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Old August 15th 11, 09:31 PM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london
cj cj is offline
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Default Greenford branch closure this week

On Aug 15, 10:22*pm, "Peter Masson" wrote:
"cj" wrote



Do 2 Chiltern trains an hour really necessitate the suspension of the
Greenford trains (AFAIK they weren't even running up that branch, but
turning off at Acton?) Could FGW not have run a Hayes/Hanwell-
Greenford service (as they have done before e.g. Ladbroke Grove/lorry-
v-train incident at West Ealing)?


Much of Old Oak Common West Junction to Northolt Junction is single track,
and the permitted speed is pretty low (40 mph?). So it's almost certainly
necessary for a proportion of the Chiltern trains to be routed via Drayton
Green. They will also take up Relief Line paths between West Ealing and
Paddington, and occupy platforms at Paddington. It does however seem that
Network Rail and fGW have given up too easily, and it should certainly be
easier to find out what's going on.

The walk from West Ealing to Drayton Green isn't actually all that far.

Peter


I was under the impression that the Chiltern diversions were turning
off at Acton and not actually running up the Greenford line at all.

As you say, it's not a long walk at all from West Ealing (or indeed
Hanwell), but if I was a regular user of, say, South Greenford* I
would be a bit more annoyed. It still smacks of FGW giving up though.

~cj

* -was it South Greenford that had a platform collapse down an
embankment a good few years ago, which took an age for FGW/NR to fix?