On 3 Feb, 11:41, "Paul Scott" wrote:
You have to look at the plans for the whole area though. The re-design for
Kings Cross didn't need to allow for longer or more suburban platforms,
because the greater proportion will be diverted to Thameslink, and
lengthened to 12 car at that time.

Thameslink will only have room for 8 of them per hour. While that
should mean 12 car platform provision at KX is adequate in 2015, it
won't have room for any serious growth in IC or outer suburban
frequency.

(though granted, neither does Welwyn viaduct)

There is no case for spare long platforms in case of weekend engineering
works on Thameslink etc either...

If the majority of the Thameslink fleet is indivisible 12 car trains,
then yes there is.

U

"martyn dawe" wrote
I think there was a fear of confusing the signals folk - apparently they
could re-sign the platforms, but they'd run out of dymolabels to sort out
the signals diagrams ...
... or something equally stupid, unbelievable and Totally British Rail.
I thought British Rail Cased some years ago ?

What on earth made you think that?

They live on in all but name, all over the country, doing loopy, stupid
things and blaming others afterward; look around you

- the failure to electrify Gospel Oak to Barking (and twenty other false
economies);
- restoring Barlow's magnificent train shed - and adding a flat roofed mess
at the end
- seriously planning an electric train dragging a diesel engine from London
to Scotland, rather than, er, attach it at Edinburgh for the onward journey.

I could go on, endlessly; BR is alive and well, but working in disguise.
--

Andrew

On Mon, 2 Feb 2009 23:49:32 -0000, "David Morgan"
wrote:


"Adrian" wrote in message
...
I think it's somehting like "Pur-kip-see".

"Pick-upsy", IIRC

Although I travelled through Poughkeepsie a few years ago the train wasn't
scheduled to stop so there was no announcement.

So my only reference is from the TV series Friends episode "The Girl from
Poughkeepsie" where it's pronounced "Pur-kip-see" as Adrian says

It's mentioned quite a few times by Gene Hackman in one scene from the
French Connection.


--

On Feb 3, 12:27*pm, "Andrew Heenan" wrote:
- the failure to electrify Gospel Oak to Barking (and twenty other false
economies);

That's territorial fighting. The UK freight resurgence is diesel-based
(the EMD Class 66 is the single best thing to happen to UK rail
freight in c.100 years: it's cheap and it Just Works) so there's no
benefit to freight operators in electrifying it. The only operator
who'd benefit is TfL, but they're not willing to pay the full cost
without any control over the infrastructure.

This is neither a situation that's particularly BR-ish, nor one that's
unique to the UK.

- restoring Barlow's magnificent train shed - and adding a flat roofed mess
at the end

I think you mean 'a sympathetic, low-profile extension that makes St P
useable without detracting from Barlow's architecture. I mean, what,
you'd've stuck up a giant pastiche shed extension or something?
YAQuinlanTerry[spit]AICMFP.

- seriously planning an electric train dragging a diesel engine from London
to Scotland, rather than, er, attach it at Edinburgh for the onward journey.

I'll give you that one. I don't *entirely* blame people who've seen
loco-switching operations in the dying days of CrossCountry, or EMU
+loco operations from Chester to Holyhead, for viewing this as
unworkable - however, it *should* be as easy and effective as
splitting and joining units on the Southern.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

In message
, at
04:19:23 on Tue, 3 Feb 2009, Mr Thant
remarked:
You have to look at the plans for the whole area though. The re-design for
Kings Cross didn't need to allow for longer or more suburban platforms,
because the greater proportion will be diverted to Thameslink, and
lengthened to 12 car at that time.

Thameslink will only have room for 8 of them per hour. While that
should mean 12 car platform provision at KX is adequate in 2015, it
won't have room for any serious growth in IC or outer suburban
frequency.

And some people have speculated that it will transpire to be 0 per hour,
when they decide at some stage not to connect up the ECML to Thameslink
after all.
--
Roland Perry

On Tue, 3 Feb 2009, Mark Goodge wrote:

On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 21:49:03 GMT, Neil Williams put finger to keyboard
and typed:

[1] It's a pity that M&S Food[2] seem to have an almost-monopoly on
station supermarkets, though. A small Tesco or Sainsbury's would be a
lot more useful for a "get a quick shop on the way home" type
diversion - which is why the latter is very welcome at Manc Picc.

That's an interesting point. I've always seen station retail as catering
primarily to departing travellers, and thus focussing on goods (mainly
food, toiletries and reading material, plus a few over-priced gifts)
that are useful to someone who is waiting to get on a train. That's
certainly how I use station retail facilities, anyway - either to eat
before I get on the train, or buying something to take on the train with
me. By contrast, when I arrive at a station on a train, I only ever want
to get out of it as soon as possible in order to complete the journey to
my ultimate destination

Right. Hold that thought ...

by whatever method (car/bus/tube/taxi/walk/etc) will take me there. The
idea of using station retail facilities for a quick shop on the way
through after arrival hadn't occurred to me. But, given that I do most
of my supermarket shopping on the way home from work (by car), it's not
unreasonable for rail commuters to want to be able to do the same thing
when arriving home by train. The obvious locations, though, for station
supermarkets would be commuter stations at the "home" end of the route,
rather than the city centre destination stations.

