"Paul Corfield" wrote in message
news
In terms of turnbacks and crossovers - yes they can be a help but you do
need to consider what happens to the passengers at the end of a closed
part of line. I would not want to see trains terminating at Covent
Garden - the place can hardly cope with normal passenger flows.

I know Covent Garden isn't the most ideal place, but the Picc really does
need some form of turn-back facility in the long section between Hyde Park
Corner and King's Cross. If one of these is out of use for any reason you
have a really long length of railway closed - i.e. Hyde Park Corner to Arnos
Grove. Perhaps Covent Garden should be reinstated with trains detained at
Leicester Square or Holborn? The Picc could also do with some means of
turning eastbound trains from Heathrow back - currently there is no way of
doing this until the reception roads at Boston Manor (which us problematic
as AIUI only Acton Town drivers are trained to drive in there?), or
inconveniently at Northfields.


If you
look at the Jubilee Line - which has a lot of turnbacks and sidings on
old and new sections - you will see that that added flexibility does not
always provide a guarantee of quick service recovery. It does help but
it would be better not to fail in the first place. I understand that a
range of options per line are being assessed at present to boost
operational flexibility and service recovery - this includes
reinstatement of crossovers etc.

IME there seems to be a reluctance to use facilities even where they exist.
Even for pre-planned closures the areas of suspension seem to get wider and
wider, and not long ago I witnessed an occasion where Northern Line trains
were being reversed south-to-north at Stockwell due to an incident and yet
were not taking passengers northbound, causing massive congestion and
needless inconvenience. It has taken ten years to commission the Central
Line's crossover at Queensway, which I'm sure would have proved useful on
occasions where something has gone wrong at White City. And as far as the
Jubilee Line is concerned, whenever there is engineering work east of Canary
Wharf they only ever seem to reverse in one platform (providing a
6-minute-interval service), when reversals in both are possible.