Boltar wrote:
(CJC) wrote in message
. com...
were built, unusually. The piccadilly stock has specially
built
luggage spaces. Also it is much quicker I find to central
london. I

Yes , that stock AFAIK was built especially for the new
heathrow link.
But then if they'd decided to use the district line then
they'd have
built new district line trains (the district stock on the
line then was
due to be replaced soon anyway , hence the D stock from
1978) that had
the same type luggage space but had generally more room.
You can't get
around that fact that tube stock trains are small and if
you have more
than a few suitcases in any given luggage area then things
get awkward
and passengers boarding on and off end up tripping over
them.

To be honest , short of using stock from the Romney Hythe
and Dymchurch
railway you couldn't really use less appropriate trains to
serve a major
international airport IMO and LU only made things worse
when the
refurbishment of the trains substaintially reduced the
amount of seating (but did little to improve the standing
room) which has resulted (I know
cos I've seen it) in people having to stand all the way
from heathrow.

B2003

Tube stock and surface stock are approximately the same width, it is only
the height that is different. When deciding which line should serve the
airport (or any other location) account has to be taken of where the people
will actually want to travel to. There's not a lot of point in having the
District serve Heathrow when people want to get to hotels in Russell Square
is there?

Of course situations change and hindsight is a wonderful thing. I am however
quite sure that if it had been decided to build the Heathrow extension to
surface stock loading gauge the whingers would have been complaining about
the additional expenditure and little use.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, it was Cast_Iron
), in message
who said:

Tube stock and surface stock are approximately the same width, it is
only the height that is different. When deciding which line should
serve the airport (or any other location) account has to be taken of
where the people will actually want to travel to. There's not a lot
of point in having the District serve Heathrow when people want to
get to hotels in Russell Square is there?

Of course situations change and hindsight is a wonderful thing. I am
however quite sure that if it had been decided to build the Heathrow
extension to surface stock loading gauge the whingers would have been
complaining about the additional expenditure and little use.


I think the problem is that all the connections to Heathrow seem to be aimed
at getting people into central London, which is fundamentally flawed in two
respects.


1) Around half the passengers coming into Heathrow are British people
returning from their holidays, not tourists visiting.

2) Central London hotel prices have led to a vast expansion of the tourist
catchment area in recent years. It's now not unusual for 'ordinary' people
who aren't made of money to visit the capital and stay in zone 2 or 3,
because that's where the affordable accomodation is getting built.


Can't we have rail links from Heathrow to anywhere else?

When I go from Tooting to Heathrow to go on holiday, both the Picc and the
Express seem extremely inconvenient and time-consuming prospects (and the
Express is pricey to boot), so I get a taxi every time.

BTN

"peter" wrote in message

"Nigel Pendse" wrote in message
...
"CJC" wrote in message
om

The tunnels from Hounslow West to Heathrow were built using the
cut-and-cover method that was used on the district/met lines when
they were built, unusually.

There is some cut and cover tunnel, but much of the Heathrow
extension is deep-bored, including all of the line under the airport
itself. Cut-and-cover would hardly have been an option for a line
that was tunneled under an active and very busy runway, a number of
taxiways, probably some hangars and (presumably) Terminal 3.

Just because it was deep-bored doesn't mean it has to be small bore.
In this city there are deep level main line rail tunnels (for double
deck stock) as well as deep-bored road tollway tunnels (3 lanes each
way).

Agreed, but that wasn't the point I was making. The fact is that the
Heathrow LU tunnels are Tube, not sub-surface sized, so the District Line is
not an option now. Presumably in the 1970s it was a lot cheaper to build
small diameter than large diameter tunnels, which may have been one of the
reasons why there were built that way (quite apart from the other advantages
of the Piccadilly over the District line).

Of course, the Heathrow Express now has larger diameter deep bored tunnels
under both acyive runways, taxiways, etc.

Ben Nunn wrote:
Unless I'm very much mistaken, it was Cast_Iron
), in message
who said:

Tube stock and surface stock are approximately the same
width, it is
only the height that is different. When deciding which
line should
serve the airport (or any other location) account has to
be taken of where the people will actually want to travel
to. There's not a lot
of point in having the District serve Heathrow when people
want to
get to hotels in Russell Square is there?

Of course situations change and hindsight is a wonderful
thing. I am however quite sure that if it had been decided
to build the Heathrow extension to surface stock loading
gauge the whingers would have been complaining about the
additional expenditure and little use.


I think the problem is that all the connections to Heathrow
seem to be aimed at getting people into central London,
which is fundamentally flawed in two respects.


1) Around half the passengers coming into Heathrow are
British people returning from their holidays, not tourists
visiting.

2) Central London hotel prices have led to a vast expansion
of the tourist catchment area in recent years. It's now not
unusual for 'ordinary' people who aren't made of money to
visit the capital and stay in zone 2 or 3, because that's
where the affordable accomodation is getting built.


Can't we have rail links from Heathrow to anywhere else?

When I go from Tooting to Heathrow to go on holiday, both
the Picc and the Express seem extremely inconvenient and
time-consuming prospects (and the Express is pricey to
boot), so I get a taxi every time.

We can have anything we like as long as we are prepared to pay for it, and
most people aren't.

