On Feb 12, 8:23*pm, Andy wrote:
On Feb 12, 6:44*pm, Mizter T wrote:





On 12 Feb, 18:31, MIG wrote:

On Feb 12, 6:23*pm, Mizter T wrote:

(snip)

The other thing about the Victoria - Bellingham service ('SLL2' as
I've called it) that I didn't mention earlier is that it conveniently
runs out of Victoria's less busy eastern side, thus freeing up
platforms in the central side of the station - the South London RUS
highlights this as a benefit of this plan. So the SLL is basically
seen as the weakest link at both London Bridge and Victoria (central),
getting the boot from both of them, though space is then offered up in
Victoria eastern for its SLL2 replacement to Bellingham. Of course
this also precludes a stop *at Battersea Park, because trains from the
eastern side of Victoria can't even get on to the central side's
tracks to get to Battersea Park in the first place (and making complex
alterations to enable this would no doubt be unwelcome).

I'm sure they can. *There's a crossover that can be reached from
platforms 3 - 8, leading to the "Brighton Slow" tracks.

I dithered before writing that and in retrospect it's silly - I know
full well that there's a connection as platform 8 is served by both
Southeastern and Southern trains. However I though that was the only
one eastern side platform - platform 8 - that could access the central
side's tracks (perhaps I should actually be talking about eastern and
central divisions - sounds a bit like a yankee sports league!). It's
highly likely I'm wrong!

I don't think that platform 8 is regularly used by Southeastern
trains. It is accessed by from the Southern gateline and *there is a
gate between it and platform 7. Physically, the pointwork allows all
of platforms 3-8 access to/from the 'Brighton' lines at Victoria
(rather than via Stewarts Lane), but I can't remember if the
signalling allows it.-

My experience is that it's used more by Southeastern than Southern,
and it actually has its own gateline, because there's a very big wall
between it and platform 9.

In fact it's a horrible bottleneck. If you arrive at platform 8 in
the peak (as I've done on Southeastern trains many times) in anything
other than the first couple of coaches, it's best to walk towards the
back and then down platform 7.