There are no District line trains through East Putney, Southfields or Wimbledon Park this weekend, the third weekend the branch has been shut since the start of September.
TfL has now said in writing that neither its Business Plan nor its Capital Plan includes a plan to replace the signalling behind the branch’s failures, or any funding set aside for one.
The closure runs on Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 October, with replacement buses between Hammersmith and Wimbledon via Putney Bridge, East Putney, Southfields and Wimbledon Park. The branch shuts again on 24 and 25 October.
The acknowledgment that it doesn’t intend to replace the signalling came in reply to a freedom of information request from Max Barber, who organises the passenger campaign Fix The District. He asked for any study of replacing the branch’s signalling since December 2020, and for any business case, funding line or cost estimate in its current plans. TfL replied on that it holds none of them.
Some of the signalling infrastructure is decades old and is the reason why this arm of the District Line is London’s worst Tube line and East Putney is the Underground’s worst Tube station for signal failures.
The only thing TfL pointed to is its own Asset Management Improvement Plan, which lists a strategy for the parts of the District line left out of the upgrade as “required”. There are “no plans to start this piece of work in the short term”, TfL said. The work “will be assessed in the next financial year against other activities”, and that year begins in April 2027.
TfL also said it holds no material that considers the signalling “in light of the transfer of SWR into public ownership”. One reason given for leaving the branch out of the upgrade was that South Western Railway’s trains share the track and cannot be fitted with the new signalling. SWR has been publicly owned since May 2025, and the campaign argues that removes the last practical excuse.
Protests
Passengers have had enough and are now keeping their own count. Fix The District, a volunteer campaign, has logged 313 delays and disruptions on the branch since February and counts a signal failure on 35 days between February and August, one day in five. TfL has refused since March to release its own delay records for any period after February 2025.
After the line collapsed during the 2025 Wimbledon Championships, the Mayor of London apologised. In March, TfL’s own figures made East Putney the worst Tube station in London for signal failures in 2024. In May, documents showed that TfL left the branch out of its signalling upgrade in 2020, and a committee paper from 2024 says the District line will not be re-signalled.
Before this year’s Championships, TfL told passengers the line was ready, and it failed three times in the weeks that followed. The branch still runs on signals installed in the 1980s.
TfL’s notices for the October weekends do not say what the engineering work is. We asked its press office last month whether it is for the new signalling, which TfL says will stop at East Putney. It has not replied.
Fix The District took its protest to Wimbledon station on 17 September, with BBC London and ITV News filming. It plans to hold a second demonstration outside Southfields station, on Wimbledon Park Road, on Thursday 15 October from 5pm to 7pm, with the group photograph at 6pm, and children are welcome.
