On 2015\03\08 10:45, Recliner wrote:
eastender wrote:
On 2015-03-07 23:38:01 +0000, Paul Corfield said:

I'm obviously guessing here but there are not many refuge sidings on
the ELL core section so you really need to get trains beyond Surrey
Quays to be able to hide them away somewhere.

I was wondering when watching it being built what they would do for
contingency - it seems very little. The elevated section down to
Shoreditch used to carry four tracks and one would have thought a siding
could have been put in there.

Yes, they used the wider embankment for the new stations, but could have
put a reversing siding between stations. But it does seem to be the modern
policy to keep tracks as simple as possible, as points and crossovers are
themselves vulnerable to failures. For this reason, I think many tube lines
now have fewer crossovers than before.

Do you mean crossovers suffer failures which prevent them from being
used as crossovers, or that they suffer failures which prevent the
straight railway from being used at all? If the former, that is no
reason to get rid of crossovers, no matter how often they fail.

But here it seems the crossovers were all there, they just preferred to
shut the whole railway rather than use them.