"Solar Penguin" wrote in message
...

Ah... You mean, the Thamelsink customers are putting up with this
blockade, and they aren't even going to get a new interchange station
out of it? Just the option of a vague possibility of a new interchange
station at some unspecified point in the future...

Exactly.

On Sat, 27 Nov 2004, Roland Perry wrote:

In message ,
at 13:17:50 on Sat, 27 Nov 2004, Tom Anderson
remarked:

Not all of Essex is 45min drive from Ebbsfleet at all times.
Not all trains in Essex are 'slow'

But you need to accept that those are the "normal" parameters.

I most certainly do not. Where i grew up, Colchester, a large town in
Essex, is not 45 min drive from Ebbsfleet, not by a long chalk, and is
well served by fast trains to London.

Yes, Colchester is outside the area I was describing.

My route planner says 54 miles, so it'll depend a lot on the traffic!

The trains are fast, somewhat at the expense of people living further
down the line :-(

I do take the point you're going nearly 'all the way' into London to
pick the train up at Stratford if you're setting off from somewhere
along the north Thames bank.

I was thinking anywhere bounded (roughly) by the A12 and M25, out as far
as Witham.

Ah, nothing that i'd count as actual Essex, then!

You don't think Brentwood, Chelmsford, Witham, Southend, Basildon and
Grays are in Essex ?!?!?

Witham and Chelmsford, yes. The others, no - that's Gormandy, not Essex.

tom

--
It is a formal cultural policy to show unreasonable bias towards any woman who is both attractive and wierd.

If Waterloo International remained open, St Pancras International
would be little more then a hideously expensive flop.



Isn't that PRECISELY what it is anyway, and a damned and inexcusable
inconvenience to domestic passengers using St. Pancras who have now been shoved
halfway up the line to Hackney?

Marc.

--- Jack Taylor said...


"Solar Penguin" wrote in message

You mean, the Thamelsink customers are putting up with this
blockade, and they aren't even going to get a new interchange
station out of it? Just the option of a vague possibility of a new
interchange station at some unspecified point in the future...

Exactly.


And the railway companies can't understand why no-one likes them...

"Solar Penguin" wrote in message
...


And the railway companies can't understand why no-one likes them...

Nothing to do with the train operating companies. They just get told what is
going to happen and to put up with it the same as their passengers. It's a
decision made at a far higher level than them - they just field the crap
from people who think that they have decided to do it for the fun of it.

In article , ()
wrote:

In uk.railway Graeme Wall wrote:
Given my national rail (aka SWT) train to Waterloo doesn't stop at
Vauxhall
that is not a great deal of help. I'm in the quadrant that is
probably most
affected by the change. I'm too far west to make using Ashford at all
attractive and too far south for an easy journey to St Pancras. Also
will
there be CIV tickets available?

I must be missing something as I do Waterloo-St Pancras everytime I
go and see my girlfriend in Bournemouth (thus avoiding Virgin voyagers
and CT fun since the Cov-Loughborough service was shelved). This is
sometimes with a _large_ rucksack or trolley for a week's stay. I
usually go St.Pancras to Leicester Square on the Piccy and then on to
Waterloo on the Northern. There's a few steps in there and sometimes
the Tube can be a bit packed (especially at peak times) but its not a
big deal IMHO.

Victoria to Oxford Circus and Bakerloo to Waterloo is *much* easier (cross
platform at Oxford Circus) and probably quicker too.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Tom Anderson wrote in message ...
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Dave Arquati wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

On Tue, 23 Nov 2004, Dave Arquati wrote:

Dave Liney wrote:

If you want flat interchanges then go to Waterloo as normal and get a
bus to Euston (at least three routes IIRC) and walk from there. Or
you could walk to Aldwych and get a direct bus from there. It'll take
around 30 minutes either way.

Why on earth isn't there a direct bus between Waterloo and King's
Cross?! I never even noticed that before. These are arguably the two
most important railway termini.

No, since one of those is Liverpool Street. Just because it mostly serves
Essex and Hackney doesn't mean you can ignore it! Gaaah!

Unless you have some definition of 'important' that is not related to
passenger numbers, in which case you will be the first up against the wall
when the revolution comes.

Liverpool Street is very important - but when I was referring to King's
Cross I meant (and didn't make at all obvious) the combination of King's
Cross, St Pancras and King's Cross Thameslink.

