On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, gwr4090 wrote:

it would make a lot of sense to extend some CrossRail services to High
Wycombe instead of turning them around outside Paddington. One or two of
these per hour could run via Ealing Broadway to replace the Greenford
loop service.

Crossrail is about providing a high-frequency service on simple,
well-defined lines; if you're going to serve High Wycombe, you have to do
it properly, with more than one or two trains per hour. Perhaps you meant
sending a good frequency to High Wycombe, but only a few round the loop?
Even there, i'd disagree - if you make the pattern that complex, you lose
much of the psychological strength of the project, and you make keeping it
all running to time that much harder.

Not that i'm against using the loop - i'd be in favour of running all the
hypothesised Wycombe services via the loop; that way, you'd get more
trains through Ealing Broadway.

Actually, i'd be even more in favour of taking them off at Old Oak Common,
running up to Neasden on the Dudden Hill line, then sending them along the
Chiltern corridor on quadrupled tracks - then we can give the suburban
Chiltern stations a proper service and let the long-range services run
fast more easily (again, utterly nobbling freight traffic along the way).
This would be ten times more expensive, of course, for not more than twice
the benefit.

Sadly, Montague and other people whose job it is to think these thoughts
looked at these ideas, and concluded they weren't worth it. Oh well.

tom

--
Destroy - kill all hippies.