Tom Anderson wrote:

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Adrian the Rock wrote:

In many cases the underground itself provides a third group of
"ultra-inner" services.

What? No. I don't think that's true. I think LU routes are generally of
about the same extent as NR inners. The Brighton line inners you mention
end at Purley...

.... while the LUL lines only go as far as Elephant, Brixton and
Morden.

I accept it's a bit different north of the river, where LU lines
generally do go further out, but many of them don't run parallel or
even near to NR lines anyway. But Ealing Broadway and West Ruislip
are good examples of the comparison I was making, while the
corresponding inner suburban trains on NR go to Hayes and High Wycombe
respecively.

And the other point, of course, is that LU lines have more closely
spaced stations, which obviously makes journey times longer. Eg there
are far more District line stations between Z1 and Wimbledon/Richmond
than if you go by SWT from Waterloo.

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.

What are the NR inners on those routes?

Ealing see above; Richmond, the SWT services to Kingston/Hounslow loop
etc; W Ruislip see above. The Met&GC line is unusual in that only the
outer suburban service (Alyesbury) runs over NR tracks, with the
Metropolitan line providing the inner suburban service. But note that
even this has multiple tiers - Amersham semi-fasts vs Uxbridge/Watford
stoppers.

Inners are usually all-stops. A service to Aylesbury would be an outer.

Indeed. Were the GW&GC to become an arm of Crossrail, I would
certainly envisage inners to (at furthest) High Wycombe with separate
outers to Aylesbury.

Part of Crossrail's problem is that it tries to straddle the fence between
inners and outers, providing both a high-frequency, short-distance service
in town, and a fast long-distance service at the fringes...

I think we're broadly agreeing there are some issues around this,
anyway.

... Well, at the
western end: the Shenfield service is a straightforward all-stops
to-roughly-the-edge-of-Z6 service. It's the attempt to go to Maidenhead
and Reading that's causing schizophrenia...

That's one view, but I would turn the coin on its head and say it
shows a lack of ambition to run only that far on the eastern stretch.
This is why I'm concerned about the 'Ken factor' having too much
influence, as their formal responsibilities stop at Z6.

I'd surely have thought there would be a market for through trains
from places like Colchester and Southend to points west of London -
Heathrow is surely a no-brainer, but the Thames Valley itself is a
thriving business zone and this would make it far more accessible from
Essex. Again, think how successful Bedford - Brighton is. I have
used those trains many times for easy changes onto the MML at Luton
(though obviously now St P Thameslike is finally open, there's much
less need to do that).

... The ideal solution would be for Crossrail to go to Slough on its own pair of tracks...

Yes, capacity on the GWML is a major issue even today. And we haven't
even mentioned the freight traffic that comes down the Acton Wells -
Acton East (Poplar chord) link yet! I don't know about Slough, but it
certainly could do with 6 tracks as far as Airport Jct.

Adie