On 10 Oct 2006 12:01:17 -0700, TheOneKEA wrote:

There are a couple of points here (happy to be corrected if my facts
aren't quite right). The NLL that exists now was two separate services
back in the late 70s. It was diesel operated out at North Woolwich and
through Hackney IIRC. You only got the third rail bit at Dalston.

The two services were Broad Street to Richmond and Palace Gates to
North Woolwich.

IIRC the Palace Gates branch closed in the 60s. Paul C is referring to
the situation in the years leading up to the closure of Broad Street,
when IIRC there were electric services from Richmond to Broad Street
and Watford to Broad Street, and diesel services from North Woolwich
to Camden Road.

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006, John Rowland wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

The big London freight study a while ago did say we needed a new Thames
crossing to get freight from the Kent ports to the north without
faffing around on the south London commuter lines and the WLL; might as
well build it here as out at Tilbury (yes, i know, it'd still play
merry hell with the Dartford lines).

CTRL has freight facilities.

True, but IIRC, the freight study says it doesn't solve the problem - i
think because there aren't enough freight paths or something. I can't find
the study right now, though, so i'm afraid i can't be more authoritative.

tom

--
Who would you help in a fight, Peter van der Linden or Bill Gates?

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006, asdf wrote:

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 01:32:18 +0100, Tom Anderson wrote:

Alternatively, whack in a second portal or a flyover or whatever, and
run Shoreditch - Highbury & Islington - Willesden Junction as another
Crossrail branch!

I'll throw in this idea: it could be used by a future high speed
inter-city line, as part of its route from the city to the outskirts,
saving lots of expensive tunnelling.

Broad Street to Glasgow! The thing is, it would only save a few miles of
tunnelling, and would make the portal arrangements more complicated, so it
probably doesn't work out worth doing.

I'm trying to think of a way to connect it to the soon-to-be-abandoned
Farringdon - Moorgate stretch of the Widened Lines. Oh, and a reason to do
so!

tom

--
Who would you help in a fight, Peter van der Linden or Bill Gates?

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:18:53 +0100, Tom Anderson wrote:

I'll throw in this idea: it could be used by a future high speed
inter-city line, as part of its route from the city to the outskirts,
saving lots of expensive tunnelling.

Broad Street to Glasgow! The thing is, it would only save a few miles of
tunnelling, and would make the portal arrangements more complicated, so it
probably doesn't work out worth doing.

I'm trying to think of a way to connect it to the soon-to-be-abandoned
Farringdon - Moorgate stretch of the Widened Lines. Oh, and a reason to do
so!

Bonus points for including the Aldwych branch, the Waterloo & City,
Charing Cross Jubilee, and the Kingsway tram tunnel. ;-)

Mizter T wrote:
Dave Arquati wrote:

Mizter T wrote:
TheOneKEA wrote:

On Oct 9, 11:54 am, "Kev" wrote:
TheOneKEA wrote:
For that matter, how will the tracks themselves be positioned? One
smart thing to do would be to run them down the centre of the
formation, so that in case patronage begins to pick up significantly, a
set of outside loops can be built at the stations and new platforms
added, to permit non-stopping of trains.
Funniest thing that I have read in ages, the prospect of the Eat London
Line being so busy it will need to be quadrupled. You would still have
the double track bottleneck to the south.
True. I was thinking more in terms of offering branched services to the
north.
It certainly won't need quadrupling - as Kev says it would be a
nightmare anyway as there'd be a bottleneck.

If however the suggestion is the ELL is going to be a quiet line then
I'd offer the contrary prediction - I think it'll be a very successful
and well patronised line. I know this is contrary to what appears to be
the received wisdom in this group but I'm convinced it'll be a great
success.
Is it contrary to the received wisdom? The North London Line and
associated lines show that there is strong and increasing demand for
inner city orbital services. The ELL will pass through some
heavily-populated areas, with a reasonably large number of residents
within 15 minutes of stops along the line. Strong job growth is expected
in the inner city and suburbs in general, and suburban road congestion
means that the combined North London Railway orbital services will
provide competitive journey times between many pairs of
origins/destinations. I think all of that will inevitably (and fairly
logically) lead to strong demand for ELL services.


