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withdrawn XC service never provided a link between Wandsworth Road,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.

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.

--
Nick

On Mar 2, 9:32*pm, EE507 wrote:

On Mar 2, 10:04*pm, cj wrote:
[snip]
The services that will put the 'ghost bus' to rest have appeared in
the timetables from 24th May as follows:

10:48 Wandsworth Road
11:11 Kensington Olympia
11:13 Shepherd's Bush
11:30 Ealing Broadway

12:07 Ealing Broadway
12:29 Shepherd's Bush
12:32 Kensington Olympia
12:50 Wandsworth Road

I'm just curious as to what stock Southern will use for this service -
seems a bit of a waste to have one of their DMUs so far off normal
territory for a good few hours. Unless dual-voltage stock is possible
for the whole route - how would it get from Ealing to Shepherd's Bush?
~cj

Ta for the gen - what a delightfully insane service. All thanks to The
Times and belatedly Passenger Focus kicking up a stink last year. They
won and this is the, er, result.

See my other post - all very stupid. A "ghost train" will replace the
"ghost bus". LO station staff at Shepherd's Bush should expect a
spattering of bemused Paddington-bound pax turning up at half-noon
every now and then.

Passenger Focus took this on, whilst London TravelWatch notably didn't
- I suppose PF possible justification for encroaching on LTW's
territory is that the 'parly' service is a 'replacement' for the XC
service which mostly operated outside of LTW's patch. If someone can
find a normal passenger making part of their overall Brighton to
Manchester or Reading to Gatwick journey on any one one of these
services then I will eat all the words that have been written anywhere
about this whole affair.

If I've got this all wrong, and this deserves to be a cause célèbre, I
wonder if someone would kindly tell me why?!

"D7666" wrote

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.

The Highland Railway did, in Summer timetables between 1911 and 1915. The
1150 am Perth to Inverness ran via Forres, but 'The Strathpeffer Express'
connected out of it at Aviemore, depart 2.30 pm, running non-stop to
Dingwall arr 4.00 pm and Strathpeffer arr 4.15 pm. It ran on Tuesdays only,
and in its last year started from Perth, calling only at Kingusiie,
Aviemore, Dingwall, and Strathpeffer.

But the much more valuable use of Rose Street curve was to enable
cross-platform connection between north and south trains, arriving trains
running through the curve, and backing in from Welsh's Bridge or Rose
Street.

Peter

On Tue, 2 Mar 2010 13:41:18 -0800 (PST), Mizter T
wrote:

Interesting, thanks for the spot. Afraid I think this whole thing is
rather ridiculous.


Almost ridiculous enough for a uk.railway meet. ;-)

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.

On 2 Mar, 21:41, Mizter T wrote:
I'm minded to think that the push by Passenger Focus et al (but
notably not London Travlwatch, AFAIAA) for a proper 'parly' service
might possibly end up having negative repercussions - whilst the quasi-
enthusiast Adonis (who's done much good, I don't doubt that) decreed
to his DfT Rail servants that a train service shall run, I'm guessing
in part because he saw that as being a legal requirement [1], I can't
help but think the new mob of Cameron, Osbourne & co. won't be too
enamoured by such profligacy - and if the advice comes back that it's
required by law, then they might just change that law, and not just
the bit about route closures - think other elements of today's
railways that enjoy legislative protection as well, e.g. regulated
fares.

I agree but I bet the cost of running this service is small compared with
the leasing cost of the SET 508s that don't carry any passengers. I have
written to DFT and the rail regulator and neither showed any interest. It
seems that wasting money is of no concern to the government. Presumably this
way they can claim that there is no spare rolling stock. If it's leased then
it's not spare!

John

It wasn't always obvious which trains used the Rose Street Curve. In the
early 80s I caught the sleeper to Inverness from Edinburgh and that
terminated by reversing into the North side of the station. A lot of mail
and parcels were carried then through to the far North and Kyle lines and
it was easier to transfer these on the North side of the station.

There was a 0655 from Perth as well due 0940 which did the same for the
later morning Kyle/Wick service. The Perth service carried vehicles that
had been on the West Coast Postal so again the cross platform connection was
useful.

AFAIK there was a plan hatched by BR when DMUs started operating to do away
with the Northern part of the station and reverse all trains into the
Southern platforms like they do at Killarney. With the increased frequency
of trains on the Southern end of the far North line I suppose that is no
longer an option.

"Andy" wrote in message
...

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.

They can probably claim this is a temporary lack of use, so that they can
avoid the cost of fitting a CSR repeater for only a short period prior to
replacing it with GSM(R)?

Paul S

On 2 Mar, 21:55, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Tue, 2 Mar 2010 13:47:44 -0800 (PST), darkprince66

wrote:
On 2 Mar, 21:41, Mizter T wrote:
[1] But what of Wedgwood, Barlaston and Norton Bridge?
You mean this Norton Bridge?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkprince66/4395670242/

Ah - a perfect opportunity for a question. *I was reading a letter in
Modern Railways about these three stations on the WCML that lost their
service. *Can anyone give a brief explanation as to why? *I know it was
to do with the WCML upgrade but don't understand the causes / reasons.
Why was Norton Bridge's bridge removed?

Sorry if this has been done before on uk.railway but it does seem a very
strange state of affairs.
--
Paul C

The stopping service between Stoke & Stafford run by CT was
"temporarily" withdrawn when the Norton Bridge/Colwich to Cheadle
Hulme route was closed for upgrading (as part of the aforementioned
WCML upgrade) in 2003. Whilst it was shut, the units used on it and
the Trent Valley stopping trains from Coventry to Stafford via
Nuneaton were redeployed elsewhere in the West Midlands. So when the
route reopened, there wasn't any stock available to run the stopping
service and hence the bustitution remained. Norton Bridge's
footbridge was removed not long after the service ceased to permit
increased clearances for the upgraded OHLE put in as part of the same
upgrade and reinstatement wasn't considered economically feasible
given that said station served nowhere of any great size and wasn't
going to get trains back anyway! Stone was left without a service for
4+ years also, but did at least get it back when LM started running
its Euston - Crewe Desiros in 2008.

GM