Untold Stories of the DLR
Memories from the early years of the Docklands Light Railway.
Welcome to Londonist: Time Machine, the newsletter of London history.
Today, we’ll be riding back in time on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), a line that is very dear to my heart. This was the railway upon which I first fell in love with London.
I’ve been talking to a Londonist: Time Machine reader who was instrumental in the DLR’s genesis and early operation. He/she wishes to remain anonymous, but they’ve shared some special memories about its early days, never before published. It is a story of old viaducts and automatic trains, but also of a decrepit tea house and some troublesome peacocks…
That’s for the main feature. First, if you’ll allow me, I’ve got something to plug…
I’ve been and gone and co-written a book; a big, bold, wrist-breaker of a book, which looks like this:
The Boroughs of London’s publication coincides with the 60th anniversary of the formation of Greater London and its 32 boroughs. It collects together Mike Hall’s gorgeous maps of each borough, inspired by colourful, modernist graphic design of the 1950s and 1960s. Alongside these, I’ve written Matt-ish descriptions of each borough, along with a selection of intriguing ‘things to see’.
The book isn’t out until October, but you can get a discounted pre-order in now through the publisher’s website (UK only), using the discount code MATT20. The 20%-off will be valid until 25 September 2025. It’s also available for pre-order on Amazon or Bookshop.org for those outside the UK, but without a discount code.
Don’t worry… I won’t be bombarding you with adverts for my book every week… but I thought a few of you might be interested. More info and launch-party details nearer the time.
Untold Stories of the DLR
It still feels like a vision of the future. The Docklands Light Railway (DLR) sashays along its east London viaducts, glides among the gleaming giants of Canary Wharf, then dips under the Thames to Greenwich. All with no driver.
The DLR first ran in 1987. This was the year of Never Gonna Give You Up, La Isla Bonita and Fairytale of New York. It doesn’t seem that long ago. But those first driverless journeys were closer in time to the reign of George VI than they are to 2025. Musically, the 38-year chasm that separates us would yield Perry Como and Bing Crosby if thrown in the other direction, with half a decade still to go until Elvis Year Zero. What I’m trying to say here is that the DLR is already a worthy subject for a history-focussed newsletter, and now I feel old.
The DLR was officially launched on 30 July 1987 when Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II became the first person to sit at the front and pretend to drive the train, thereby initiating a tradition that is now a rite-of-passage for any new Londoner.
She even paid her right-royal way. Both the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh reportedly deposited 40p in the Island Gardens ticket machines ahead of boarding. Their ride didn’t go entirely smoothly. The automatically driven train paused too long at one station, and stopped short at another, prompting an alarm. In the latter case, the royal bodyguards had tried to force the doors open before the train had stopped, which was their normal practice when in a motorcade. Both embarrassments were quickly corrected by manual override, and the first DLR journey was done.
I don’t think the Queen ever rode the DLR again. Had she done so, later extensions could have taken her to stations named after her great, great-grandmother (Royal Victoria), her great, great grandfather (Royal Albert), her great-great-great-great-great-uncle (Prince Regent), and her grandfather (King George V). She might have interfaced with her own Elizabeth line at Custom House or Woolwich, and the Jubilee line (named after her Silver Jubilee) at three further stations. This is, then, our most patriotic rail service, suitably dressed in red, white and blue.
Of course, the DLR didn’t just pop into existence on that glitchy summer’s day. It was several years in the planning, with a fascinating origin story. We’re going to crank the time machine back a few years to see where it all began. And I have a co-pilot for this journey. Many of the memories and anecdotes that follow were shared with me by a senior member of the project team that planned, built and operated the DLR. He or she speaks on condition of anonymity. For the sake of convenience, I’ll call them Sam.
From an old tea house in Blackfriars…
The first stirrings of the DLR go back to the 1970s. London’s once bustling docks had largely closed down by this point, superseded by modern facilities at Tilbury and elsewhere, which could handle large container ships. These historic sites were left to tumbleweed, as so memorably depicted in the film The Long Good Friday. But only for a few years. All this land, so close to the river, was ripe for redevelopment, and various schemes for new offices and residential districts were considered. Any such development would need new transport links. Light railways and ‘minitrams’ were the preferred options, first touted in a report of 1973. A tube line was considered, though initially deemed too costly.
Nothing got off the page until 1981, when the government established the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC), a powerful agency charged with rejuvenating the docks. The LDDC gave London Transport the task of planning out a light railway system to connect the City to the regeneration sites.
This is where ‘Sam’ comes in. They were part of the leadership team who would plan the routes, manage the contracts, get the thing built and eventually operate the new railway.
