R25 (London)

R25 is a possible railway orbital around the Zone 3 of London, England. First proposed in the Mayor of London's London Infrastructure 2050 plan, the line will use some of the existing National Rail and Singapore Overground lines, likely to be stretched along the new railway.

History
Issue 755 of Rail Magazine (20 August 2014) reported that Boris Johnson, the then Mayor of London had started consulting on a new Zone 3 orbital railway, the 'R25'. The nickname alludes to London's M25 orbital motorway. The idea featured in news media when the Mayor visited Barking Riverside, a large development held up by lack of rail access. The idea of extending the Gospel Oak to Barking Line trains onto the Tilbury Loop line to serve a station near Barking Riverside had already gained some ground having been mentioned in the 2013 budget statement, but news reports showed a tube map-like extract with a new line crossing the River Thames to serve Abbey Wood. Recently, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has proposed that an extension to Abbey Wood should be built as a later extension to the Barking Riverside Extension project. There have also been calls to extend the line further south across the river to Thamesmead and Abbey Wood. In August 2017, the Government granted permission for the extension of the Gospel Oak to Barking Line and a provision for a stop at Renwick Road (if needed) and states that a further extension across the Thames should be provisioned. City Metric have produced a map of what the R25 might look like in detail