Tom Anderson wrote:
On Fri, 4 Jan 2008, wrote:
My completely off-the-wall idea is to join up Crossrail with the
Hammersmith & City and run Crossrail trains (from Shenfield) that
would otherwise terminate at Paddington on to Hammersmith.
You're not the first person to suggest this. I can't remember who
was, at least on utl, but it's a cudgel i've taken up. It's an
excellent idea.
The pattern could be:
4 fast Heathrow
4 slow Heathrow
8 Maidenhead / Reading
8 Hammersmith
Or 12 Hammersmith if Ken can't get BAA to agree to HeX on Crossrail.
Which they won't.
Current plans, the last i heard, only have 10 tph going beyond
Paddington - 4 tph to Heathrow, 2 tph to West Drayton, and 4 tph to
Maidenhead, all all-stops, i think, although exactly what happens at
the far end is still up in the air. That's 14 tph to dispose of at
Paddington, which would be a doubling of the current H&C frequency.
I think the constraint on frequency at Heathrow is the need to
reverse. This is one reason the Airtrack plan is such a good one -
you can run trains on from T5 to Staines and reverse there, where
there's room for a higher-capacity layout. That would let more trains
go to Heathrow (well, Staines), although at the expense of other
destinations i think.
Not sure about that Tom, doesn't the current airtrack proposal only have
terminating trains from Staines originating both at Waterloo, and from the
Woking direction (including Guildford). In other words the 'HEx' tracks at
T5 are arranged as entering one pair of platforms, from the central area,
alongside a currently unused space for trains from the 'airtrack' route
only. Side by side two platform terminii, rather than a four platform
through station?
Clearly if Crossrail had dual voltage units there is no basic reason they
couldn't carry on onto the SW lines, but does the T5 station even allow for
this future possibility?
Paul S