On Sat, 24 Jan 2015 09:42:10 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 01:31:19 on
Sat, 24 Jan 2015, Paul Corfield remarked:
Crossrail will be largely segregated from other services so there are
fewer opportunities for things to go wrong than on Thameslink.

Eh? Loads of freight on GWML and GEML. Plenty of other services on
those lines too. Frequent suicides in West London, never ending
signal and wiring problems on both NR stretches of line.

And of course many (most?) of the problems with Thameslink seem to be in
the core. Wellies required again until at least 2pm today, for example.

IIRC The original Metropolitan Railway was built on a drained river
bed in the Farringdon Area. Moreover, the Widened Lines pass under
the original pair at this point. This makes for a drainage headache
modern engineers would avoid.

Crossrail is being constructed to a much higher standards (Although I
do wonder about the spray- on concrete in the station areas). OTOH,
given that Crossrail will run thru three different signalling systems,
integrate into the timetables of two franchises, and mix with local
and freight traffic, one can see it will present an operating
challenge.