"John B" wrote in message
oups.com...
On 14 Mar, 15:42, "Paul Scott" wrote:

The ELL will be DC third rail - and I shall be very surprised if in due
course it isn't run by Southern, as contractors to TfL as the services
will
have to be timetabled into the existing paths, indeed the extension of
the
railway to Crystal Palace and Croydon will subsume certain existing
services.


Current bidders for London Overground (= NLL, ELLx, WLL, GOBLIN) are
MTR/Laing (Chiltern) and GoVia (Southern). AIUI the Southern franchise
deal allows for transferring certain services to ELLx when it opens,
so this side of things won't be a problem whoever wins.

Network Rail is supposed to be able to resolve timetable conflicts
between different operators, and doesn't do a terrible job: for
example, although the South Central and South Eastern franchises have
been under the same control for much of privatisation (Connex and now
GoVia), the period when GoVia and SRA were running South Central and
South Eastern respectively was not a disaster.


What does seem useful is that whatever (small number of?) Southern
paths/services are effectively transferred to ELL, the displaced rolling
stock will remain available for strengthening other services...

Paul