On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:39:23 +0100, Paul Corfield
wrote:

They are like a mix of suburban train services with central area tunnel
sections to distribute people into the central business district as well
as providing a cross regional link. Not unlike Crossrail or the RER in
some respects. Berlin has orbital services and I think the Rhine Ruhr
does too but I don't see London Overground being remotely comparable to
those sorts of networks.

An S-Bahn is essentially a middle-distance heavy-rail metro. I would
say that its closest equivalent in London might be the Metropolitan
Line or maybe the District, or elsewhere Merseyrail and its ilk.

Is it seats vs standing space? Do S-bahnen have more?

They tend to have wide 2+2 but with a lot of standing space between.

Isn't that because
they're like a RER or Thameslink, and run from far out? Whereas the Goblin
only runs for a few miles, so doesn't need to be all-seater, and since
it's going to be two cars every fifteen minutes but will hopefully attract
lots more people because of the rebranding, benefits from the extra
standing capacity that comes with longitudinal seating.

This is a fair point...

I'm grateful we're getting the work done but a rebuild to S Bahn
standards it is not - perhaps because the lines that constitute
Overground could never really mirror what I see as a German S Bahn
network. Still I'm sure we'll see Neil's response in due time and see
what aspects he is critical of.

Mainly that money is being spent on new, replacement stock under the
banner of "London's new train set", when the problem with the lines
isn't the stock per-se, but the *quantity* of it, and the platform
lengths in the case of the NLL and potentially GOBLIN.

IOW, I accept that with LUL the cost of extending platforms is
absolutely prohibitive because of the tunnelling required. However, I
don't accept the same of the NLL etc, as it's mainly above ground. I
therefore don't think LUL "solutions" should be applied to that kind
of railway, because the problem just isn't the same.

I do see the political "spend it now, look good" thing, though I don't
see why anything needed to be spent on such wasteful things as
removing the Silverlink "swish" from Bushey's mainline platforms, for
instance. I also think they'd have been best saving up the money to
do things properly overall.

Neil

--
Neil Williams
Put my first name before the at to reply.