gwr4090 wrote:
In article ,
Jack Taylor wrote:

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
...

And how would the freight trains that use the Greenford loop and
the
ex-GW main line to get to the Chiltern route then do so?

The answer is to extend Crossrail (rather than Central line) services
to
West Ruislip via Northolt with a few via Drayton Park. Mixing
Crossrail
and freight should be less of a problem.

David

This would mean upgrading and electrifying the GW to West Ruislip.
West Ruislip is somewhat overserved anyway.

It would be better to spend the money electrifying the GW mainline
beyond Maidenhead.

A.

In article .com,
Adrian Auer-Hudson wrote:

gwr4090 wrote:
In article ,
Jack Taylor wrote:

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
...

And how would the freight trains that use the Greenford loop and
the
ex-GW main line to get to the Chiltern route then do so?

The answer is to extend Crossrail (rather than Central line) services
to
West Ruislip via Northolt with a few via Drayton Park. Mixing
Crossrail
and freight should be less of a problem.

David

This would mean upgrading and electrifying the GW to West Ruislip.
West Ruislip is somewhat overserved anyway.

It would be better to spend the money electrifying the GW mainline
beyond Maidenhead.

I wouldn't disagree on the last point, but it would make a lot of sense to
extend some CrossRail services to High Wycombe instead of turning them
around outside Paddington. One or two of these per hour could run via
Ealing Broadway to replace the Greenford loop service.

David

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, gwr4090 wrote:

it would make a lot of sense to extend some CrossRail services to High
Wycombe instead of turning them around outside Paddington. One or two of
these per hour could run via Ealing Broadway to replace the Greenford
loop service.

Crossrail is about providing a high-frequency service on simple,
well-defined lines; if you're going to serve High Wycombe, you have to do
it properly, with more than one or two trains per hour. Perhaps you meant
sending a good frequency to High Wycombe, but only a few round the loop?
Even there, i'd disagree - if you make the pattern that complex, you lose
much of the psychological strength of the project, and you make keeping it
all running to time that much harder.

Not that i'm against using the loop - i'd be in favour of running all the
hypothesised Wycombe services via the loop; that way, you'd get more
trains through Ealing Broadway.

Actually, i'd be even more in favour of taking them off at Old Oak Common,
running up to Neasden on the Dudden Hill line, then sending them along the
Chiltern corridor on quadrupled tracks - then we can give the suburban
Chiltern stations a proper service and let the long-range services run
fast more easily (again, utterly nobbling freight traffic along the way).
This would be ten times more expensive, of course, for not more than twice
the benefit.

Sadly, Montague and other people whose job it is to think these thoughts
looked at these ideas, and concluded they weren't worth it. Oh well.

tom

--
Destroy - kill all hippies.

In article ,
Tom Anderson wrote:
On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, gwr4090 wrote:

it would make a lot of sense to extend some CrossRail services to High
Wycombe instead of turning them around outside Paddington. One or two of
these per hour could run via Ealing Broadway to replace the Greenford
loop service.

Crossrail is about providing a high-frequency service on simple,
well-defined lines; if you're going to serve High Wycombe, you have to
do it properly, with more than one or two trains per hour. Perhaps you
meant sending a good frequency to High Wycombe, but only a few round the
loop?

Yes I did mean that !

Even there, i'd disagree - if you make the pattern that complex,
you lose much of the psychological strength of the project, and you make
keeping it all running to time that much harder.

Doesn't sound very complex to me ! Say two per hour via Ealing Broadway
and Drayton Park and say four per hour via Park Royal, with stops at say
Park Royal, Hanger Lane or Perivale, and Greenford. Maybe two of these
would terminate short of High Wycombe at say Beaconsfield or West Ruislip,
and would completely replace Chiltern stopping services between High
Wycombe and South Ruislip.

Not that i'm against using the loop - i'd be in favour of running all the
hypothesised Wycombe services via the loop; that way, you'd get more
trains through Ealing Broadway.

Line capacity between Ealing Broadway and West Ealing will be a
limitation. I very much doubt that more than two extra per hour could go
this way. The original plans, now shelved, involved increasing from four
to six running lines over this stretch. An alternative option would be to
run all Crossrail services via Park Royal but to send some from Greenford
East Jc via Drayton Park to terminate in a bay platform at West Ealing.

Actually, i'd be even more in favour of taking them off at Old Oak
Common, running up to Neasden on the Dudden Hill line, then sending them
along the Chiltern corridor on quadrupled tracks - then we can give the
suburban Chiltern stations a proper service and let the long-range
services run fast more easily (again, utterly nobbling freight traffic
along the way). This would be ten times more expensive, of course, for
not more than twice the benefit.

I feel there maybe be more benefit from taking over the Watford DC lines.

Sadly, Montague and other people whose job it is to think these thoughts
looked at these ideas, and concluded they weren't worth it. Oh well.

It now rather looks as though the whole Crossrail project will go forward
on the basis of the current rather limited aspirations for the western arm
- with the possible exception of extending to Reading rather than
Maidenhead (is there any news on this ?). Then once the service is
underway, there will probably be another rethink about additional western
destinations instead of turning back nearly half the trains at Paddington.

David

gwr4090 wrote:
In article ,
Tom Anderson wrote:

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, gwr4090 wrote:
(snip)
Sadly, Montague and other people whose job it is to think these thoughts
looked at these ideas, and concluded they weren't worth it. Oh well.


It now rather looks as though the whole Crossrail project will go forward
on the basis of the current rather limited aspirations for the western arm
- with the possible exception of extending to Reading rather than
Maidenhead (is there any news on this ?). Then once the service is
underway, there will probably be another rethink about additional western
destinations instead of turning back nearly half the trains at Paddington.

