 it was announced a new Crosstown Linkline service would be operated linking North Woolwich, Custom House and Stratford to Camden Road and this commenced on 14 May 1979.Batten, M. (2020). East London Railways: From Docklands to Crossrail. United Kingdom: Amberley Publishing. The line was electrified by

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Comm ...

and from 13 May 1985 the Crosstown Linkline diesel service was replaced with electric through running from Richmond to North Woolwich, which replaced the Richmond–Broad Street service. In 1986 the line became part of

Network SouthEast Network SouthEast (NSE) was one of the three passenger sectors of British Rail created in 1982. NSE mainly operated commuter rail trains within Greater London and inter-urban services in densely populated South East England, although the networ ...

. Following privatisation of the railways in 1994 the track through Custom House became the responsibility of

Railtrack Railtrack was a group of companies that owned the railroad, track, railway signalling, signalling, tunnels, bridges, level crossings and all but a handful of the railway station, stations of the Transport in England#Rail, British railway syste ...

whilst train operations became the part of North London Railways (part of

National Express Mobico Group, formerly National Express Group, is a British multinational public transport company with headquarters in Birmingham, England. Domestically it currently operates bus and coach services under brands including National Express. Th ...

) on 3 March 1997. This company was re-branded as Silverlink in September of that year. In 2002 following financial difficulties at Railtrack,

Network Rail Network Rail Limited is the owner (via its subsidiary Network Rail Infrastructure Limited, which was known as Railtrack plc before 2002) and railway infrastructure manager, infrastructure manager of most of the railway network in Great Britain. ...

took over responsibility for the operation of the infrastructure around the station. The original Custom House station was closed on Saturday 9 December 2006 along with Silvertown and North Woolwich. The area was by now well served by the Docklands Light Railway and this was also due to take over the track bed of the old ECTJR up to

Stratford railway station Stratford is a major multi-level interchange station serving the town of Stratford, London, Stratford and the mixed-use development known as Stratford City, in the London Borough of Newham, East London for London Underground, London Overground ...

Custom House Engine Shed

This engine shed was located to the east of the station and on the south side of the line. The three track engine shed was built in 1881 by the London and St Katherine Docks Company after a fire had destroyed an earlier wooden structure. Early locomotives tended to be a series of second hand locomotives including some from the London and North Western Railway which tended to work passenger services on the Gallions branch and would have been seen at the GER station. The main duties undertaken by the shed's locomotives were shunting the various sidings, wharves and factories around the Victoria and Albert docks. In 1889 the shed passed to the London and India Docks Joint Committee following the merger of some of the dock companies. The dock company's locomotives stopped working passenger services on the Gallions Branch from 1903 and services were then worked by the GER although occasionally Custom House locomotives did help out. Six years later in 1909 the remaining dock companies were all merged under the umbrella of the

Port of London Authority The Port of London Authority (PLA) is a self-funding public trust established on 31 March 1909 in accordance with the Port of London Act 1908 to govern the Port of London. Its responsibility extends over the Tideway of the River Thames and its ...

who became responsible for the operation of the shed and rail network in the docks. From time to time shunting locomotives from the Great Eastern (later LNER and British Railway) shed as Stratford were hired in to cover shortages. By the mid-1920s the locomotive stock allocated to Custom House consisted of: * Seven

Robert Stephenson Robert Stephenson , (honoris causa, Hon. causa) (16 October 1803 – 12 October 1859) was an English civil engineer and designer of locomotives. The only son of George Stephenson, the "Father of Railways", he built on the achievements of hi ...

0-6-0STs * Two Manning Wardle 0-6-0STs * Six Andrew Barclay 0-6-0Ts * Seventeen Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0Ts The first diesel engines (from the Yorkshire Engine Company) appeared in 1959 and a handful of steam engines were retained until 1963 (mainly for the banana traffic; the bananas were ripened en route by means of heating pipes in the vans, fed by steam from the locomotive). The reign of the diesels was short lived as the docks were in rapid decline and on 1 May 1970 the PLA system and Custom House shed closed.

Light rail station

In 1973 a government report on the redevelopment of London's Docklands proposed an extension of the unbuilt Fleet line from

Charing Cross Charing Cross ( ) is a junction in Westminster, London, England, where six routes meet. Since the early 19th century, Charing Cross has been the notional "centre of London" and became the point from which distances from London are measured. ...

via

Fenchurch Street Fenchurch Street is a street in London, England, linking Aldgate at its eastern end with Lombard Street and Gracechurch Street in the west. It is a well-known thoroughfare in the City of London financial district and is the site of many cor ...

Beckton Beckton is a suburb in east London, England, located east of Charing Cross and part of the London Borough of Newham. Adjacent to the River Thames, the area consisted of unpopulated marshland known as the East Ham Levels in the parishes of Bark ...

, with stations on each side at North Greenwich and

. The proposal was developed during the 1970s as the Fleet line developed into the Jubilee line. The route was approved in 1980 with the main route running via

Silvertown Silvertown is a district of West Ham in the London Borough of Newham, in east London, England. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, Thames and was historically part of the parishes of West Ham and East Ham, Becontree Hundred, hund ...

to Woolwich Arsenal and the Beckton route planned to operate as a shuttle service from Customs House. Financial constraints meant that the route was not proceeded with. By the start of the 1990s new plans had been developed to extend the Jubilee line on a route south of the River Thames towards Stratford. The adjacent Docklands Light Railway (DLR) station opened on 28 March 1994 as part of the extension to

Today

Design

It is linked to the main entrance of the ExCeL Exhibition Centre by an overhead walkway, which also connects to the Royal Victoria Dock Bridge, spanning the

Royal Victoria Dock The Royal Victoria Dock is the largest of three docks in the Royal Docks of east London, now part of the redeveloped London Docklands, Docklands. History Although, the structure was in place in the year 1850, it was opened in 1855, on a pre ...

to its southern side.

Location

It is the principal public transport access to the ExCeL Exhibition Centre and its adjacent complex of hotels, restaurants and bars.

Services

Docklands Light Railway

The typical off-peak

service in trains per hour is: * 12 tph to of which 6 continue to Tower Gateway * 12 tph to

Additional services call at the station during the peak hours, increasing the service to up to 16 tph in each direction.

Elizabeth line

services at Custom House are operated using EMUs. The typical off-peak service in trains per hour is: * 8 tph to * 4 tph to of which 2 continue to * 4 tph to Additional services call at the station during the peak hours, increasing the service to up to 12 tph in each direction.

Connections

London Buses London Buses is the subsidiary of Transport for London (TfL) that manages most bus services in London, England. It was formed following the Greater London Authority Act 1999 that transferred control of London Regional Transport (LRT) bus s ...

routes 147, 241,

300 __NOTOC__ Year 300 ( CCC) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Constantius and Valerius (or, less frequently, year 1053 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 300 ...

, 304, 325, 474, school route 678 and night route N551 serve the station.

References

External links

Docklands Light Railway website – Custom House station page

Disused Stations: Custom House
{{Closed London Underground stations Docklands Light Railway stations in the London Borough of Newham Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1855 Railway stations served by the Elizabeth line Former Eastern Counties and Thames Junction Railway stations Railway depots in London Station Unbuilt London Underground stations Proposed London Underground stations