London Banter - View Single Post

Roland Perry · December 20th 15, 06:47 AM posted to uk.transport.london,cam.transport

In message , at 16:26:18
on Sat, 19 Dec 2015, remarked:
So it's like this:

Ely ------------------------------------ Peterborough
\
Ely ---------a-------------------------- Peterborough
\
*
\
b------c--------------- Kings Lynn
\ \
\ -------------- Kings Lynn
\
d------------------ Norwich
\
----------------- Norwich

As is fairly obvious, places like "*" are a monster bottleneck.

That looks a bit cheap and nasty, even to a non-trainspotter. Whose
clever idea was that design then?

British Rail (the nationalised outfit which people still insist
could have done no wrong) in the 70's/80's simplifying lots of
junctions to have fewer moving parts, on the grounds that rail
transport was in managed decline.

At the time there was probably only 1tph in either the Kings Lynn or
Norwich directions.

... but now there's routinely 2.5tph each way to Peterborough, 2tph
each way to Norwich, and 1tph to Kings Lynn proposed to increase to
2tph, plus freights, they can't get the necessary 11.5tph+freight
past the "a".

As Rupert would tell us were he here, the biggest problem is the level
crossings over all three routes north of the junction at Queen Adelaide. The
planned extra trains make them an even bigger headache, hence ideas like for
an Ely North station there.

The level crossings are where the arrows are in the 40th column of my
diagram. It's still not clear to me how they are a bottleneck for the
trains, even if they might be for the very lightly trafficed roads.
--
Roland Perry