My earlier assessment of an anti-extended ELL bias in this group is
perhaps wide of the mark - note that my comments on the received wisdom
concerning it related to utl as opposed to the world at large.

Perhaps utl isn't as guilty as uk.railway - I can't remember where I've
read the many past ng posts that are (sometimes deeply) sceptical about
the project, but I certainly have. Whilst I'm a relative newcomer here
I have read several of the discussions from the archives (of both
newsgroups).

I recall reading several comments along the lines of "who wants to go
from Sydenham to Hoxton anyway", "the Croydon traveller wants to go to
central London not Whitechapel" and "do the people of Dalston really
want to go to Surrey Quays".

Actually Hoxton is a very trendy place these days, and I have on many
occassions had to direct people on the train from Sydenham and
thereabouts to LB how to get to Hoxton Square via Old Street, a direct
connection would be popular. Also Whitechapel is a very handy place for
getting to all parts of East London, it is exceptionally well connected
for buses as well as the District Line and not having to go via LB is a
great bonus.

One 'alternative scheme' discussed poured scorn on the ELL project as
being a waste and stated all that was necessary was the the ELL be
funnelled into Liverpool Street, with the Broad St. - Dalston track
used for a tram.

I don't of course object to such fantasy schemes - after all every PT
project starts with an idea - the one I read did however very easily
dismiss the present scheme as poor, something that I very much disagree
with.

Hence my recieved wisdom statement! Of course Dave, even before
endorsement above, it's pretty clear that your wisdom was in the right
corner!

Like you I'm sure the extended ELL will be very successful. In the mid
80's it seemed people thought the NLL was dying, but it is - as you say

It will indeed, the ELL has become a lot busier since the JLE arrived at
Canada Water, not to mention all the developemnts at Wapping and
Rotherhithe.
I have been using the ELL for over 25 years, I have a lot of friends in
Hackney, Stoke Newington and similar places, a direct train from New
Cross Gate, my local station, to Dalston will be a real bonus, less
changes, less hassle.
I hope, however that it will come in closer to time than the last time
it was closed, for works on the tunnel, this was originally scheduled to
be 9 months, but ended up at close on 3 years with a dreadful bus
replacement service which did not even serve NXG directly.
I am looking forward to it.

- a very well patronised (if horribly scruffy) route now.
Plus look at the example the West London Line and the "Two Junctions" /
"Junction to Junction" service (why does no-one ever call it either of
those!) from Willesden Junction to Clapham Junction which never existed
at all whatsoever before '94 (I think) - it's now a pretty popular
route on a day-to-day basis (as well as it's revived popularity for
Olympia exhibitions).

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006, Mizter T wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

On Mon, 9 Oct 2006, TheOneKEA wrote:

On Oct 9, 11:54 am, "Kev" wrote:
TheOneKEA wrote:

For that matter, how will the tracks themselves be positioned?

Funniest thing that I have read in ages, the prospect of the Eat London
Line being so busy it will need to be quadrupled.

The big London freight study a while ago did say we needed a new Thames
crossing to get freight from the Kent ports to the north without
faffing around on the south London commuter lines and the WLL; might as
well build it here as out at Tilbury (yes, i know, it'd still play
merry hell with the Dartford lines).

I think it'd be far preferable to get as much rail freight traffic as
possible on routes that avoid going through London.

Not only preferable, but absolutely necessary. There's a Felixstowe -
Nuneaton (IIRC) route that is the great white hope here; it needs various
bits of fiddling about, but would allow Felixstowe's traffic to the north,
which is rather substantial, to bypass London completely.

I've not read the freight study but an out of town link across the
Thames, such as at Tilbury, sounds good.

That doesn't help you avoid London, though - from Tilbury, it's the Goblin
or the NLL to Willesden and up north from there. It does keep trains off
the south London suburban network, though.

