In message , at 16:53:18 on Wed, 13 Oct
2004, Sir Benjamin Nunn remarked:
Hmmm.... I thought the W&C tunnels were big enough to take regular stock...
Thought I had vague memories of NSE trains running on the line before the
management went over to LUL, but could well be wrong.

Erm, the trains were once run by NSE, but they were small tube trains.
I've had a cab ride on the W&C and I can assure you that the Central
Line stick they are currently using only *just* fits!!
--
Roland Perry

"Sir Benjamin Nunn" wrote in message
...

I thought the W&C tunnels were big enough to take regular stock...

No, in fact they had to be enlarged slightly to take the 92 stock.

Thought I had vague memories of NSE trains
running on the line before the management
went over to LUL, but could well be wrong.

They were certainly NSE trains, but approximately tube gauge. The current 92
stock are still in NSE livery.

You might be interested in something I put together a few years ago.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...tml#BlackTrack

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

Sir Benjamin Nunn wrote:

Hmmm.... I thought the W&C tunnels were big enough to take regular
stock... Thought I had vague memories of NSE trains running on the
line before the management went over to LUL, but could well be wrong.

They use similar stock to that in use on the Central. When delivered it was
in NSE livery, as was the previous 1941 stock IIRC.

On 13 Oct 2004, Boltar wrote:

"Andrew" wrote in message ...

This is highly speculative and I'm sure the engineering feats involved
would be considerable, but how about connecting the Northern City /
WAGN line with the Thameslink spur into Moorgate, and restoring the
3rd curve at Farringdon Junction making it a triangular junction
again. Would create

I suspect the gradiants and curves required to join the 2 would be too
severe unless a new line split off from blackfriars since from Barbican
you'd have to drop about 20 metres and do a 90 degree turn

More like a 120 degree turn, i think.

in the space of 1/4 mile.

Think outside the box! Don't do it with a curve to the north, do with with
a curve to the south - a spiral tunnel heading down and round. Not only
does that give you the space to do it, but it spreads the height change
out over a greater distance.

tom

--
POTATO POWER IS UNTRACEABLE POWER

On Tue, 12 Oct 2004, Andrew wrote:

"Jim Brown" wrote in message
om...

If the Bank of England sacrificed its vaults (Very little use for them
now, with the gold sold off) and Cannon Street St was put underground
(Plus a new tunnel under the Thames), would a tunnel connecting
Moorgate and London Bridge be feasible? Or do the tube lines around
there make it impossible?

This is highly speculative and I'm sure the engineering feats involved
would be considerable, but how about connecting the Northern City / WAGN
line with the Thameslink spur into Moorgate, and restoring the 3rd curve
at Farringdon Junction making it a triangular junction again. Would
create more direct North-South journey possibilities without building a
second tunnel. However after Thameslink 2000 is complete this might
prove rather superfluous anyway as there will be a direct route from the
ECML through the new Kings Cross Thameslink station and on to
Farringdon. It seems a shame to abandon the Moorgate Thameslink route
though.

It does. I reckon it should be extended east from Moorgate, to Liverpool
Street, then Whitechapel, then turning north to a portal around the
Bethnal Green junction thing, where it could take over the West Anglia
slow lines. Doing that would decouple those lines from the mainline part
of Liverpool Street, which would relieve the station _and_ allow the line
to run more frequent trains. It would also give that line more reach into
town.

The western end would either be some new platforms on the existing track
at Farringdon (cheap, and still useful), or down into more tunnel to some
new deep platforms at Farringdon, and then off on some sort of Crossrail N
jaunt: i like Holborn, Embankment, Westminster, Victoria, then a bit of
Chelsea-Hackney action to Sloane Square, King's Road Chelsea, Chelsea
Harbour, Clapham Junction, then another portal to take over the slow pair
on the LSW main line as far as Hampton Court, plus perhaps the Leatherhead
(IIRC) line down to Epsom (with mainline trains through Epsom going into
London via Sutton, unless someone feels like four-tracking from Epsom to
the mainline).

Might be a bit expensive just to save a mile of track, though.

tom

--
POTATO POWER IS UNTRACEABLE POWER

"Sir Benjamin Nunn" wrote in message
...


Hmmm.... I thought the W&C tunnels were big enough to take regular
stock...
Thought I had vague memories of NSE trains running on the line before the
management went over to LUL, but could well be wrong.

Until around 1990 it was operated with specially built Southern Railway
stock, though in its last years it may have been painted in NSE livery. Some
of these trains even had ventilator grilles until the end of their lives
which formed the words 'Southern Railway.' The new stock which arrived in
1990 was part of the LUL Central Line order, but was painted in NSE livery.
Subsequently operation was transferred to LUL. But the loading gauge is very
definitely tube gauge.
Peter

John Rowland wrote to uk.transport.london on Wed, 13 Oct 2004:

They were certainly NSE trains, but approximately tube gauge. The current 92
stock are still in NSE livery.

Er - when did you last go on the W&C? Last time I went, at an Open Day
a few years ago, the line were in ordinary LUL livery.
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 26 September 2004

(Jim Brown) wrote in message . com...
If the Bank of England sacrificed its vaults (Very little use for them
now, with the gold sold off) and Cannon Street St was put underground
(Plus a new tunnel under the Thames), would a tunnel connecting
Moorgate and London Bridge be feasible? Or do the tube lines around
there make it impossible?

