London Banter - View Single Post - Network Rail "incorrectly designed" the Gospel Oak

[email protected] · February 13th 17, 09:24 AM posted to uk.transport.london

On Fri, 10 Feb 2017 11:13:54 -0600
wrote:
In article , d () wrote:
Sorry, which modern electric trains exactly - the 378s which run on
the NLL *and* the 3rd rail ELL all the way down to crystal palace? Do
they run faster
or with better acceleration on the NLL then?

3rd rail is fine for frequent suburban and metro services but increasingly
hopeless for long distance passenger and freight services. The huge benefit
derived from power electronics is that dual system trains are so much
cheaper and more versatile so there is no reason to keep third rail where
25KV would allow bore versatile traffic, hence the electric spine
re-powering project. It may have been ahead of its time but it will come so
freights too heavy for diesel haulage can run in and out of Southampton.

I understand that all other things being equal 25Kv is the better choice.
However all the 378s are capable of 3rd rail and installing 3rd rail on the
goblin line would have meant little to no disruption of services plus it would
have cost a damn site less. Ok, so freight on the line would still have to use
diesels or 92s. So what - it always hauled by diesels anyway from my experience
probably because the wires don't extend to whatever port or sidings its heading
for anyway, not because the goblin isn't wired up.

--
Spud