They had plenty of relevant experience. Years earlier, Sam and some colleagues had looked at the feasibility of bringing back the Finsbury Park to Highgate line (which had closed in 1954) as a light railway. Those plans never got anywhere, and today the route is the popular Parkland Walk trail for bikes and pedestrians. The rejuvenation of the Docklands presented the perfect opportunity to pursue a light railway, and Sam was made part of the senior team. From the start, the project would be managed in an unusual way:
“It was being used by London Transport’s MD of Rail, Tony Ridley, as a test-bed for a 'tighter' management style,” says Sam. “He was also keen that we kept a distance (physical and organisational) from both London Underground and London Transport’s corporate functions, so we didn't want to be in 55 Broadway or other existing offices.
“We actually were based in some old London Transport properties above Blackfriars Station. There had been a Lyon’s Coffee House at Blackfriars, which had been bombed in the war, and we occupied the first floor of that old Lyon’s corner house. It was rather wonderful. And we started to put together the DLR project there.”
The base was small and quirky, but proved the perfect hub for the project. “The offices were pretty austere and very hard to make, and keep, presentable — we really were squatters and, at times, it felt like it, but I think the setup helped shape the great team spirit we had. It was also a good compromise location for those of us coming from the north of London, those coming from south London, and those commuting in by main-line rail”. Sam also recalls watching the Lord Mayor’s Show from its windows, which overlooked the procession route.
In those days senior LT staff were provided with tea (or coffee) and biscuits each morning and afternoon. As they were away from 'Head Office' they received an allowance, which they used to provide refreshments for everyone: part of the team culture.
So the project kicked off. Task number one was to work out where the railway would run. “The first thing I did,“ says Sam, “was cycle around the area with a photographer, to see what we could do and what the possible routes were. We found we could use a lot of disused structures [such as existing viaducts]. We felt there was surplus capacity on Fenchurch Street, that we could actually go into Fenchurch Street, but British Rail baulked at that.”
They ended up with the western terminus at Tower Gateway, which Sam informs me was previously the City of London’s winter weather equipment site. The quick and (relatively) cheap solution has since been eclipsed by the DLR terminus at Bank, but Tower Gateway remains in use as perhaps the most quintessentially 1980s building in London. If anyone ever proposes to demolish it, then I, for one, will object.
Value for money
The budget for the project was £65 million (£77 million adjusting for inflation). That sounds like peanuts today. London has houses that cost more. But, of course, £77 million went a lot further in the mid-1980s. Even so, it was still a very tight budget for a new rail system covering 7.5 miles of track. To save money, the stations were designed in kit form, with a standard platform canopy, and other design elements. The project was eventually delivered on time and on budget. It was also delivered beyond the original specification. This would evolve to become a driverless railway. It even gained a station when office developers at Heron Quays paid to have a halt at their development, which was absent from the original plans.
The £77 million budget was jointly handled by the Greater London Council (via London Transport), and the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC). These two organisations — one socialist-leaning, the other a top-down let’s-get-things-done agency — had starkly contrasting attitudes to development. They were often at loggerheads. “At that time,” says Sam, “the GLC and LDDC didn't recognise each other, so we couldn't hold meetings in either of their offices. That led to all sorts of difficulties in [ensuring the] funding was exactly 50:50. I had to go get a cheque from one of them each month and show it to the other to show that they were writing a cheque for the same amount. I kid you not.”
Despite the fiscal gymnastics, the railway turned out to be a bargain at £77 million. “The government had made that money [back] before we’d turned a wheel,” says Sam. “The land value of docklands was increased by DLR, because of accessibility, by way more than 77 million, so that railway, actually didn't have to make a profit or anything. It would pay for itself at the national level long before [services began].”
Trains, planes and… rockets?
The DLR initially ran with 11 two-car units supplied by the German manufacturer Linke-Hofmann-Busch (now part of Alstom). Sam was invited to attend the rollout of the first train from the production line. The DLR Board's Chairman and Deputy Chairman wanted to go with him, but they were not prepared to stay overnight. The solution was to privately hire a small aircraft, with the Deputy Chair himself piloting the plane from Elstree aerodrome to a sports ground in northern Germany. “I paid for the fuel and the lease on petty cash,” says Sam. It’s a far-cry from the micromanaged travel arrangements that senior managers would have to adhere to today.
Sam also shared an anecdote about the DLR supplier’s history:
“Linke-Hofmann Busch had a little museum of trains they’d built. There was some fabulous kit, such as a very famous train called, rather risibly, the flying hamburger. But in the middle, there was a cylindrical thing… which turned out to be a V2 rocket motor. In the Second World War, they’d been making V2 rockets. So the DLR was actually the company’s second export to East London… We kept quiet about it at the time because we felt there was still a degree of German phobia”.
Teething troubles
The building of the railway proceeded relatively smoothly. Almost all of the initial network followed old tracks, including the section from the City to Canary Wharf, which revived Victorian viaducts from the London and Blackwall Railway (closed 1968).
