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Old February 10th 08, 08:43 PM posted to uk.transport.london
Orienteer Orienteer is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 9
Default Fast Uxbridge Mets


"Mizter T" wrote in message
...
On 10 Feb, 13:12, MIG wrote:
On Feb 10, 1:00 pm, Mizter T wrote:


On 10 Feb, 11:06, Bill Hayles wrote:


On Sun, 10 Feb 2008 09:00:04 -0000, Fig wrote:
Train 423 departs UXB 1731 runs fast through Wobbly park 1755
arrives at
Aldgate at 1828 if you're lucky.


That's the fella! Thank you.
I take it that that's the only one in the timetable then? Shame. I'm
surprised I've never stumbled upon it before in all my years of
commuting
out of Uxbridge, then twice in a week!


There used to be plenty of peak hour Uxbridge trains fast from
Finchley
Road to Rayners Lane in 16 minutes.


Similarly Amershams fast from Finchley Road to Moor Park. (and
Watfords
fast from Finchley Road to North Harrow)


This was when the "A" stock was, like me, in its prime, and capable
of
doing 60mph+ on the non stop sections.


The 1145 Saturday Liverpool Street to Amersham was a favourite -
Finchley Road dep. 1206, next stop Moor Park arr. 1226


--
Bill Hayles


Interesting stuff. Harrow on the Hill would seem to be regarded as a
more important hub nowadays - perhaps this shows the growing
importance of local traffic, rather than just whooshing people into
and out of central London. Then again, perhaps it just makes life
simpler for passengers - and as you say A-stock ain't as fast as it
used to be so maybe the current service pattern is also influenced by
what is operationally convenient.


Nonetheless I'm surprised to see that there were Watford fasts with
the first stop at North Harrow, missing a stop at Harrow on the Hill.


I'm not a Metroland man myself, and so I needed to remind myself of
the current Met service pattern - there isn't any obvious place to
look on the TfL website for this, so I used the site's search facility
(using the term "Metropolitan line") and found the line diagram was
the third in the results list, though it is far from obvious that it
is actually a map (the result was merely labelled as a PDF named
"Metropolitan
line"):http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/metropolitan.pdf


Perhaps this line diagram should be made easier to find and be
included on the main TfL maps page


I remember reading somewhere about why the speed was reduced. Was it
something to do with the OPO conversion?


No. The A-stock trains are somewhat knackered and their top speed has
been reduced to 50mph - AIUI they originally had a top speed of 70mph.


It was because the track condition became so poor that the bogies started to
break up, and had to be welded together again.