On 13 Oct 2004, Jim Brown wrote:

"R.C. Payne" wrote in message ...
Solar Penguin wrote:
--- Jim Brown said:

If the Bank of England sacrificed its vaults (Very little use for
them now, with the gold sold off) and Cannon Street St was put
underground (Plus a new tunnel under the Thames), would a tunnel
connecting Moorgate and London Bridge be feasible? Or do the tube
lines around there make it impossible?

Interesting idea, Jim... There's also the problem of the slope down
from the high-level platforms at London Bridge to below the level of
the river bed. Especially since the line also has to curve from
east-west to north-south as it drops.

Surely the way to make this work is to build new tube-level platforms
at Cannon St and London Bridge, and break the surface east of London
Bridge? Of course that would increase your price by just a few quid.

Well yes I kind of presumed underground platforms at London Bridge but I
didnt make that explicit. But as a ball park figure and assuming you
could slot it into the London Bridge rebuild I'm guessing it would cost
£3/4 billion. Of course the question then is which line(s) south of the
river would be best to used for a new cross-london service?

Dartford. What i'd do is surface as soon as possible onto the northernmost
pair of tracks heading into (or out of) London Bridge, then run down to
Lewisham (via a new station at the proposed Deptford Park ELL station),
then out over all three routes to Dartford. You could run out to Ebbsfleet
as well, if you liked. Ideally, you'd run a tube-style service.

All this would interfere with other lines, like Crossrail (which is going
to use part of the North Kent Line), mainline services from beyond
Dartford (which would have to share with the metro as far as Lewisham) and
the line (the Greenwich Line?) from London Bridge to Charlton. I'd solve
the first two by fiddling about with Crossrail: beyond Canary Wharf, keep
going south, to Lewisham, then turn and go to Dartford, still in tunnel;
mainline trains could then use the tunnel to get to Lewisham, and carry on
as normal from there, via another portal. Alternatively, don't get quite
so radical with Crossrail, just follow the existing route but all in
tunnel, and four-track one of the Dartford-Lewisham lines for the mainline
(which is probably impossible - although probably cheaper than the ~100
million mile tunnel needed in the other option). The Greenwich Line, i'd
transfer to the ELL - you just need a little tiny connection through some
mangy trading estate around TQ366777; you'd lose the ELL service to New
Cross, but New Cross would gain the metro in return.

In other news, are Crossrail seriously not proposing a station at London
City Airport? Is that what Custom House is supposed to be for? I think we
discussed this, but most Crossrail stuff goes right over my head.

tom

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