On 28 Oct, 19:19, Stephen Furley wrote:
On 28 Oct, 12:19, Jamie *Thompson wrote:



On 28 Oct, 07:10, Stephen Furley wrote:

On 28 Oct, 04:05, D7666 wrote:

I would have thought the most significant length constraint would be
Willesden Junction (for LO trains obviously not SN). To extend that to
8-car would involve bridging WCML and that would not come cheap.

Which would put the high-level station back just about where it used
to be. *I'm certainly not holding my breath for that to happen.
They've been talking about re-building the platforms on the slow lines
almost since the old ones were demolished. *I'm not expecting that to
happen in my lifetime either.

How long were the platforms at the old station? *Given the previous
platform lengths at various other North London Line stations, I'm
guessing that they were rather longer than at the present station.

The original station also had a third platform, generally known as the
'Earls Court Bay', though I believe it was actually a through
platform, rather than a real bay. *If this was still available it
would have avoided the situation which existed a few years ago, I'm
not sure if it still does now as I haven't used the line for some
time, where a train arriving from the WLL is held just before the
junction while trains run through in both directions on the NLL, so
you then have a long wait for a connection on that line.

This is why NEW tube lines - be they tube size or main line size -
need to get under way now as they take 10 years to build even once
planning is done, and that takes years too.

An LU person at a LURS meeting at the time that the Jubilee Line
extension was being either planned or constructed stated that this was
being built to traditional tube dimensions only because the rest of
the tube section of the line was that size, and that any future tube
line would almost certainly be to take surface stock size trains, as
the cost of tunneling to the larger size would not be much greater
using modern equipment and techniques.

Don't suppose you know of any diagrams of the old pre-1960's layout of
Willesden Junction?

I hear odd descriptions from time to time, but the best I've ever
managed were a few scattered old photos that didn't really give any
indication of how it all was laid out.

Something for the station's wikipedia page perhaps

No sorry, and I don't know much about it. *There was a track in the
second bay, next to platform 2, in the 'new' station. *I have seen a
picture of the old high level station; the two main tracks were served
by side platforms as I remember, and one of these was an island with
the 'Earls Court' track on the other side of it. *The signalbox seems
to have been just at the end of the ramps of the high-level platforms
in the pictures I've seen. *The bridge which gives access to the high-
level platforms also used to serve the main line platforms, I know
this because until not too many years ago old painted over signs
pointing to these platforms could just be made out on this bridge.

Before the old ticket office was demolished, with the odd situation
that you had to cross a road to get from the ticket office to the
platforms, a bricked-up doorway could just be made out in one of the
walls, which I think would also have provided access to these
platforms.

In the South-West you have Clapham Junction, with lots of platforms on
all lines, and most trains stopping there. *In the North-East you have
something similar at Stratford. *it always seemed to me that Willesden
Junction should be the one in the North-West, though there's not
really an obvious one in the South-East.

Thank you. I'll try and work on my mental image of all that.

I agree about the four interchanges. In the south east I guess London
Bridge fulfils the role, dealing as it does with both the southern and
south-eastern mainlines. One of the options considered for Thameslink
was new tunnel from Kings Cross to Bermondsey, with the tunnel to St
Pancras being the cop-out. In my various musings about how things
could be, I usually settle on building a new station on the scale of
CJ/WJ/Stratford roughly where the lines converge next to Millwall's
ground, and downgrading London Bridge in some capacity as more trains
could be running through to Kings Cross (if they an manage 24tph down
the current Thameslink, two tunnels means 24x2 tph isn't out of the
question), and thus Cannon Street should be able to cope. Having the
station there could regenerate the area, and most importantly, provide
interchange with the orbital London overground route. A super-dooper-
surrey canal road junction station, if you will. This location would
be a great location for the line to surface after serving Cannon
Street/London Bridge in tunnel.

Anyway, I digress. Thanks you for your descriptions.