.... and apply it!

The advantage of being able to do your shopping at the starting end is
that you can do it while waiting for your train, which is time you're
going to be spedning hanging around the station anyway. If the shop is at
the destination end, then every minute spent shopping is a minute later
walking in your front door.

It doesn't have to be a full-sized shop, but it's useful to be able to buy
the kind of things that don't keep, like fresh fruit and veg, milk, etc.
The little M&Ss ought to do this, but have mostly become glorified
sandwich shops.

tom

--
There is no strange thing.

On Feb 3, 12:15*pm, Jamie Thompson wrote:
1924 new island platform added between the local station and the Hotel Curve
platform, numbered 14 and 15.

Quite how they manage with only 3 + borrowing some from the maid shed
these days is amazing.

Don't forget the extra x2 at Moorgate GN.

Opening up the Gas Works tunnels is not an option, as the Grand Union Canal
goes over the top of them. It might, I suppose, be possible to reinstate the
third tunnel, use the western one only for the suburban station (including
possible longer and/or additional platforms), the middle one for platforms
5-8, and the eastern one for platforms 1-4 and 0/W/Y or whatever it will be
called.

You could stick the canal into an aqueduct...it bridges obstacles
elsewhere with ease. Bridging the gap for the road is also (relatively
speaking, of course) trivial.

Boat lift!

I do have my doubts. Capacity is the sort of thing that gets eaten up
very quickly. I think the diversion onto Thameslink is going to be a
monumental balls up. The tube suffers with some delays with multiple
branches only going out to zone 5. Thameslink is going to have route
pollution from MML (from TL diagrams that use the fast lines), damn
near *all* ECML services thanks to the Welwyn viaduct, not to mention
the Peterborough services and the magic 3-track section, and they want
to merge 24tph into the 2 platform St. Pancras Thameslink....it's all
going to go horribly wrong, I suspect.

Not making SPTL 4- (or at least 3-)platform was an error. However, the
Central line works well, despite its multiple and far-out (including
Epping, which would probably be zone 7 or 8 if Essex CC hadn't lobbied
and paid to put it in Zone 6 before zones 7-9 were invented) branches,
on 24tph. ATO combined with clever signalling that reacts dynamically
to any delays in incoming trains is the key here.

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

On 3 Feb, 13:09, Tom Anderson wrote:

It doesn't have to be a full-sized shop, but it's useful to be able to buy
the kind of things that don't keep, like fresh fruit and veg, milk, etc.
The little M&Ss ought to do this, but have mostly become glorified
sandwich shops.

They're fine for milk and bread, but given that unopened milk easily
keeps for up to 2 weeks these days that isn't an issue, and bread can
be frozen. What I want to be able to buy at Euston on the way home is
properly fresh veg for consumption that day. M&S doesn't provide that
to any useful extent, not even at an inflated price - just not at
all. No fresh mushrooms, for instance.

Neil

"John B" wrote ...
On Feb 3, 12:27 pm, "Andrew Heenan" wrote:
- the failure to electrify Gospel Oak to Barking (and twenty other false
economies);

That's territorial fighting. The UK freight resurgence is diesel-based
(the EMD Class 66 is the single best thing to happen to UK rail
freight in c.100 years: it's cheap and it Just Works) so there's no
benefit to freight operators in electrifying it. The only operator
who'd benefit is TfL, but they're not willing to pay the full cost
without any control over the infrastructure.

Very wrong; the 'resurgence' needn't be diesel-based, and with a few infill
electrifications, much of the containerised freight (the only part that's
actually resurging (!), could be entirely electric. And not territorial
fighting; I'd argue exactly the same for a dozen similarly sized schemes
(see the railway magazines - they feature regularly). And the argument for
GOB preceded the overground by several years.I don't blame the operators for
diesel; many of them would jump at the chance to run electric - but they'd
have few diversionary routes, and some key lines would be unreachable.

Much European freight is electric; if they didn't have four voltages and
five signalling systems, probably the 66 would not have been needed in
Europe!

I think you mean 'a sympathetic, low-profile extension that makes St P
useable without detracting from Barlow's architecture. I mean, what,
you'd've stuck up a giant pastiche shed extension or something?

There's absolutely nothing sympathetic about it; it's brutal.

I'll give you that one. I don't *entirely* blame people who've seen
loco-switching operations in the dying days of CrossCountry, or EMU
+loco operations from Chester to Holyhead, for viewing this as
unworkable - however, it *should* be as easy and effective as
splitting and joining units on the Southern.

And of course, electrification - already planned by Scotland - will remove
the need anyway

--
Andrew

"Jamie Thompson" wrote

That said, I do love these newsgroups sometimes. If you have somewhere
to cite all that from, it'd be great to get that on Wikipedia.

The information was taken from 'London's Termini' by Alan A Jackson,
originally published by David & Charles in 1969, my edition by Pan Books
1972.

The reduction in the number of platforms takes into account the transfer of
the Northern Heights (High Barnet and Mill Hill East) to LUL Northern Line,
and the diversion of the inner suburbans to Moorgate (except late evenings
and weekends), although some trains formerly ran to Broad Street, or to
Moorgate via the Widened Lines.

Peter