One novel problem was encountered when laying the tracks, as Sam recounts: “The railway ballast for the line was delivered using ballast wagons (the sort where there is a hatch on the bottom so the ballast can be released directly onto the track bed). These had previously been used for a grain shipment and so we soon had a fine crop of corn growing through the track. The urban farm at Mudchute had (and still has) a flock of sheep and these inevitably ended up on the track, causing chaos during our test running.
“It also attracted the peacocks that lived in the All Saints churchyard at Poplar, with similar results -- we were aware of the problems and bad publicity that would occur if we were to run over peacock or sheep.” Another minor challenge presented itself just north of the peacock peril. “I had real difficulty,” says Sam, “in persuading the staff at the school at Bow Church that they should no longer be telling children that they could 'nip over the fence' onto the [previously disused] track to retrieve lost footballs.”
As with any big infrastructure project, legal challenges emerged. “Somewhere around Langdon Park station, which was not built until many years later, the line runs through an artificial tunnel. This was built to shield some new multi storey blocks of flats from the presumed noise of freight trains using the line when they served the docks. In fact I don't believe any such trains ever did run. As a result some additional dwellings were constructed above the tunnel, and we had a massive claim for compensation when we started running DLR trains. In fact the nuisance (noise/vibration), when measured, was small, and if any compensation was paid it was small”.
The most notorious incident, however, came during the testing phase. On 10 March 1987, a manually driven train overshot the terminal station at Island Gardens. It crashed through the end of the viaduct and dangled precariously over the street below. Fortunately, the three workers onboard escaped without injury. The incident provided some spectacular photographs, but the wider project was not derailed. Just four months later, the system was deemed safe enough for its royal inauguration.
Sam remembers well the day that the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh officially opened the line (although it would be a few weeks before the public could ride).
“Our chairman and deputy chairman had been in different regiments in the war — and remember that the war was still quite significant in this period. And they each wanted their military band to be playing. So we had to have one military band at Island Gardens station, and another one in the Poplar depot”.
Lasting legacy
The DLR achieved many ‘firsts’. I was surprised to learn that it was the first line in London to operate a penalty fare system. Previously, anyone caught fare-dodging would simply be asked to pay up on the spot, but no more than the ticket price (prosecution could follow if they refused). Penalty fares upped the ante, and helped London Transport recoup lost revenue by requiring fare dodgers to pay significantly more than the ticket price.
The role of ‘train captain’ (as opposed to driver) was also pioneered on the DLR. That role reflected the system’s most famous ‘first’, the way it moves along without the need of a driver. “The only thing we were worried about was the dispatch of trains from stations,” says Sam. The Railway Inspectorate who had authority over whether the railway was safe to run had concerns that people might be trapped in doors as the train moved off. “Nobody was confident in those days that the technology was good enough. [The Inspectorate] said we don't mind what you do: either have somebody on the train or somebody on the platform. Well, we had fewer trains than platforms, so we put somebody on the train. But we didn't have them driving. So that was also a huge change. I think DLR was the first automatically operated railway in a non-protected environment”. (Theme parks like Disney had automated trains, but under more heavily supervised conditions.)
The Docklands Light Railway went on to be a resounding success. Numerous extensions have since opened, including links to Bank, Lewisham, Woolwich and Beckton. It hasn’t stopped growing yet, either, with a new under-the-Thames link between Beckton and Thamesmead currently under consultation.
Sam concedes, however, that it wasn’t a triumph in every respect. “One of its planning intentions was to enable the creation of job opportunities in the Isle of Dogs for those who had lost their jobs because of the docks closing. Instead we got Canary Wharf. Not many ex-dockers found work there. In other words it was the catalyst for a mega example of gentrification. Others may see this as a success!”
This has been only a short dip into the early years of the DLR, mostly based on personal reminiscence. There is much more to say, and I would love to hear further stories in the comments — either from people involved in the project, or simply from anyone who’s experienced this unique rail service over the years.
And feel free to email me any time on matt@londonist.com
This is great! I was a child when it opened and it seemed so exciting. We came down from Essex on one of our occasional trips to London and, of course, we had to go on the Docklands railway. It must've only been a couple of years after it'd opened. I don't think we were actually travelling anywhere specific, we just wanted to go on it! I remember going past flats that had been built in converted Victorian warehouses and peering through the windows when we went by.
Trains like that still seem futuristic. To me, anyway. There's a monorail at Birmingham airport which takes you from the train station to the terminal, and I think it was built around the same time as Docklands. There was a real "thing" for light railways like that back then.
The economic impact of Docklands is so important to note, especially for any governments wobbling about public transport initiatives.
Thank you Matt and Sam for a great article and good luck with your book, Matt.