THE DELAYED Docklands Light Railway extension from Canning Town to Stratford should open in the spring, and test trains are now  running. Originally, it had been planned to open the line last year.

Transport for London attributed the delay to ‘joint venture contractors Skanska and Volker Rail taking longer than expected to progress some technical aspects, such as communications system design and installation’.

TfL said the route, which will form a second DLR route to Stratford, would still be open ‘well in advance’ of the Olympics.

The main part of the extension as far as Stratford domestic station is a conversion of the former North London line between Stratford and North Woolwich, which closed in December 2006 after the alternative King George V station on the DLR had opened in North Woolwich.

However, the section from Stratford domestic station to Stratford International is new.

The rest of the North Woolwich branch onwards from Canning Town has been temporarily abandoned, but most of the formation is reserved for the future Abbey Wood branch of Crossrail, which will use the existing Silvertown Tunnel to pass under a deep water dock and then enter the portal of a new tunnel under the Thames just short of the former North Woolwich station, where the substantial mid-nineteenth century building is listed. 

A separate ticket office was built at North Woolwich in the early 1980s, and the original station building then housed a small railway museum run by the London Borough of Newham, which has also now closed.