"Richard J." wrote:
Colin McKenzie wrote:

I hope the principle that Crossrail should be all-stations has been
established.

Then you'll be disappointed. The planned Crossrail timetable involves
some trains non-stopping certain stations west of Paddington in order to
leave paths for some west-of-Maidenhead FGW trains on the relief lines...

Glad to hear this - the suggestion of every train stopping at every
station to Maidenhead seemed utter madness to me too.

Firstly, it's been standard and established practice for many years
now to have separate outer and inner suburban services on major London
suburban/commuter lines. For example the Brighton lines have their
Metro and Sussex Coast services, out of KX the inners run to Welwyn
GC/Hertford N, and so on.

In many cases the underground itself provides a third group of
"ultra-inner" services. Most of these don't run alongside NR routes,
but obvious examples are the District/Central lines to
Ealing/Richmond/W Ruislip and the Jubilee to Stanmore. So in effect
the inner suburban services over NR are usually the second tier, not
the first.

I am also thinking by analogy to why Thameslink has been so
successful. Clearly one major factor is the Brighton-Bedford trains,
which clearly fall in the outer category. It does worry me that the
Mayor of London's crowd seem sometimes to overlook the importance of
these links, as they run largely outside their 'patch' (witness the
forthcoming truncation of the Southern WLL service, though I
acknowledge the constraints of the track layout between Falcon Jct and
Balham do provide some rationale for those plans.)

On the GWML, the inner suburban service traditionally terminated at
Slough, with outers running to Reading/Oxford/Newbury etc. This was
changed when the planet-scorchers' parlour branch opened, so the inner
suburbans are now Padd - Hayes & H. The extended journey times of
all-stations trains would probably be a significant disincentive for
travellers from stations west of Slough.

Colin McKenzie wrote:

(Adrian the Rock) wrote:

The other extension to Crossrail that seems fairly obvious to me is to
extend the trains currently planned to terminate at Paddington up the
former GW&GC joint line. =A0Bring the Old Oak - Northolt East line back
into proper use, rebuild the main line platforms at Greenford, making
this the first stop out of Padd, then run all-stations to Princes
Risboro and Aylesbury (some trains probably terminating at High
Wycombe). =A0But this is clearly too extensive to be sensible to include
in the initial project.

The principle of an all-stations service stands, so you'd need to give
serious thought to reallocating the Central Line tracks beyond about
Greenford...

No, because this is mixing underground and inner suburban stopping
patterns.

... First stop out of Paddington should be North Acton, then
the new Park Royal interchange.

I agree Park Royal interchange would make sense.

Capacity between Paddington and Old Oak Junction is a problem.

Maybe, but given there are 6 tracks for most if not all of the
stretch, I'd have thought that would probably not be insuperable.

"Adrian Auer-Hudson, MIMIS" wrote:

There are two issues with this idea. Firstly it would mean an
expensive electrification of the route to Aylesbury by way of Prices
Risborough.

Agreed, but if done properly it could even provide Aylesbury commuters
with a faster service than via Amersham.

Secondly, there is the Birmingham service to consider. It would
either have to remain a DMU operation with many miles under the wire,
or would have to terminate at Risborough or High Wycombe.

I would envisage it continuing with DMUs. A pity it can't also run to
Padd, which has far better connections and facilities for
longer-distance travellers than Marylebone, but I'd be surprised if
there were a capacity problem between Northolt East Jct and Risboro
that couldn't be addressed by the reinstatement of a few platform
loops eg Gerrards Cross.

However in the longer term I can see a lot of merit in electrifying
the GW&GC line to Birmingham. As the shortest London-Bham route, I
don't feel it's currently being fully exploited, and I'd have thought
it could be used better to relieve the current congestion on the Bham
- Coventry stretch.

Adie