In message , at 10:10:48 on Sun, 21 May
2017, Graeme Wall remarked:
The airport’s owners — a consortium of mostly foreign investment
funds — want to recoup its past spending on the private train line
with an “investment recovery charge” of £570 for every train
that uses the track, plus extra fees of about £107 per train.

Easy answer, charge Heathrow £1k per train for the Heathrow Express to
use the new Paddington layout.

They already have ongoing rights to use Paddington, the only leverage
will be retribution when that ends in 2023 (HEx reportedly want to be
able to run further into the core, then).

But why didn't someone in the DfT pick up on this before they started
building Crossrail?

This has been known about all along, but I suspect that the DfT thought
it could stare-down HEx when the time came.

What could possibly go wrong?
--
Roland Perry