London Banter - View Single Post

Martin Edwards[_2_]

On 29/01/2011 17:04, Andy wrote:
On Jan 29, 2:41 pm, Jamie wrote:
On Jan 29, 10:55 am, Paul wrote:

I have to ask where the demand is for such a long service? Would people
really travel on a DC stopping service via East London from Watford to
South London? Surely the imperative is to boost WLL capacity and add a
second Southern service per hour?

I agree with you, I don't see end-to-end journeys as the target,
precisely for the reasons you state. The LO service use in my
experience is primarily a local one. Passengers travel for ~6 stations
or so at most before interchanging, be it to buses or other rail
services. Case in point, short of disruption, no-one north of Harrow&
Wealdstone takes the LO to Euston outside of disruption.

I would disagree with this statement, for much of the day it is still
quicker to get the DC line train all the way from Euston to the
stations between Harrow& Wealdstone and Bushey and I certainly see
passengers traveling from stations such as Carpenders Park and
Headstone Lane to/from Euston on these services.

Operating it
as a simple end-to-end service with reversal points would be just an
operational convenience to minimise performance pollution. Arbitrary
services could be Watford Junction-New Cross, Harrow& Wealdstone-
Crystal Palace, Willesden Junction-West Croydon and Dalston Junction-
Clapham Junction (which gives the core as Willesden Junction to Surrey
Quays).

I also cannot see hundreds of millions of pounds being spent to change
an alignment on which hundreds of millions have just been spent to
provide sufficient capacity for Overground and freight services over the
NLL.

Well, yes. That said, the infrastructure would hardly be wasted
though, would it? You'd be plain-lining the points at H&I and largely
finishing the works through Camden Road they planned to do anyway.

But the track arrangement would also need to be altered between
Highbury and Camden Road; with the NLL tracks shifted to use the
northern most pair of tracks. At the moment they use the central two
tracks and currently at Caledonian Road and Barnesbury station there
is only a platform between the middle tracks, so more infrastructure
work would be needed here.

A
higher service frequency needs more intensive signalling so perhaps
that would need looking at again. I'm not sure what the limits are on
the new stuff they've just put in. The only real new major
infrastructure required would be for 20m or so of the bridge widening
west of Camden Road, and I can't see that costing more than a few
million quid at worst.

The would also depend on how cheap it is to break out of the viaduct
on the existing NLL formation to connect with new section needed and
demolish the buildings in the way.

While there does seem to be a level of demand for a service via Primrose
Hill does it really need to be hugely frequent? Could not a x30 shuttle
from Willesden Junction to Camden Road not suffice? OK people will need
to change but there will be frequent services at both points to allow
that to happen. I may be a tad out of date about platform / turnback
provision at Willesden Low Level and Camden Road (3rd platform) so my
idea might not work.

It would probably work were the turnbacks to be added, yes. The
ambition is to ditch the LO service into Euston though, so you need
somewhere for that to go. A turnback at Camden Road could probably
handle the 3tph fine, but ideally you want to be increasing service
levels beyond that. Look at the usage the Watford branch of the Met
gets versus the LO service and you'll see that market is there (though
admittedly the Met has the advantage of being faster past HotH, whilst
the LO would require the change at H&W for the same). People round my
way (Watford) mostly don't use the LO for spontaneous trips because
it's a 20 minute wait. Drop that to 10 or (at worst, 15 minutes), and
you have a different usage mentality.

Increasing the frequency of the DC line trains would certainly be a
good first step, but my understanding is that this needs resignalling
first, at least south of Harrow.

And what happens to the GOBLIN service level if yet more freight has to
be pumped along that line? It might be possible to raise line speed a
bit and possibly squash some more signalling capacity out. Network Rail
opted not to fix the decaying bridges, that result in permanent speed
restrictions, during the recent upgrade works so where will the funding
come from to fix them? TfL and the DfT cannot or won't find 250k to
progress design work for electrification so I doubt we will see any more
money being spent on the GOBLIN for a long time - more's the pity as
it's a local line for me.

The state of the Goblin is indeed a sad thing. It has a lot of
potential given some investment...there's not much more that can be
said. We all know what's required.

I also think we need some brave thinking about local North / East London
services linking down to Stratford via Lea Bridge. Again partly local
self interest but a service from Chingford via Low Hall curve and from
Enfield via South Tottenham to Stratford would generate patronage and
aid local mobility. The Enfield proposal would create a potential
capacity problem at South Tottenham given conflicting moves so that
would need some thought.

