St Mary's Curve
The connecting line leading to the old East London line is still called St Mary's Curve. For many years the line was used only to transfer rolling stock between the East London and Metropolitan lines (i.e. not for passenger use). Loading gauge restrictions for the then current stock meant that even though the curve was double tracked, stock could only pass in one direction at a time. When lit, it could easily be seen from the left-hand side of East London line trains entering Whitechapel from the south and can still be seen from the right-hand side of District line trains entering the station from the west. Since re-opening as part of the London Overground in 2010, the former East London Line no longer shares rolling stock with the Metropolitan line. As such, St Mary's Curve is no longer used, but the tunnel remains. The points at St. Mary's Curve were removed in 2009.
Read more about this topic: St Mary's Tube Station
Famous quotes containing the word curve:
“I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty.... Here was every sensuous curve of the “human figure divine” but minus the imperfections. Never did the Greeks reach a more significant consummation to their culture, and it somehow reminded me, in the glory of its chaste convulsions and in its swelling, sweeping, forward movement of finely progressing contours, of the Victory of Samothrace.”
—Edward Weston (1886–1958)