On Mar 2, 9:48*pm, D7666 wrote:
On Mar 2, 9:41*pm, Mizter T wrote:

I posit that the letter of the law about route closures is not
actually totally clear cut, rather that it's somewhat muddled, not
least because the realities of such situations are not easy to
legislate for.

Furthermore this particular case is somewhat absurd in that the
withdrawn XC service never provided a link between Wandsworth Road,
Kensington Olympia and Ealing Broadway stations - and journeys between
those stations can be quite successfully accomplished using the
existing network.

I tend to agree in a way.

This literal interpretation is silly - this residual train is
purposeless. I don't condone closures without going through procedure
either, but then the answer is go through the procedure.

Either that or plan proper services to use the curves. Prior to
privatisation most of the closures seemed to be done 'properly', with
a couple such as the Croxley Green branch bending the rules. The funny
thing about the XC services was that they ones to the Dover etc.
(rather than Brighton) were started under the Speller Amendment (as
far as I can remember) which allowed 'experimental' services to run
without the need for full closure proceedings. But the closure rights
for these trains got lost when the services were franchised and so DfT
really only have themselves to blame for the expense of buses.


The most extreme example i know of is this nonsense at Inverness.
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to keep the ''bypass''line
legally open as a passenger line. No one in their right mind would
ever consider running a service that does not call at Inverness. Any
operational need to have a train from the Dingwall direction to reach
the east platforms or v.v. working should *not need the line to to be
a passenger route, and any TOC should be free to optimise its
timetables and decide itself if it needs to do it.

This line is a worst case scenario of anorkism at work ... it did lose
its service once ... and it was some busy body track basher who
objected for the sake of it.


But the train which current uses the Rose Street curve is a through
train from Kyle - Elgin, which passes over before using the east side
platforms. It was services like this which lead to the curve gaining a
passenger service in the first place, with services running from
Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow to/from Kyle and Wick and there used
to be a lot more than just the single train in the early 2000s. Maybe
the question should be why Scot Rail removed the through services to
the big cities and should they have done so?

Another similar route which has just come to light is the route from
Stratford Central Junction - Channelsea Junctions - High Meads
Junction - Temple Mills East Junction. The section from Channelsea -
Temple Mills was temporarily closed during the building work for the
Olympics. It has now reopened for non-passenger trains, but apparently
due to the lack of cab radio in the new trench/tunnel, it can not be
used in passenger service along with Driver Only Operation. So a route
which was widely used in the past during engineering works (services
would run in a lasso pattern from Tottenham Hale - Coppermill Jcn -
Stratford - High Meads - Tottenham Hale and vice versa) has been lost
and all such trains must either run through to Liverpool Street,
reverse in a single platform at Stratford (due to the position of
crossovers reversing trains can only use platform 11) or possibly have
a pilotman. There used to be a one train each way per day service from
Stratford - South Tottenham - Cheshunt which used the route, as well
as the two other 'parliamentary' curves at South Tottenham, a
replacement service runs, only to Enfield Town now, but goes via the
direct route. The cost implications here seem to be down to supplying
the necessary radio mast / survey work to run a passenger train,
rather than an empty stock only.