Heck you can run it with light rail vehicles for all I care - please
just provide the services. They could sensibly be run and marketed as
part of London Overground.

All worth looking into.

Well the SSL lines don't have to cope with freight.

No they don't, and neither would a segregated DC line from WJ to
Surrey Quays if you came up with something from the City loop at
Willesden to Wembley Yard. It somewhat shifts the pressure onto the
NLL, but with the ELL covering the heavy section between Camden and
Dalston at increased frequencies, it should cope. Hell, be brave and
consider running the NLL fast through that section to increase
capacity if need be; change at Camden Road, Highbury or Dalston (OSI)
for the ELL. Probably unpopular, but gives a bit more of a point to
running two parallel services from non-adjacent platforms.

You also need to consider the freight connections from the East Coast
mainline. At the moment freight can't access GOBLIN from the ECML
without undertaking a double shunt (going the other way is OK),
however access via Camden Road is comparatively easy and only overlaps
with the NLL through Camden Road station itself.

They also have far
higher demand levels than the Overground and have trains that are twice
as long.

Well about 40% longer as an 8 car S-stock train is 133m, whilst a 4
car class 378 is 80 meters (and the potential five car class 378 would
be 100m or 75% of the length).

They do indeed. I'm not proposing 32 8-car tph

There are other remedies like longer trains on parts of the
Overground that will raise capacity before you start resignalling and
track realignment. Didn't Ian Brown have a vision of 5 car trains on
the NLL, WLL and DCs?

Increased frequencies need to come before longer trains. Get
passengers used to the tube-like mentality that you can wait for the
next one if this one is too full. That's not going to happen when the
next one is 20 minutes away.

I agree that increased frequencies are a good idea.

If you increase the length of trains, you need to resignal things.
Overlaps change, point clearances, etc. all need looking into. Unless
the current work was done with that in mind, (tell me it was....) more
work will be required. I heard the 5-car thing as well, but haven't
seen anything I can recall right now first hand.

But you'd also need to resignal to increase the frequencies. Much of
the recent work done has included passive provision for 5 car trains
(the platform extensions etc. are long enough for example).

Not sure about ELL but that is scheduled to have
16 tph on the core section when the new SLL opens in late 2012. I think
it will take a long time to exhaust the capacity of 16 tph on the ELL
although the southern branches may be fuller south of NXG.

Indeed. It's a lot of capacity, and my initial proposal is to extend
half the terminating trains from Dalston to Willesden, half the H&I
terminators to Harrow, and the rest to Watford. That gives your 15-
minute frequency from Watford to Harrow, and removes the need for the
Bakerloo to Harrow as you will have 8tph between there and Willesden
Junction.

The Bakerloo might struggle to reverse all its service at Queens Park
as only the central roads of the north shed can be used for reversals
(the two through tracks don't have access to the other platform).
Harrow does have the advantage that it has a central reversing siding,
which is not present at Stonebridge Park (where some of the Bakerloo
trains reverse at the moment).

However, this will become impossible thanks to the strange choice of
method chosen to link HS2 to HS1. They are proposing to tunnel a
single-track tunnel from Old Oak Common all the way to Primrose Hill,
then rise up and take over one of the tracks (widened to UIC gauge)
onward to St. Pancras. I suspect the widening required might require
the removal of the other track over the viaducts though. Why they
don't just continue the tunnel a few hundred metres more to St.
Pancras is beyond me. Sure it will save a tiny fraction of the cost,
but you're crippling the LO network's future prospects.

I think you need to define what you the LO network's future prospects
are before you can conclude that a HS2 link tunnel will cripple them.

I define the prospects as taking advantage of the Primrose Hill link,
which connects two parts of the LO network on either end. Severing
that link and removing the service to Euston (replacing north of
Queens Park with the Bakerloo) means closing Kilburn High Street and
South Hampstead. A simple, linear LO line from Watford to West Croydon
with short terminal branches to New Cross and Crystal Palace is very
simple for passengers to understand. Primrose Hill also offers a
opportunity to build an interchange with Chalk Farm, improving usage
on that section of line, and saving a good few pointless trips through
Euston for those wanting Camden.

But disrupting the journeys of those passengers who want the Euston
area rather than Camden; Kilburn High Road and South Hampstead are
quite busy with just the existing services from Euston.

As I say, I see the LO as SSL lines, just without the tunnelled core
sections, and I think they should be treated as such.

Imagine the carnage when that lot hit town.