That's what i assumed - i don't think of them as separate stations.

I'm not sure on the passenger numbers but combined it must be at least a
competitor to Liverpool St.

I think Greater King's Cross is the second busiest station in London,
after Liverpool Street; i think Waterloo is a lot further down. I can
never find the figures, though!


Figures are available somewhere and I have seen them, the combined
figures together means it would still come behind Victoria(I believe
is the busiest passenger station in London), Liverpool Street and
Waterloo.

One thing to consider is the nature of the journeys: i think LS is so busy
because of all the commuter traffic into the city, but handles relatively
little long-haul traffic (there isn't really anywhere to long-haul to,
except Chelmsford, Colchester and Norwich), whereas KX, along with Euston,
is the hub for pretty much all of the trips along the length of the
country. I should imagine Waterloo's in a similar situation to Liverpool
Street, though: lots of inner and outer suburban traffic, not a lot of
long-distance. If you think long-distance traffic is more important in
some way, you could argue that KX is more important than LS, but i don't
think it works for Waterloo.

Whatever the passenger numbers, my rant is justified because Waterloo
has two buses to Liverpool Street :-) (26 and express 705) It also has
buses to Moorgate, Euston, Marylebone (Baker St), Paddington, Victoria,
Charing Cross, London Bridge, Fenchurch Street, Cannon Street and City
Thameslink. The only one left out seems to be Blackfriars - and the
buses to London Bridge and Elephant & Castle should cover that.

While we're ranting [1] - the buses at Blackfriars are a disgrace! The
stops for some of them are about twenty miles up the road! And there's
only one night bus - which is pretty daft, given that trains run there
until pretty late at night. I had to do Wallington to Clapton on a sunday
night once, which is why i'm bitter about this .

tom

[1] By which i obviously mean "While *i'm* ranting"

--- Jack Taylor said...


"Solar Penguin" wrote


And the railway companies can't understand why no-one likes them...

Nothing to do with the train operating companies.

Errr... yes. That's _why_ I said "railway companies" not "train
operating companies".

In article , Roland
Perry writes
You don't think Brentwood, Chelmsford, Witham, Southend, Basildon and
Grays are in Essex ?!?!?

Southend isn't (any more than Peterborough is in Cambridgeshire): it's
in the County of Southend-of-Sea. As for Grays, I don't have a map to
hand, but didn't Tendring Hundred declare UDI?

--
Clive D.W. Feather | Home:
Tel: +44 20 8495 6138 (work) | Web: http://www.davros.org
Fax: +44 870 051 9937 | Work:
Please reply to the Reply-To address, which is:

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 07:31:55 +0000, "Clive D. W. Feather"
wrote:

In article , Roland
Perry writes
You don't think Brentwood, Chelmsford, Witham, Southend, Basildon and
Grays are in Essex ?!?!?

Southend isn't (any more than Peterborough is in Cambridgeshire): it's
in the County of Southend-of-Sea. As for Grays, I don't have a map to
hand, but didn't Tendring Hundred declare UDI?


Grays is still in Essex!

Thurrock Council is now a Unitary Authority, taking a bigger share of
the local taxation pie, & providing some services that used to be
provided by the ECC, but the Police & Fire Services are still provided
via County Hall.

As for Herr Anderson's coments re "Gormandy?", I'd reccomend that he
should not pre-judge a sizeable chunk of Essex's population by their
accents / dialects or by where they chose to live!

Since he obviously has no knowledge of local traffic patterns, I'd be
happy to state that Colchester to Grays / Thurrock is an hour's drive
at legal speeds on a "good" day.
The layout of the new road network for Ebbsfleet Station is,as yet
unfinished, but it seems that to get there from the QE2 bridge, one
would have to drive down the A2, eastbound.
This will clash with the traffic to / from the Bluewater Mall !

So, as this time, based on some personal commuting experience between
Colchester & Thurrock, + local knowledge re trips to / from Kent, I'd
allow 2 hours from door to door by car!

Since it's unlikely that many E*'s will actually call at Stratford
&/or Ebbsfleet, I suspect that most of us will continue to drive to
Ashford & park there.
The M20 is a much quieter & quicker road than the A2, with better
access to the M25, & Ashford is an easy hours drive from the Dartford
Crossing.

DC