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Old July 19th 18, 10:18 AM
Robin9 Robin9 is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Feb 2011
Location: Leyton, East London
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Quote:
Originally Posted by View Post
On 18 Jul 2018 16:32:34 +0100 (BST)
Jonathan Amery wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
On 18 Jul 2018 15:14:44 +0100 (BST)
Jonathan Amery
wrote:
This being the TfL that's so scrapped for cash that it's mortgaging
rolling stock it hasn't finished paying for yet?


The 378s were ordered long before Kahn came in and froze fares.


Also long before there was any finalized plans to electrify the
GOBLIN in any sense; as has been described before.


Not entirely true. The goblin electrification looked pretty certain in 2009
when it would have been fairly easy to roll a few more 378s off the production
line.

Also TfL were already running low on money in the early 2010s which
would have been the latest possible time to order more 378s, and that
at a higher cost than the original units were since they'd used all
their option to buy more units.


Would that cost have been more than the 710s they're ordering now? Either way,
they'd have an electric service running now if they'd ordered more 378s.
Currently they don't.

Half a century? Would the presense of a switched off conductor rail on a
closed for upgrade line cause some some disturbance in The Force preventing
the installation of AC overhead then? Oddly it didn't prevent most of the
rest of the NLL being converted to AC.


No, but having spent millions only 10 years ago will cause a
disturbance in the beancounters.


)

10 years ago yes, but I was referring to decades ago when the NLL was first
electrified. I have no idea why the goblin didn't have a 3rd rail put down
at the same time but if it had this problem wouldn't exist.
The North London Line was indeed electrified decades ago, and electric trains ran from Richmond to Broad Street. When Broad Street was closed, the 3rd rail electrification was extended to North Woolwich and the trains from Richmond were diverted to there.

During those years trains along what is now GOBLIN ran to Kentish Town and in the evenings to St. Pancras. It was a very lightly used service. When I moved to Leyton, I used it one day to visit a friend in Kentish Town. The man in the ticket office - yes, we had them in those days - asked me "why does nobody use this line?" I replied that it was because no-one knew about the service.

That is still my opinion. If the route to Kentish Town had remained open and GOBLIN had been absorbed into Thameslink, the volume of business would be far, far higher than it is today. However, the reason GOBLIN was not electrified with 3rd rail back then was because it was such a quiet backwater railway.

Last edited by Robin9 : July 19th 18 at 01:41 PM