"Terry Harper" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 14:45:59 GMT, (Adrian the
Rock) wrote:

"Richard J." wrote:
Colin McKenzie wrote:

I hope the principle that Crossrail should be all-stations has been
established.

Then you'll be disappointed. The planned Crossrail timetable involves
some trains non-stopping certain stations west of Paddington in order to
leave paths for some west-of-Maidenhead FGW trains on the relief lines...

Glad to hear this - the suggestion of every train stopping at every
station to Maidenhead seemed utter madness to me too.

Firstly, it's been standard and established practice for many years
now to have separate outer and inner suburban services on major London
suburban/commuter lines. For example the Brighton lines have their
Metro and Sussex Coast services, out of KX the inners run to Welwyn
GC/Hertford N, and so on.

Isn't there a precedent here from the Japanese high-speed lines?

They run flights of trains which go non-stop to a major station, and
then every station to the next major station, where they terminate.
The timing is such that connections in each direction provide a
quicker service than the alternative of all-stations plus limited stop
services.

This is already a well established principle on some national rail routes.
But the problem with operating it on Crossrail is that it requires all the
trains to leave Padd on time. This is achievable if they start there, but
likely to end in chaos if they are delayed en-route from
Shenfield/whereeverelse.

tim

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007, asdf wrote:

On Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:00:13 +0000, Tom Anderson wrote:

The clever bit about the Bakerloo tunnel is that it allows trains that
would otherwise have to reverse at Queen's Park to go somewhere; if the
plan to reorganise the DC lines comes to pass, so that all Bakerloo
trains can go beyond Queen's Park, with NR trains (from the Overground)
terminating there, this becomes a less good plan.

Possibly-ignorant question: why can't some Bakerloo trains go beyond
Queen's Park? I looked on the interweb but couldn't find anything about
some trains being different to others.

Sorry, i phrased that badly. All Bakerloo trains are, as far as i'm aware,
capable of going beyond Queen's Park - it's just that some don't currently
have the opportunity to do it, because north of there, the track is also
used by suburban trains from Euston (QP being where the Bakerloo tunnels
and Euston surface tracks join up), so there isn't enough capacity (AIUI).

There's only 3tph from Euston north of Queens Park, but many more
Bakerloo trains than that terminate at QP.

I think the main reason is simply that the outer part of the line
doesn't require as high-frequency a service as the central part.

There's also the fact that the Euston trains are running to a stricter
timetable than the Bakerloos, as they're only 4tph, and that combination
seems to be very hard to make work at high density. Effectively, you need
to leave big enough gaps in the Bakerloo service that if it drifts a few
minutes ahead of or behind itself, it doesn't clobber the Euston service.

No doubt the lack of demand is the main reason, though.

It's interesting that the arrangement here is the reverse of the normal
situation - instead of one central route with two outer branches, there
are two routes from the centre combining to form one outer branch. I'd
say the clever bit about the Bakerloo tunnel is that it would re-balance
the situation (especially with the District currently having too many
western branches).

Also true. It does mean that whatever branch gets taken over has to take
an indirect route into town, though; it's a shame there isn't another
existing radial route in that area that could receive the blessing of the
little brown trains!

tom

--
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets
of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a
whole galaxy of multi colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and
also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw
ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all this for the trip,
but once you get locked in a serious drug collection, the tendency is
to push it as far as you can. -- Hunter S. Thompson, 'Fear and loathing
in Las Vegas'

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007, tim..... wrote:

"Adrian the Rock" wrote in message
...
"Richard J." wrote:
Colin McKenzie wrote:

I hope the principle that Crossrail should be all-stations has been
established.

Then you'll be disappointed. The planned Crossrail timetable involves
some trains non-stopping certain stations west of Paddington in order to
leave paths for some west-of-Maidenhead FGW trains on the relief lines...

Glad to hear this - the suggestion of every train stopping at every
station to Maidenhead seemed utter madness to me too.

I can't see why.

