Beckton tube station


Beckton was an authorised railway station planned by London Underground but never built. It was to be located in Beckton in the London Borough of Newham, in east London as a station on an unbuilt extension of the Jubilee line. It would have been the terminus of a branch from Custom House adjacent to a planned depot for the line.

Plan

Plans for a new underground line connecting north-west and south-east London via the West End and the City of London were first considered in the 1930s. They were developed during the 1950s and 1960s until a plan for the Fleet line established a route to Lewisham in 1965 with permission to build the first phase to Charing Cross granted in 1969 with the second and third phases approved in 1971 and 1972.
Phase 1 opened as the Jubilee line in 1979, but uncertainty as to the appropriate eastern destination of the line and shortage of funds meant that the remaining works were never begun. An alternative route for Phase 3 was planned and approved in 1980 that followed a more northern alignment to Woolwich Arsenal with a branch from Custom House to Beckton. The line from Custom House would have followed the disused route of the Great Eastern Railway's Beckton branch.
Although preparatory works were carried out for Phase 2, neither it nor either of the Phase 3 routes were constructed. When, in the 1990s, the Jubilee line extension to Stratford was constructed, it followed a different route. Docklands Light Railway services between Custom House and Beckton follow a route along the north side of Royal Albert Dock.