John B wrote:

On 14 Mar, 15:42, "Paul Scott" wrote:

The ELL will be DC third rail - and I shall be very surprised if in due
course it isn't run by Southern, as contractors to TfL as the services will
have to be timetabled into the existing paths, indeed the extension of the
railway to Crystal Palace and Croydon will subsume certain existing
services.


Current bidders for London Overground (= NLL, ELLx, WLL, GOBLIN) are
MTR/Laing (Chiltern) and GoVia (Southern). AIUI the Southern franchise
deal allows for transferring certain services to ELLx when it opens,
so this side of things won't be a problem whoever wins.


Just to be clear on this, the MTR/Laing joint venture doesn't run the
Chiltern Railways franchise - that's owned directly by Laing. MTR is
Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway company, who don't currently operate
any franchises in the UK rail market. I have read a number of comments
from people who think they would make an interesting choice - even if
only as one half of a joint venture - and might shake things up
somewhat.

I was interested to read what you said re the Southern franchise -
that the SRA / DfT had the foresight to ensure the agreement with
Govia was flexible enough to accommodate the forthcoming ELLX. It's a
pretty obvious move when one thinks about it - it's just that I
hadn't.


Network Rail is supposed to be able to resolve timetable conflicts
between different operators, and doesn't do a terrible job: for
example, although the South Central and South Eastern franchises have
been under the same control for much of privatisation (Connex and now
GoVia), the period when GoVia and SRA were running South Central and
South Eastern respectively was not a disaster.


Though the operations of the South Central (i.e. Southern) and South
Eastern franchises are surprisingly discrete - they quite literally
don't cross paths that often (at least not on the level).

First Capital Connect's Thameslink route however crosses both their
paths, especially on the run in to London Bridge, which is what the
Thameslink 4000 project is aimed at dealing with.


Also, the LO franchise is rather different from the South Central
franchise, in that it's far more tightly specced and responsible to
TfL - much of the strategic/planning work that GoVia does for Southern
will be done by TfL for LO.


TfL refer to the London Overground operator arrangements as a
concession, as opposed to a franchise, so the winning operator will be
the concessionaire.

I'm no expert on Merseyrail, but it is already run on this concession
basis - the Merseyside lines are run by a Serco/NetRail joint venture
for Merseytravel (the Merseyside Public Transport Executive). The
London Overground and Merseyrail concession arrangements look similar,
at least superficially - I've no idea comparable the two are when
looked at comprehensively though.


So overall, I don't think GoVia has the kind of advantage in bidding
that you're suggesting - although they might win by default if it
transpires that Laing's new owners don't have the same interest in
rail as the previous management.

--
John Band

On Mar 14, 2:57 pm, " wrote:
Was just thinking about the ELL (yes I truly have no life) and got to
thinking:

When the East London line is closed this December, will the A stock be
used to reinforce any services on the Metropolitan line, or to
implement the change of the terminus from Aldgate to Barking before
the introduction of S stock? Or will they just be stored away and used
as spare sets in case of breakdown?

Edd



There isn't any dedicated stock for the ELL*, so I suppose it would
allow some A stock to be withdrawn as it came up for overhaul or
whatever, but it wouldn't be ELL stock as such.


*Only the double-ended units can be used on the ELL, but they still
spend the majority of their time on the Metropolitan.

On Mar 14, 3:57 pm, "John B" wrote:
In the future, the Cross-London RUS suggests converting the NLL east
of Camden Road to fully AC-electrified and leaving the WLL as-is:

Leaving the WLL in its current electrified state is a colossal
mistake. At a minimum the OHLE should be extended south to Shepherd's
Bush, and at a maximum, it should be extended south to Kensington
Olympia with the up platform road reinstated to provide four fully
bidirectional roads through the station, releasing capacity in both
directions to allow for additional passenger/freight usage (especially
if Imperial Wharf station ever opens).

Converting most of the NLL to AC would be a good idea.


The SLL will remain third-rail-only until the ex-Southern Region
converts to overhead AC, which will be never. If the GOBLIN is
electrified, it will be overhead AC.

This leaves the ELL itself. I'm fairly sure this is third-rail from
New Cross / New Cross Gate to Dalston: although I haven't read
anything explicitly stating that this is the case, none of the TfL
publicity pics have OHLE masts in them and I'd be sceptical that the
tunnels have the necessary clearance.

Beyond Dalston, there's an implication that either the ELL
Electrostars (which will continue initially to Highbury, maybe later
further on) may need to be dual-voltage with a switch-over at Dalston,
that the conversion of the NLL to OHLE east of Camden will not take
place, or that a dual-voltage section of track will be required
between Highbury and Dalston.

There is already a segment of dual-voltage track west of Dalston, so
more is not impossible (although it does give the S&T folks major
issues).


Not sure which is happening here. One suggestion is to re-instate four-
tracking between Camden and Dalston, which would be sensible, and then
to dedicate one pair of tracks between Highbury and Dalston
exclusively to the ELL with the other shared between NLL and freight,
which would be barking mad, given that ELL and NLL trains will run at
the same speed in the same direction making the same stops and freight
won't. But if this did happen then you'd expect the NLL tracks to be
OHLE and the ELL tracks to be DC.