Most people would say that the fixed interval, all stations service, is
what makes the German S-Bahns so sucessful. London to Maidenhead is a
very similar distance to Munich to Freising (or some other end of line
station).

Distances for driving, using google maps routes adjusted to be as direct
as possible:

From To Distance (miles)
Fenchurch St Upminster 16.6
Liverpool St Shenfield 21.1
Paddington Maidenhead 29.2
Paddington Slough 21.1
Munich Freising 19.1

For Munch - Freising, i measured from the start of the A9, which
approximatelyish the same distance out of town as a London railway
terminus.

Anyway, Maidenhead is over 50% further than Freising. Some would say this
means Crossrail shouldn't be all-stops; i say it means Crossrail should
terminate at Slough!

tom

--
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets
of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a
whole galaxy of multi colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and
also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw
ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all this for the trip,
but once you get locked in a serious drug collection, the tendency is
to push it as far as you can. -- Hunter S. Thompson, 'Fear and loathing
in Las Vegas'

tim..... wrote:
"Terry Harper" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 14:45:59 GMT, (Adrian the
Rock) wrote:

"Richard J." wrote:
Colin McKenzie wrote:

I hope the principle that Crossrail should be all-stations has
been established.

Then you'll be disappointed. The planned Crossrail timetable
involves some trains non-stopping certain stations west of
Paddington in order to leave paths for some west-of-Maidenhead
FGW trains on the relief lines...

Glad to hear this - the suggestion of every train stopping at
every station to Maidenhead seemed utter madness to me too.

Firstly, it's been standard and established practice for many
years now to have separate outer and inner suburban services on
major London suburban/commuter lines. For example the Brighton
lines have their Metro and Sussex Coast services, out of KX the
inners run to Welwyn GC/Hertford N, and so on.

Isn't there a precedent here from the Japanese high-speed lines?

They run flights of trains which go non-stop to a major station,
and then every station to the next major station, where they
terminate. The timing is such that connections in each direction
provide a quicker service than the alternative of all-stations plus
limited stop services.

This is already a well established principle on some national rail
routes. But the problem with operating it on Crossrail is that it
requires all the trains to leave Padd on time. This is achievable
if they start there, but likely to end in chaos if they are delayed
en-route from Shenfield/whereeverelse.

Aren't the Crossrail tracks from Shenfield and Abbey Wood dedicated to
Crossrail? If so, the reliability of the service is under Crossrail's
control. "Chaos" might be a good description of LU's attempt to run the
evening peak to timetable on some lines, but a new railway with new
rolling stock would have no excuses.

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Adrian the Rock wrote:

"Richard J." wrote:
Colin McKenzie wrote:

I hope the principle that Crossrail should be all-stations has been
established.

Then you'll be disappointed. The planned Crossrail timetable involves
some trains non-stopping certain stations west of Paddington in order to
leave paths for some west-of-Maidenhead FGW trains on the relief lines...

Glad to hear this - the suggestion of every train stopping at every
station to Maidenhead seemed utter madness to me too.

Firstly, it's been standard and established practice for many years
now to have separate outer and inner suburban services on major London
suburban/commuter lines. For example the Brighton lines have their
Metro and Sussex Coast services, out of KX the inners run to Welwyn
GC/Hertford N, and so on.

In many cases the underground itself provides a third group of
"ultra-inner" services.

What? No. I don't think that's true. I think LU routes are generally of
about the same extent as NR inners. The Brighton line inners you mention
end at Purley, which is in Z6, as are many (well, some) of the LU
end-of-the-lines. The ends of inners on other lines are Watford Junction,
Potters Bar, Cheshunt, and Shenfield, which are all roughly at the edge of
Z6 - they're all closer to London than Epping, i think. St Albans is a
notable exception.

Most of these don't run alongside NR routes, but obvious examples are
the District/Central lines to Ealing/Richmond/W Ruislip and the Jubilee
to Stanmore. So in effect the inner suburban services over NR are
usually the second tier, not the first.

What are the NR inners on those routes?

