On Dec 8, 9:43*pm, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
12:41:36 on Mon, 8 Dec 2008, MIG remarked:

Brentwood is the first station in Essex on that line, as I recall.

Correct. And as the only station in Essex which wouldn't have fast
trains to Stratford [1], they would be particularly hard done by.

That's the current situation I think.

*[1] This is probably not true.

Wildly untrue. None of the stations between Shenfield and Southend have
fast trains to London, for example.

It's true if "fast" means "non-stop from Shenfield".

That isn't a useful definition of "fast" in this context.

They all have trains that go non-stop from Shenfield, and some
non-stop from Billericay.

Some trains, perhaps. I think one an hour misses Romford.

Brentwood is currently only served by trains that do all stations off-
peak and substantial number of stations in the peak. *It wouldn't be a
change to get a similar service under Crossrail.

But I remember it when most of the Brentwood trains were semi-fast.

As I was describing somewhere else in this thread a few daze ago.
Brentwood was served by the Southends (and Southminsters sometimes)
which did all stations to Romford, then Ilford and Stratford, and the
all-stations started in from Gidea Park.

Then the all-stations were extended to start from Shenfield and the
Southends were moved to the fast tracks, so Brentwood got a more
frequent but slower service (as did Harold Wood). Gidea Park got a
reduced service.