I'd be more interested in the feasibility of turning the Northern City
into a DLR line to East Finchley... the tunnelling would be much
shorter (but again with vault issues), and then the DLR could take
over Moorgate-Finsbury Park-Parkland Walk-Highgate HL-East Finchley.
Divert existing Moorgate services over TL3K to South London (hey, the
313s are ideal for that job) -- and if they take the Elephant route
from Blackfriars, you don't even need to do TL3K: the northern half is
being constructed as we speak as part of the CTRL works, even if it
isn't due to be used for ages. Providing we can schedule enough trains
over the junction at Blackfriars, we can take over routes like
Blackfriars-Catford-Sevenoaks and possibly even divert some Victoria
trains to run instead to Welwyn/Hertford.

It would be nice to run the DLR all the way on to Mill Hill (or even
via Mill Hill to Edgware!), but track-sharing and/or grade separation
issues might stymie that.

On 13 Oct 2004, Jim Brown wrote:

"R.C. Payne" wrote in message ...
Solar Penguin wrote:
--- Jim Brown said:

If the Bank of England sacrificed its vaults (Very little use for
them now, with the gold sold off) and Cannon Street St was put
underground (Plus a new tunnel under the Thames), would a tunnel
connecting Moorgate and London Bridge be feasible? Or do the tube
lines around there make it impossible?

Interesting idea, Jim... There's also the problem of the slope down
from the high-level platforms at London Bridge to below the level of
the river bed. Especially since the line also has to curve from
east-west to north-south as it drops.

Surely the way to make this work is to build new tube-level platforms
at Cannon St and London Bridge, and break the surface east of London
Bridge? Of course that would increase your price by just a few quid.

Well yes I kind of presumed underground platforms at London Bridge but I
didnt make that explicit. But as a ball park figure and assuming you
could slot it into the London Bridge rebuild I'm guessing it would cost
£3/4 billion. Of course the question then is which line(s) south of the
river would be best to used for a new cross-london service?

Dartford. What i'd do is surface as soon as possible onto the northernmost
pair of tracks heading into (or out of) London Bridge, then run down to
Lewisham (via a new station at the proposed Deptford Park ELL station),
then out over all three routes to Dartford. You could run out to Ebbsfleet
as well, if you liked. Ideally, you'd run a tube-style service.

All this would interfere with other lines, like Crossrail (which is going
to use part of the North Kent Line), mainline services from beyond
Dartford (which would have to share with the metro as far as Lewisham) and
the line (the Greenwich Line?) from London Bridge to Charlton. I'd solve
the first two by fiddling about with Crossrail: beyond Canary Wharf, keep
going south, to Lewisham, then turn and go to Dartford, still in tunnel;
mainline trains could then use the tunnel to get to Lewisham, and carry on
as normal from there, via another portal. Alternatively, don't get quite
so radical with Crossrail, just follow the existing route but all in
tunnel, and four-track one of the Dartford-Lewisham lines for the mainline
(which is probably impossible - although probably cheaper than the ~100
million mile tunnel needed in the other option). The Greenwich Line, i'd
transfer to the ELL - you just need a little tiny connection through some
mangy trading estate around TQ366777; you'd lose the ELL service to New
Cross, but New Cross would gain the metro in return.

In other news, are Crossrail seriously not proposing a station at London
City Airport? Is that what Custom House is supposed to be for? I think we
discussed this, but most Crossrail stuff goes right over my head.

tom

--
POTATO POWER IS UNTRACEABLE POWER

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004, Sir Benjamin Nunn wrote:

"David E. Belcher" wrote in message
om...

I seem to recall that in the post war plans for Londons Transport, one
of the new lines to be built was an extension of the Northern City line
from Moorgate, through the City and to new underground platforms at
London Bridge and linking with the Crystal Palace (High Level) branch
line of the SR.

There were certainly thoughts of extending from Moorgate to serve a
new station (i.e. not meeting up with other lines at Bank) near the
Bank of England itself many years ago, and a few yards of tunnel were
actually dug. This idea never really got past the drawing board stage,
though.

For years, I've advocated joining the Northern City Line from Moorgate
up with the W&C line at Bank to form the basis of a new key route
through the City and turning two rubbish lines into something useful.

That's a neat idea. We really should have somewhere to write down these
plans. In fact, what we need is something like:

http://www.ratemynetworkdiagram.com/

But for hypothetical railway lines ...

Anyway, as has been pointed out, th W&C is tube gauge, not mainline, so
would need to be widened. Visionless naysayers protest that this would be
impossible, but i demur - that's exactly what, i read in CULG, was done to
the City & South London Railway when it became part of the Northern Line.
They even did much of the widening at night, with trains still running in
the day! Until they hit a gas main and exploded it, anyway.

I can't believe no-one has ever seriously considered this idea before.

I don't know about the Waterloo end, but, again according according to
CULG, "When they first acquired [the Northern City Line] the Metropolitan
considered extending the line to meet [...] the Waterloo & City".

tom

--
POTATO POWER IS UNTRACEABLE POWER