Colin McKenzie wrote:

(Adrian the Rock) wrote:

The other extension to Crossrail that seems fairly obvious to me is to
extend the trains currently planned to terminate at Paddington up the
former GW&GC joint line. =A0Bring the Old Oak - Northolt East line back
into proper use, rebuild the main line platforms at Greenford, making
this the first stop out of Padd, then run all-stations to Princes
Risboro and Aylesbury (some trains probably terminating at High
Wycombe). =A0But this is clearly too extensive to be sensible to include
in the initial project.

The principle of an all-stations service stands, so you'd need to give
serious thought to reallocating the Central Line tracks beyond about
Greenford...

No, because this is mixing underground and inner suburban stopping
patterns.

Inners are usually all-stops. A service to Aylesbury would be an outer.

Part of Crossrail's problem is that it tries to straddle the fence between
inners and outers, providing both a high-frequency, short-distance service
in town, and a fast long-distance service at the fringes. Well, at the
western end: the Shenfield service is a straightforward all-stops
to-roughly-the-edge-of-Z6 service. It's the attempt to go to Maidenhead
and Reading that's causing schizophrenia. The ideal solution would be for
Crossrail to go to Slough on its own pair of tracks, leaving a slow pair
for trains that run fast to Slough and stopping beyond that to Windsor,
Henley, Reading, and perhaps even Oxford, and then a fast pair for trains
that run fast to Reading and then do whatever beyond that. Sadly, we don't
have six pairs to Slough, only four.

tom

--
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets
of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a
whole galaxy of multi colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and
also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw
ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all this for the trip,
but once you get locked in a serious drug collection, the tendency is
to push it as far as you can. -- Hunter S. Thompson, 'Fear and loathing
in Las Vegas'

On Sat, 29 Dec 2007, Peter Masson wrote:

"Tom Anderson" wrote

It seems strange that they wanted to keep the route in tunnel all the
way to Gunnersbury; the current track layout means you can surface at
Turnham Green and go from there (via Chiswick Park, ish) without
getting in anyone's way. Maybe it wasn't always like that, or they
thought a stop at the Green itself was more useful.

The situation in 1920 was that the District had been electrified by 1905
to Wimbledon, Richmond, Hounslow Barracks (later renamed West), Ealing
Broadway, and South Harrow. This used the LSWR between Hammersmith
(Studland Road Junction) and Turnham Green, though this section had been
quadrupled in 1905, with the District having sole use of the southern
electrified pair. The LSWR service, which used the northern pair, ran
from Addison Road (now Olympia) via Hammersmith Grove Road to Richmond,
and was withdrawn in 1916, leaving this pair of lines derelict (but
still in the ownership of the LSWR).

This meant that the District was congested west of Earls Court, so the
proposal to extend the Central Line to Richmond would have provided
relief. In the event, the LSWR service was never reinstated. In 1932
tracks between Hammersmith and Turnham Green were rearranged,
quadrupling was extended to Northfields, and the Piccadilly was extended
to take over the Hounslow and South Harrow (extended to Rayners Lane and
over the Met to Uxbridge) lines. Even then, Studland Road Junction to
Turnham Green remained in SR ownership, leased to the District (as part
of the Underground group, soon to be absorbed into the London Passenger
Transport Board).

Aha, i see. But hang on, the way things are now is that as soon as you're
past Turnham Green, there's a pair of tracks that go to Gunnersbury and
nowhere else (and also the two pairs that go to Chiswick Park). The
Central line could surface around there (possibly still being underground
at Turnham Green itself) and use those to get to Richmond, rather than
staying in tunnel to Gunnersbury. That's what i was getting at. Was that
not the situation in 1920?

tom

--
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets
of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a
whole galaxy of multi colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and
also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw
ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all this for the trip,
but once you get locked in a serious drug collection, the tendency is
to push it as far as you can. -- Hunter S. Thompson, 'Fear and loathing
in Las Vegas'

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007, tim..... wrote:

"Terry Harper" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 30 Dec 2007 14:45:59 GMT, (Adrian the
Rock) wrote:

"Richard J." wrote:
Colin McKenzie wrote:

I hope the principle that Crossrail should be all-stations has been
established.

