London Banter - View Single Post - Heathrow Connect

Colin McKenzie · June 19th 05, 11:51 AM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london

wrote:
SB wrote:
Late last week and all this weekend 18/19-June-2005) the brand new
multimillion pound Heathrow Connect service has - well - not actually
connected with Heathrow. Due to the pathing problems (sorry signaling
problems) at Airport Junction the service has had great difficulty in
keeping to any sort of timetable. Indeed the delays have built up every
day until the last trains to/from Paddington/Heathrow have been
anything up to 45 minutes late. The problem is that coming out of or
going into the Airport the trains have to be switched from the slow
local lines across the fast Intercity lines....

I thought the intention was to run the Heathrow bound trains the "wrong
way" through Airport Junction, ie. up the track between the main and
relief lines?

I have seen platform 5 used at Hayes rather a lot this week.

On Thursday they were alleging a points failure, and all trains were
turning at H & H. There were cancellations too - though the trains ran
non-stop to try to catch up instead of just being relabelled as the
next train.

Also, does anyone know what FGWL is doing with the spare 165`s they`d
have freed up? Some of the rush hour trains could do with a bit of
lengthening...

Already (last December) redeployed on longer-distance services.

Colin McKenzie