Our Future's Orange: Crystal Palace

This is part four of our preview of the East London Line, profiling many of the stops along the new route, ahead of its opening in May.

Crystal Palace will be one of the southern termini for the new East London Line. The Grade II-listed station has been the subject of major renovation and will be served by four tube trains per hour from Brockley.

Built on and surrounded by large hills, Crystal Palace feels like an entirely self-contained world of handsome streets with a surreal park as its centrepiece, topped off with a couple of television masts, the tallest of which is only a little shorter than One Canada Square.

The park is 200-acres, big enough to envelop a national sports centre (including a 15,500-seat athletics stadium, and a 50m swimming pool), a farm, an open air concert venue and a menagerie of jerry-built dinosaurs that make the Kentucky Creation Museum look like an accurate depiction of pre-history by comparison.

Although money has been spent on maintaining the park, it's so huge and filled with so many curiosities it has a haunted quality, enhanced by the fact that its future is in limbo, while an ambitious master plan by the London Development Agency struggles through the planning stages.

Perched above the park is a buzzy town centre called the Triangle, which is home to some decent nightlife and a few great restaurants, including Joanna's, a brasserie with a unique 'railway carriage' private dining room, Japanese diner Edo and Portuguese joint A Torre. The Alma is a great 'traditional' pub with an eclectic line-up of live music and a regular market place in the pub garden. The White Hart, the Royal Albert (for a Sunday roast) and the Grape and Grain are all also worth a visit.

Already connected by two overland trains an hour to Brockley, a trip to Crystal Palace is about to get a lot easier.

More East London Line destinations:

Shoreditch
Rotherhithe, Canada Water, Surrey Quays
Dalston