I believe this was actually planned at one point - at Dalston, the
ELLX would be segregated from the NLL with separate platforms, and
west of the station, would run as separate paired-by-usage lines
through Highbury all the way to Caledonian Road & Barnsbury, where the
ELLX lines would connect to the NLL and then terminate in a set of
reversing sidings.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any literature saying what
the layout will be when it finally does get built, so I don't know if
this is still planned or not - the above info is from Modern Railways,
back in 2005 or 2006.

TheOneKEA wrote:

Leaving the WLL in its current electrified state is a colossal
mistake. At a minimum the OHLE should be extended south to Shepherd's
Bush, and at a maximum, it should be extended south to Kensington
Olympia with the up platform road reinstated to provide four fully
bidirectional roads through the station, releasing capacity in both
directions to allow for additional passenger/freight usage (especially
if Imperial Wharf station ever opens).

Converting most of the NLL to AC would be a good idea.

Both of those comments scream out common sense. I'm sure that I read
somewhere (a couple of years ago) that there were plans to move the AC/DC
changeover point further south (it may even have been at Shepherds Bush
station) for practical reasons, BICBW.

"Paul Scott" wrote in message
...

"John Hearns" wrote in message
...
wrote:
Was just thinking about the ELL (yes I truly have no life) and got to
thinking:

On the subject of the ELL, how is it going to be electrified?
(Yes, I know it has electrification at the moment and steam trains no
longer run under the river).
Perhaps a stupid question, but on any part of the proposed orbital
railway (ie. ELL, NLL etc) are there any overhead lines?
I guess not.

The ELL will be DC third rail - and I shall be very surprised if in due
course it isn't run by Southern, as contractors to TfL as the services
will have to be timetabled into the existing paths, indeed the extension
of the railway to Crystal Palace and Croydon will subsume certain existing
services.

The NLL and WLL have a mixture of DC third rail and 25kV ohle at the
moment, and the stock is currently dual voltage just like Thameslink, and
will remain so, although there are various proposals for extending the
25kV setions of the NLL. I'm sure there are details of the stock
requirements on TfL's website somewhere...

Paul S

Paul

I suspect that you may be right. It may be of interest that the initial
thoughts of the powers that be were that the ELL would have control and
priority of all the main line sections it was extended over! I had to
prepare a few high level tender calculations based on that design although I
had to add very strong riders about the inadvisability of even attempting it
and the unlikeliness of it going ahead - it didn't!

Peter
--
Peter & Elizabeth Corser
Leighton Buzzard, UK



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On 15 Mar, 00:03, "Peter Corser" wrote:
I suspect that you may be right. It may be of interest that the initial
thoughts of the powers that be were that the ELL would have control and
priority of all the main line sections it was extended over! I had to
prepare a few high level tender calculations based on that design although I
had to add very strong riders about the inadvisability of even attempting it
and the unlikeliness of it going ahead - it didn't!


Echoes of Crossrail and the GWML relief lines...

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

On Mar 14, 11:10 pm, "Jack Taylor" wrote:
TheOneKEA wrote:

Leaving the WLL in its current electrified state is a colossal
mistake. At a minimum the OHLE should be extended south to Shepherd's
Bush, and at a maximum, it should be extended south to Kensington
Olympia with the up platform road reinstated to provide four fully
bidirectional roads through the station, releasing capacity in both
directions to allow for additional passenger/freight usage (especially
if Imperial Wharf station ever opens).

Converting most of the NLL to AC would be a good idea.

Both of those comments scream out common sense. I'm sure that I read

Depends on the point of view. If its going to be used by freight
trains then yes , if its just EMUs probably going slowly then I doubt
it makes much difference from an electrical efficiency point of view
but from an asthetic point of view DC would be preferable. Lets face
it , OHLE is a bloody eyesore.

B2003

Once the ELL gets switched over the 3rd rail is St Marys curve going
to be lifted or will it be left intact just in case LU want to move
stock onto the national rail network at some point in the future?

B2003

On 15 Mar, 12:39, "Boltar" wrote:
Converting most of the NLL to AC would be a good idea.

Both of those comments scream out common sense. I'm sure that I read

Depends on the point of view. If its going to be used by freight
trains then yes

It is - NLL is an extremely popular freight route; currently electric
freight is limited to a single bidirectional AC overhead line between
Camden Road and Dalston.

if its just EMUs probably going slowly then I doubt
it makes much difference from an electrical efficiency point of view
but from an asthetic point of view DC would be preferable. Lets face
it , OHLE is a bloody eyesore.

AC would slightly improve electrical efficiency and also improve
acceleration, which is useful on a one-stop-every-mile service like
London Overground. But the main advantage would be reducing the need
for AC/DC switchover at Camden Road, and thereby improving
reliability.

Also, AIUI St Mary's Curve is not going to be lifted, although it's
unlikely to see much use given the new Metronet-National Rail link way
out east (Barking, is it?)

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

John B wrote:

Also, AIUI St Mary's Curve is not going to be lifted, although it's
unlikely to see much use given the new Metronet-National Rail link way
out east (Barking, is it?)

I have a feeling that it was Upminster.