In fact, with stuff coming up from the channel tunnel, Thamesport and
Sheerness in Kent, and Purfleet, Tilbury and soon Shellhaven in Essex,
there's quite a lot of freight with no current way to avoid London.
Someone suggested here a while ago that it might be possible to make the
NLL four-track throughout, which would allow for a dedicated freight route
from Stratford to Willesden, which would help a lot (although getting from
the ports to Stratford is still a bottleneck). Ideally, i suppose, there'd
be a freight railway running alongside the M25 from Upminsterish to Hemel
Hempstead, to avoid London completely, but i'd say that was really rather
unlikely to come about!

Secondly, what's going to happen to the stub of viaduct south of the
junction with the answer to the first question?

Re your second question - the stub of the viaduct might contain business
premises in the arches, I don't know, I'll take a look next time I'm
around there. Presumably it could be knocked down and built on, though
I'd imagine such a redevelopment would be expensive given the difficulty
of demolition so close to the busy tracks out of Liverpool Street (look
at an aerial photo [1] to see this for yourself)

I was wondering if something could be put on top of the viaduct, which is
currently just grass. I thought it would be rather fun to have a new park
right in the middle of the City - about half the size of the HAC grounds
at Bunhill Fields, or twice the size of Finsbury Square. And up in the
air!

Oh, third question: what was on the Bishopsgate site between 1964, when i
understand it closed as a goods yard, and the time ELLX construction
started?

The Sub Brit website has several fascinating pages and photos
concerning Bishopsgate Goods Yard [4]. On it Nick Catford says:

Interesting stuff!

tom

--
Who would you help in a fight, Peter van der Linden or Bill Gates?

asdf wrote:

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:18:53 +0100, Tom Anderson wrote:

I'll throw in this idea: it could be used by a future high speed
inter-city line, as part of its route from the city to the outskirts,
saving lots of expensive tunnelling.

Broad Street to Glasgow! The thing is, it would only save a few miles of
tunnelling, and would make the portal arrangements more complicated, so it
probably doesn't work out worth doing.

I'm trying to think of a way to connect it to the soon-to-be-abandoned
Farringdon - Moorgate stretch of the Widened Lines. Oh, and a reason to do
so!

Bonus points for including the Aldwych branch, the Waterloo & City,
Charing Cross Jubilee, and the Kingsway tram tunnel. ;-)

And King William Street for a rollercoaster ride.

Or how about retaining the Moorgate tracks it and reinstating the
railway and goods station under Smithfields Meat Market for use in
delivering fresh carcasses, just like they used to do. - there's an
awful lots of HGVs that arrive there at night and it'd take them off
the road. The Moorgate tracks could be used by freight trains queueing
to enter the Smithfields goods station - some reversing necessary so
each train would need to be topped and tailed by loco on each end,
unless you could somehow add a few shunters into the mix - no, I don't
think that would work out. Why can't the loco go on one end and a
driving carriage on the other end, so the loco can either push or pull,
a bit like the one Anglia intercity trains or the old Gatwick Express
do it. I'm way out of my depth here on this loco business, I think the
bods at uk.railway would rip me to shreds!

The Met & Circle line platforms at Moorgate might have a certain whiff
about them in the morning though!

See http://www.loveplums.co.uk/Tube/Holborn_Viaduct_station.html for
a map of the Smithfield route. There is a better page somewhere on the
web that at least has a photo of the entrance to the underground goods
yard turned car park, but I can't find it, and you can see that with
your own eyes if you go there. There have been past discussions on
uk.railway and/or utl that have mentioned it.

Martin Smith wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

(snip)

I recall reading several comments along the lines of "who wants to go
from Sydenham to Hoxton anyway", "the Croydon traveller wants to go to
central London not Whitechapel" and "do the people of Dalston really
want to go to Surrey Quays".

Actually Hoxton is a very trendy place these days, and I have on many
occassions had to direct people on the train from Sydenham and
thereabouts to LB how to get to Hoxton Square via Old Street, a direct
connection would be popular. Also Whitechapel is a very handy place for
getting to all parts of East London, it is exceptionally well connected
for buses as well as the District Line and not having to go via LB is a
great bonus.


