On 17 Nov, 13:09, Mr Thant
wrote:

On 17 Nov, 12:52, D7666 wrote:

... but my point is not whether or not the service level is adequate
for that station, but about the effect one short platform station has
on the central core capacity.

All of the 8 car trains in the RUS are coming from Elephant, and I'm
assuming there are lots of stations in that direction that only have 8
car platforms. Since there isn't capacity at Blackfriars to not run at
least some of these 8 car trains through the Thameslink core, that
means even if Kentish Town were extended, Thameslink would still have
8 car trains.


This is the crux of the matter, is it not? i.e. if the services coming
up from the south through the Elephant are set to be 8-car, then what
does or doesn't happen at Kentish Town is somewhat irrelevant.

There's a couple of critical assumptions in that however - one being
that the model whereby 'flyer' and 'metro' service segregation
continues (to use the old Thameslink TOC's nomenclature). Such an
assumption wouldn't take account of the possibility that some of the
12-car Brighton trains might become slow 'metro' trains north of St.
Pancras, and hence would need to be able to stop at K Town.

The other assumption is that trains coming up through the Elephant
from Sevenoaks/ Orpington/ Maidstone East (or wherever else might be
chosen) could only ever be 8-car - perhaps running 12-car trains on
these routes is not beyond the bounds of possibility? This would of
course involve a fair old bit of platform extension work south of the
river, which - if my memory serves me right - was't even mooted in the
South London RUS.

*Incredibly* stupid question coming up... I presume (perhaps
erroneously) from your talk of Kentish Town and SDO that you are
arguing for SDO to be included in the spec for the new Thameslink
rolling stock, right? If so then how much of a big thing is it to
equip new trains with SDO systems? Perhaps foolishly it seems to me
that (a) it can't be that big a deal and (b) new stock such as that
which will be ordered for Thameslink should arguably have SDO
capabilities installed anyway to ensure the stock is versatile,
adaptable and future-proof.

Or is the issue more to do with signalling at Kentish Town - i.e.
signalling needing to take account for the fact that 12-car trains
would be jutting out at both ends of the platform?