"Cast_Iron" wrote in message ...
Tube stock and surface stock are approximately the same width, it is only

Not true , surface stock is a foot wider which amounts to a lot more extra
room inside the carriages.

Of course situations change and hindsight is a wonderful thing. I am however

You don't need hindsight to know that bigger trains = better carrying
capacity.

quite sure that if it had been decided to build the Heathrow extension to
surface stock loading gauge the whingers would have been complaining about
the additional expenditure and little use.

Even if the picc continued running the main service to the airport some
distruct trains could have used it occasionally to take up the slack, the
same way that the picc and met run togather to uxbridge.

B2003

Boltar wrote:
"Cast_Iron" wrote in message
...
Tube stock and surface stock are approximately the same
width, it is only

Not true , surface stock is a foot wider which amounts to a
lot more extra
room inside the carriages.

Of course situations change and hindsight is a wonderful
thing. I am however

You don't need hindsight to know that bigger trains =
better carrying
capacity.

quite sure that if it had been decided to build the
Heathrow extension to
surface stock loading gauge the whingers would have been
complaining about
the additional expenditure and little use.

Even if the picc continued running the main service to the
airport some
distruct trains could have used it occasionally to take up
the slack, the
same way that the picc and met run togather to uxbridge.

B2003

"They" could have done all sorts of things, if the cash was available. Are
you looking at this from a 1960s perspective or a 2000s one?

In message , Ben Nunn
writes

I think the problem is that all the connections to Heathrow seem to be aimed
at getting people into central London, which is fundamentally flawed in two
respects.

1) Around half the passengers coming into Heathrow are British people
returning from their holidays, not tourists visiting.

I don't know where you get that statistic from, but I don't think its
correct.

Heathrow's lack of charter flights and cheap airline services don't make
it a popular choice for British holidaymakers. But it is the major
gateway for international visitors. The National Statistics' Office
Travel Trends report for 2000 says ...

Heathrow accounted for over a half of all visits by overseas
residents travelling to the UK by air. UK residents travelling
by air were more inclined to use regional airports.

On the other hand, Heathrow has the lion's share of business travel by
air.

2) Central London hotel prices have led to a vast expansion of the tourist
catchment area in recent years.

Central London hotels have enormous over-capacity at present.
Consequently it is possible to find much better deals there than in many
other parts of the UK.

It's now not unusual for 'ordinary' people
who aren't made of money to visit the capital and stay in zone 2 or 3,
because that's where the affordable accomodation is getting built.

Affordable hotels, do you mean? I don't see many. And for the many
visitors who come for a short city-break, the travelling time from
further out eats into holiday time.

Can't we have rail links from Heathrow to anywhere else?

Some would be desirable, but I don't know how cost-effective they would
be. Most of my friends and relatives who fly overseas for holidays go
from Luton, Stansted, Gatwick or Manchester - they wouldn't dream of
using Heathrow.

When I go from Tooting to Heathrow to go on holiday, both the Picc and the
Express seem extremely inconvenient and time-consuming prospects (and the
Express is pricey to boot), so I get a taxi every time.

That's fine, since you can clearly afford a taxi. When flying on holiday
(as opposed to business, where I get my fare paid) I find that the
savings to be made by flying from Stansted more than make-up for the
extra hour it takes me to cross town to get there.

--
Paul Terry

"Cast_Iron" wrote in message ...
Boltar wrote:
Even if the picc continued running the main service to the
airport some
distruct trains could have used it occasionally to take up
the slack, the
same way that the picc and met run togather to uxbridge.

B2003

"They" could have done all sorts of things, if the cash was available. Are
you looking at this from a 1960s perspective or a 2000s one?

Why would it have cost more to run larger trains? The difference in tunnelling
costs would have been negligable just to make the tunnels a foot or 2 wider.

B2003

Boltar wrote:
"Cast_Iron" wrote in message
...
Boltar wrote:
Even if the picc continued running the main service to the
airport some
distruct trains could have used it occasionally to take up
the slack, the
same way that the picc and met run togather to uxbridge.

B2003

"They" could have done all sorts of things, if the cash
was available. Are
you looking at this from a 1960s perspective or a 2000s
one?

Why would it have cost more to run larger trains? The
difference in tunnelling
costs would have been negligable just to make the tunnels a
foot or 2 wider.

B2003

Width isn't the main issue, it's height. In case you hadn't noticed Met and
District trains are taller than those on the Piccadilly and other deep level
tube lines.

A Piccadilly Line train is only 211mm narrower than those on the District.
They are however 711mm shorter.

On 17 Oct 2003 15:01:42 -0700, (Boltar) wrote:

"Cast_Iron" wrote in message ...
Boltar wrote:
Even if the picc continued running the main service to the
airport some
distruct trains could have used it occasionally to take up
the slack, the
same way that the picc and met run togather to uxbridge.

B2003

"They" could have done all sorts of things, if the cash was available. Are
you looking at this from a 1960s perspective or a 2000s one?

Why would it have cost more to run larger trains? The difference in tunnelling
costs would have been negligable just to make the tunnels a foot or 2 wider.

B2003
Not negligble.

The cost of the tunnel is going to be quite closely correleated to its
size. The bigger the tunnel, the more spoil to remove and the tighter
the engineering.

I would imagine that the surface area of sub-surface tunnels is much
larger than tube tunnels...

Rob.
--
rob at robertwoolley dot co dot uk