I think Reading council have been accused of being a bit slow on the
uptake about the whole Crossrail thing, and starting lobbying a bit
half-heartedly and a bit too late.

I believe that extensions such as Maidenhead to Reading and Abbey Wood
to Ebbsfleet are not entirely off the table, but are left out for now to
make sure Crossrail actually gets built.

--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

Adrian Auer-Hudson wrote:
Clive D. W. Feather wrote:
Adrian Auer-Hudson writes
1. Turning crossrail trains back @ Paddington is just crazy when there
is a lack of capacity in the mainline station.

Capacity in the mainline station won't be involved. The trains will "tip
out" at the new Crossrail island platform, run forward to a siding
between the tracks around Royal Oak, then back into service on the other
side of the same island platform. They never go near (except vertically)
the main terminus.

I'm told that the sidings will be authorised for passenger use so that
there's no need to search the terminating trains by hand. This is
necessary to provide the capacity.

The point I endeavor to make is: Paddington mainline is at capacity.
So, why are we not planning to extend all crossrail trains out into the
western suburbs? In doing so, crossrail trains replace current
terminating paths on the GW relief lines. By which method maximum
capacity is freed up in the terminus.

The short answer is because they're incompetent. They won't even consider
taking over the WCML slow lines to Northampton/Milton Keynes, despite it
being the route with the greatest potential.

However, just taking over some of the paths on the GW releif lines should
solve the Paddington capacity problem, at least in the short term.

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Dave Arquati wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Dave Arquati wrote:

John Rowland wrote:

"Adrian Auer-Hudson" wrote in message
glegroups.com...

What would it take to make at least one of these, GC and Piccadilly
Line, pairs into an interchange station?

The addition of an NR symbol to the tube map! The Sudbury Hill
stations are certainly very close.

The philosophy of "we don't need to stop the Chilterns there because
the tubes stop there" is certainly very strange

What sort of demand do you envisage for interchange between Chiltern and
Piccadilly at Sudbury? I use South Ruislip from time to time and the
interchange demand appears to be poor at best.

It's not about the interchange, it's about people wanting to get into town
quickly: it's 17 minutes to Marylebone by train, or 27 to Earl's Court by
tube.

Depending on how you look at it, of course, that's either only 10 minutes
or a whopping 60% longer.

A Chiltern service hourly, or a Piccadilly service every 10 minutes.
Theoretical average waiting times 30 min and 5 min respectively - 17+30
minutes to Marylebone, or 27+5 minutes to Earl's Court?

Dave, there's this wonderful thing called a 'time-table', which, for the
big railway, tells you when trains are going to turn up (roughly), so you
can get yourself down to the station at just the right time to catch them.
Barely any waiting necessary - it's genius! I imagine they'll have them
for other things one day, like aeroplanes perhaps.

Ooh, sarcasm... :-) I'm pretty good with timetables... but that doesn't
negate the point that if I live in Sudbury and want to leave *now* for
central London, my journey is a choice between frequent Picc services
where I can turn up at the station when I like, and infrequent Chiltern
ones which are only useful if they happen to be going at the time I want
to go.

It would be extremely foolish to turn up at Sudbury Hill Harrow in this
weather and pray for a train :-)

On the other hand, I trust Chiltern much much more to run to their
hourly timetable than I trust trains on the Piccadilly branch to appear
every ten minutes!

Also, frequency is the central point of John's criticism - more trains
should stop at these stations, then the fast journey to London wouldn't be
crippled by aeons-long waits! I don't know much about the Chiltern
services, but i should imagine there are enough trains that you could get
4 or even 6 tph at these stations.

Really don't think there is any demand - 12tph total to the Sudbury area
would probably be a gross oversupply. Better to let Chiltern concentrate
on what they're good at, which is an exemplary service to Bucks stations.

There is then the pathing problem, though, which is probably the real
reason these stations don't get more trains. If some four-tracking could
be provided, that would be lovely, but i have no idea if it could; it
probably wouldn't be cost-effective anyway.

The Ruislips are 3-tracked already, mostly for freight purposes I think.

Of course, it also depends where you are going.


True. This is where Marylebone is a very weak link; you can either get on
the Bakerloo if you happen to want to go somewhere it goes, or walk to
Baker Street (well, or take the tube to Baker Street, but i don't think
it's any faster), so actually getting to a destination from a Chiltern
train takes disproportionately long.

It's only worth taking the Tube to Baker St to catch a Jubilee across
the platform, and even then it's a bit spurious.


--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

"Dave Arquati" wrote in message
...

The Ruislips are 3-tracked already, mostly for freight purposes I think.

Not really. At South Ruislip traffic from Marylebone can *only* take the
platform road, whilst traffic from Greenford can only take the centre road
(hence the reason that, when Paddington diversions are on, no trains stop at
South Ruislip). So, effectively, the outer two tracks are the up and down
Marylebone, whilst the easternmost pair are the up and down Greenford (the
up line gives access to both routes). At West Ruislip the centre road is an
up through line (although, IIRC, it is bi-directionally signalled - perhaps
Roger can correct me on that).

"Jack Taylor" wrote
At West Ruislip the centre road is an
up through line (although, IIRC, it is bi-directionally signalled ...

Not according to Quail.

"John Salmon" wrote in message
...

"Jack Taylor" wrote
At West Ruislip the centre road is an
up through line (although, IIRC, it is bi-directionally signalled ...

Not according to Quail.

Thx for that. I wasn't entirely sure and haven't got a Quail to refer to.
Actually, now I think about it, I should have looked at my LNW sectional
appendix!