If I was part of the achingly 1990's Hoxton YBA clique then I might say
that your comment about Hoxton being "a very trendy place" was so
out-of-date as it's now gone mainstream, and the old squats and
warehouses have now been converted into studios inhabited by affluent
young city professionals city trying to be trendy. However I'm not so I
won't! Well, maybe the bit about city types taking up residence &
changing the ambiance of the area is something I might well go-along
with with, but I'm not an achingly hip ex-Hoxtonite so I don't feel
qualified to have a firm belief one way or the other. Not least because
the supposedly legendary Hoxton of yesteryear might just be a
convenient myth for those who wish to appear as though they're always
running away from the run of the mill to be the avant garde - after
all, Mr Saatchi wouldn't pay top-dollar for pieces from a common or
garden artist.

Right, now I've got that out of my system (!) I'll instead say that I
often go, along with the masses (of which I am one I hasten to add!)
for a night out in Hoxton/Shoreditch, the two names for these adjacent
places popularly being muddled together - quite understandably IMO
considering their proximity, and the fact that many people's memory of
the area is somewhat tainted by intoxication!

We shouldn't presume that a SE London - Hoxton link for those seeking a
night out is what the ELLX is for though. Because it's not. Though it
will be most useful for this purpose!

But after writing all that I realise that you were responding to my
paraphrased pseudo-quote (pseudo in the sense that I hadn't actually
looked it up before I wrote the posting) from an old post. I've just
searched for it and found two posts in particular from a September 2005
thread on utl - one of which reads:

'I can't believe Sydenham is _really_ that full of people all saying "I
wish we could get to Hoxton more easily" '

Before I get accused of taking the comments out of context I'll link to
the Google Groups archive so you can make you're own mind up.
The post quoted above is at http://tinyurl.com/kryuh, and another
post of interest is at http://tinyurl.com/jlp4q.


(snip)

Like you I'm sure the extended ELL will be very successful. In the mid
80's it seemed people thought the NLL was dying, but it is - as you say

It will indeed, the ELL has become a lot busier since the JLE arrived at
Canada Water, not to mention all the developemnts at Wapping and
Rotherhithe.
I have been using the ELL for over 25 years, I have a lot of friends in
Hackney, Stoke Newington and similar places, a direct train from New
Cross Gate, my local station, to Dalston will be a real bonus, less
changes, less hassle.
I hope, however that it will come in closer to time than the last time
it was closed, for works on the tunnel, this was originally scheduled to
be 9 months, but ended up at close on 3 years with a dreadful bus
replacement service which did not even serve NXG directly.
I am looking forward to it.


I'm in agreement with you on those points. Of course you and many
others will find it useful for visiting friends, but once up and
running it'll also open up the eyes of many to new opportunities
recreation, studying, and - critically - employment as well as much
else.

I can't recall all the details about the messy extended closure of the
line in the 90's, but at least there's a definite deadline - it all has
to be up and running for 2012!

However you probably won't be over-the-moon to read this:
(from page 4 of the Spring 2006 ELL brochure [1])
" [...] Additionally, there will be a need to close the existing East
London Line for approximately 18 months to replace existing track and
signalling. This is currently scheduled to begin winter 2007 / spring
2008."

Note that the file name of this document actually reads "...Spring 07
(Final)(1)...", so maybe the project team has taken to heart the
concept that it has to be finished on time and advanced their diaries
by a year! However that would mean the ELL closing this winter... all
I'm saying is don't be surprised to arrive one day to find no ELL
trains...


-----
[1]
http://ellp.tfl.gov.uk/UserFiles/Fil...(Final)(1).pdf
or via shortURL http://tinyurl.com/mwdp3

Mizter T wrote:
Tom Anderson wrote:

Fourth question! How did Broad Street once function as it apparently
did as a terminus of the Great Northern? How do you get from
Finsbury Park to Broad Street? Ah, no, i see - there's a curve from
just below Drayton Park to the NLL. Isn't that single-track, though?


The "Canonbury Curve" (search for it on uk.railway) used to be a two
track railway. If you look through the fence opposite of Drayton Park
station you'll see that the trackbed and tunnel do have space for two
tracks.

The Canonbury Curve was singled when electrified, I think because there
wasn't enough room for two lines with overhead.

Mizter T wrote:

I can't recall all the details about the messy extended closure of the
line in the 90's,

Wasn't it a combination of upgrading the tunnel under the Thames, combined
with building Canada Water?