Transport for London (TfL) is advising Piccadilly line customers to plan ahead during upcoming closures, as vital upgrade work continues ahead of a brand-new fleet of trains beginning to enter service between December 2026 and June 2027. The new trains will bring significant benefits to customers including walk-through carriages, increased reliability and frequency, improved accessibility and CCTV.
These part-closures will allow TfL to carry out essential upgrades to the power supply, tracks, platforms, depots and sidings while continuing to test the new trains’ interaction with existing London Underground infrastructure, alongside assessments of their efficiency and performance.
This complex upgrade and testing programme is essential to ensure the line is ready for the first new trains to start entering service. Work already completed during part closures of the line includes weight-load testing of the new trains, with 400km covered using a test train in its fully loaded state of 68 tonnes, and work at 119 Piccadilly line platforms to ensure they are ready to accommodate the new trains, which are longer than the current fleet and have different door placement. Some of the closures are also being used to continue routine maintenance work, such as the renewal of points in the Hounslow area from 28-31 May, to ensure the reliability of the line in years to come. Where possible, weekday closures have been timed to take place in school holidays when demand on the network is significantly reduced.
The new trains are part of a £3.4 billion investment to modernise the Piccadilly line and help it run more reliably, safely, inclusively and sustainably. The trains will operate on infrastructure that is, in many areas, over 100 years old and interacts extensively with other lines, making thorough testing even more important.
Most of the planned closures will take place at weekends, with many starting from 00:30 on Saturday mornings (meaning Friday Night Tube services are suspended) until the end of service on Sunday. However, there will also be some closures which include weekdays. These include:
- Acton Town to Heathrow, and Rayners Lane to Uxbridge, from Thursday 28 to Sunday 31 May
- Cockfosters to Uxbridge on Thursday 30 and Friday 31 July and Monday 3 August. There will also be a closure from Cockfosters to Heathrow on Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 August
A set of midweek closures in August (Tuesday to Thursday for two consecutive weeks) from Cockfosters to Uxbridge:
- Tuesday 18 to Thursday 20 August
- Tuesday 25 to Thursday 27 August
- During these closures, the Metropolitan line will run as normal between Rayners Lane and Uxbridge
The full list of confirmed Piccadilly line closures is available on TfL’s website at www.tfl.gov.uk/piccadilly-works. For all closures, customers are advised to plan ahead using TfL’s real-time travel information tools, including TfL Journey Planner and TfL Go, to check before travelling and to allow more time for their journeys. TfL will also contact regular users of the Piccadilly line ahead of these closures with travel advice and information while posters and public address announcements will be put in place at all relevant stations.
Stuart Harvey, TfL’s Chief Capital Officer, said: “I’d like to thank our customers for their patience while we carry out these essential upgrades to the Piccadilly line and rigorously test the new trains which will transform journeys for many decades to come.
“Introducing a new fleet of trains is a huge engineering and logistical feat which inevitably requires upgrades and intensive testing. Although much of the hard work goes on behind the scenes, there are times when we need to close sections of the railway to ensure that these pioneering new trains can operate effectively and interact correctly with a wide range of complex infrastructure.
“We are very confident that once this intensive period of upgrades and testing is completed, and the new trains start to enter service, our customers will reap the benefits of moving around the capital on these game-changing new trains.”
The new trains feature walk-through carriages, wider all-double doorways to help customers get on and off more easily, enhanced real-time digital display screens for customer information, and on-train CCTV cameras for additional customer security. They will also feature air-conditioning for the first time on the Deep Tube network thanks to an innovative, articulated design.
Each new train provides 10% more capacity, despite being lighter than existing designs, which means they consume 20% less energy and provide a smoother ride for customers. The increased fleet size will allow frequency to increase from 24 to 27 trains per hour, and the programme overall will boost peak capacity by 23% in central London compared to the current service.
Four of the new trains are currently being tested on the Tube network during overnight engineering hours and weekend closures. In the coming months, customers will start to see the new trains being tested on the network during passenger hours.
Image credit: TfL