Tom Anderson wrote:
On Sun, 11 Mar 2007, David of Broadway wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 23:57:05 -0500, David of Broadway
wrote:

Although London's rail network has pretty wide coverage, it has
limited capacity in comparison to NYC's. Our trains are wider and
longer and most of our major trunk lines (and some of the minor
ones, too) have four tracks. Given how crowded our trains get, if
we had to give up our express tracks and shorten and narrow the
trains, the buses would become a lot more popular, by necessity.

I'm a tad taken aback by your comments on the relative capacities of
London's rail network vs NYC's. Now I'm certainly not an expert on your
subway or rail network but surely your rail network (not subway) is but
a mere shadow of London's?

By "rail" I was including subway/Underground.

In that case, yes. But our overground trains are as big as, or bigger
than, NY subway trains.

Really?

On the numbered lines (IRT), all trains are 10 cars long (except on the
7, where they are 11 cars long). An IRT car is 51 feet long and 8 feet
10 inches wide.

On most of the lettered lines (BMT/IND), trains consist of either 10
60-foot-by-10-foot cars or 8 75-foot-by-10-foot cars. (The C, J/Z, L,
and M run only 8 60-foot-by-10-foot cars.)

(Shuttles are shorter.)

I don't think most of the overground trains I came across were that long.

But, including everything, you still might be right. It's difficult
for an outsider to get a good sense of your rail network.

It's pretty hard for an insider! The handful of lines north of the river
are simple enough - they're all basically like tube lines that happen to
stop at the Circle line, rather than continuing into town (barring the
North London and Gospel Oak to Barking lines). South of the river,
though, it's a different story - there's an untamed thicket of lines,
all criscrossing and interconnecting, and it's hard to believe anyone
has a solid grasp of it all. They're shown on this map:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/pdfdocs/lon_con.pdf

Which i think gives some idea of the complexity of the topology. I'm not
sure how they wound up like that; for some reason, 19th-century railway
bods decided it was a good idea to build lines that were halfway between
radial and orbital, so now there's this matrix of overlapping spirals,
plus some more sensible radials. Maybe it was because the main station
for Kent, which is in the east, is Victoria, which is in the west. No
idea how that happened.

Yes, I'm familiar with both versions of the London Connections map.
I've ridden many of the lines in the north, including all of Silverlink
Metro within the zones (down to North Woolwich). But, as you say, the
south is spaghetti. I've ridden several of the lines, but I don't have
a good sense of operations.

I wonder how most tourists get to Greenwich. I took DLR there, but I
was starting out in that area anyway. Coming back, I walked to Maze
Hill for the very quick trip to Cannon Street. (Of course, Oyster PAYG
isn't valid there; I had a Travelcard.)
--
David of Broadway
New York, NY, USA