Paul Corfield wrote:
On Wed, 01 Nov 2006 20:46:40 +0000, Dave Arquati
wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:08:01 +0000, Dave Arquati
wrote:

I noticed tonight that there appears to be a single train from Olympia
in the evening (2337, the penultimate) which runs a through service to
Upminster by the looks of it. There are usually two trains shuttling
back and forth between Olympia and HSK, passing at Earl's Court. So what
happens to this one that disappears off to Upminster?

It goes home to bed so the nice Metronet people can make sure it has had
a wash, been to the loo and then tuck it up nice and safe in its siding
until morning time ;-)

Bless... what I forgot to say was that there was no corresponding
Upminster to Olympia service in the morning.

I dug around on the LU intranet today to answer my own question, and
uncovered the exciting life of Olympia trains... it turns out that the
first pair head out from Ealing Common depot each morning to High St Ken
and do some shuttling (with gaps in the morning peak when they dive off
to run a couple of extra Wimbledon HSK services), then one of them
disappears off to Ealing again whilst another one comes from Ealing to
replace it. They carry on all day, until one runs the only through
Olympia service of the day to Upminster, and the other goes to HSK and
then sneaks off to Ealing depot. The careful balance of life on the
District line is restored when the Upminster one heads over to Ealing in
the morning and then forms that replacement service after the AM peak.

I suppose if the same trains were constantly shuttling back and forth,
they'd suffer from the uneven wheel wear problem that Circle line trains
would get if they didn't get reversed at Aldgate East every so often.

It's nice to know you are so busy that you have time to read working
timetables ;-)

On a related note, there was a question a while ago about the use of
Green Park as a terminating point. There are no scheduled passenger
services that terminate at Green Park and reverse at Charing Cross - but
there are two scheduled slots every morning for empty trains, the first
one from Wembley Park to Charing Cross and back to West Hampstead, and
the second from West Hampstead to Charing Cross and back to Stanmore
(all out of service). No idea if these are actually used or not... I
presume they aren't used every day?

Almost certainly "rusty rail" moves to ensure the track remains fit for
operational purposes if they need to send empty trains there if the
Green Park "black hole" reappears.

The alternative is that they are a form of test train path but I'd
imagine they are more likely to run to West Ham / Stratford. Elsewhere
in the timetable there may be stock transfer paths between Neasden and
Stratford.

On the Big Railway we might assume it was a route knowledge issue.