On 2008-12-04 16:24:15 +0000, Tom Anderson said:

On Thu, 4 Dec 2008, Andrew Heenan wrote:

"Roland Perry" wrote ...
Andrew Heenan remarked:
Not my area, and I wouldn't presume to guess.
But I am sure of one thing:
"Not Shenfield"

Bluff. Called.
[There's nowhere "slightly" further out than Shenfield that has the
capacity to turn the requisite number of trains]

Sneaky Pedant called:

1. I was not bluffing - I was expressing a view. Sorry about that.
2. When you quoted me, you chose to miss a key point:
"There are, of course, many options east of Liverpool Street, and a lot may
depend on who's in power come 2018."

I repeat, "Not my area, and I wouldn't presume to guess" - instead of trying
to be smart (and merely being smug) why not *use* your local knowledge to
see what other possibilities there are.

Warning: this may require an open mind and tad of imagination - do your
best.

Just imagine *you* are planning an East-West high capacity, high frequency
rail service, and you have a free choice of terminus, and go for it!

[tip: it is theoretically possible for More Than One to be used]

So please do enlighten us. And none of this "not my area" nonsense,
please - if you know enough to be certain that there are better options
than Shenfield, then you know enough to suggest some.

(And please don't tell me there's not one station on the Eastern that
is more appropiate than Shenfield - or I, and many others, will cease
to believe a word you say.)

Really? Who are these many others, and how do you know about them?

If Roland, or anyone else, wants to claim that no terminus is more
appropriate than Shenfield, and backs that up with reasoned arguments,
then the correct response is to consider those arguments. Dismissing
them out of hand is the act of someone driven by overwhelming affection
for their own opinions, not any interest in the truth.

As it happens, i also think there's no better option than Shenfield.
The GEML is four-track to Shenfield, and has two two-track branches
beyond that. That means you can run Crossrail as a stopping service to
Shenfield with one pair of tracks entirely to itself, and leave the
other pair for non-stop long-distance services, with no possibility of
performance pollution between the two. Running those Crossrail trains
beyond Shenfield supplies residents of those towns with a stopping
service into London which they simply won't use. Making some of the
Crossrails non-stop on the fasts to points beyond Shenfield, and
filling in the deficit on the slow lines with Liverpool
Street-terminating trains, throws away the advantages of segregation.
Turning some of the Crossrails off short of Shenfield - say up the West
Anglia, to suburban destinations or Stansted, means taking trains away
from the stations towards Shenfield, which means a net reduction in
service on an already overcrowded line. So, we have one useless option,
one impractical one, and one actively harmful one.

I look forward to hearing your suggestion.

tom

To balance peak hour loadings between trains running on the same Line
on the RER in Paris, the stopping patterns are varied. For example on
the western arm of the Line A, most trains ran through to the terminus
at St. Germain-en-Laye, but some turned back before the end of the line
at Le Vesinet-Le Pecq. The longer distance trains tended to skip some
of the stations nearer Paris which were covered by the trains which
turned back early. All of the trains stopped at all of the stations in
the central section. This was all done on a 2 track railway and it
seemed to work very well. Outside the central section I would suggest
that not all the Crossrail trains should be all-stations.
--
Robert