Then you'll be disappointed. The planned Crossrail timetable involves
some trains non-stopping certain stations west of Paddington in order to
leave paths for some west-of-Maidenhead FGW trains on the relief lines...

Glad to hear this - the suggestion of every train stopping at every
station to Maidenhead seemed utter madness to me too.

Firstly, it's been standard and established practice for many years
now to have separate outer and inner suburban services on major London
suburban/commuter lines. For example the Brighton lines have their
Metro and Sussex Coast services, out of KX the inners run to Welwyn
GC/Hertford N, and so on.

Isn't there a precedent here from the Japanese high-speed lines?

They run flights of trains which go non-stop to a major station, and
then every station to the next major station, where they terminate.
The timing is such that connections in each direction provide a
quicker service than the alternative of all-stations plus limited stop
services.

This is already a well established principle on some national rail
routes. But the problem with operating it on Crossrail is that it
requires all the trains to leave Padd on time. This is achievable if
they start there, but likely to end in chaos if they are delayed
en-route from Shenfield/whereeverelse.

Hang on, though: i think Terry was suggesting doing this just with
Crossrail trains, so they don't have to run on time in absolute terms,
just relative to each other, ie with an even spacing. Given that they're
running one after the other, with no branches, junctions or other
complicated bits (except passengers) from Whitechapel to Paddington, that
doesn't seem impossible.

I'm not sure that the service frequency will be low enough to allow a
useful amount of flighting using just one pair of tracks, though.

I should mention that i'm not even sure i've understood the Japanese
system right, though. Is this a Taktfahrplan or something different?

tom

--
In my view, this is no different than a parent introducing his child to
Shakespeare (except that the iambic pentameter is replaced by a framework
of profanity, misogyny, substance abuse, violence, retaliation, crime
and infidelity). -- Dad Gone Mad, on rap

"Tom Anderson" wrote

Aha, i see. But hang on, the way things are now is that as soon as you're
past Turnham Green, there's a pair of tracks that go to Gunnersbury and
nowhere else (and also the two pairs that go to Chiswick Park). The
Central line could surface around there (possibly still being underground
at Turnham Green itself) and use those to get to Richmond, rather than
staying in tunnel to Gunnersbury. That's what i was getting at. Was that
not the situation in 1920?

The junction west of Turnham Green must have been altered in 1932, when the
line from Hammersmith was changed from paired by use (northern pair disused)
to paired by direction. To complicate things, there was a spur from the
Richmond linetowards South Acton (enclosing the 'Gunnersbury Triangle')
which was used for freight (to High Street Kensington) until the 1960s. It
was therefore likely that a convenient location for a tunnel mouth could not
be found until close to Gunnersbury.

Peter

Tom Anderson wrote:

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Adrian the Rock wrote:

In many cases the underground itself provides a third group of
"ultra-inner" services.

What? No. I don't think that's true. I think LU routes are generally of
about the same extent as NR inners. The Brighton line inners you mention
end at Purley...

.... while the LUL lines only go as far as Elephant, Brixton and
Morden.

I accept it's a bit different north of the river, where LU lines
generally do go further out, but many of them don't run parallel or
even near to NR lines anyway. But Ealing Broadway and West Ruislip
are good examples of the comparison I was making, while the
corresponding inner suburban trains on NR go to Hayes and High Wycombe
respecively.

And the other point, of course, is that LU lines have more closely
spaced stations, which obviously makes journey times longer. Eg there
are far more District line stations between Z1 and Wimbledon/Richmond
than if you go by SWT from Waterloo.

Most of these don't run alongside NR routes, but obvious examples are
the District/Central lines to Ealing/Richmond/W Ruislip and the Jubilee
to Stanmore. So in effect the inner suburban services over NR are
usually the second tier, not the first.

What are the NR inners on those routes?

Ealing see above; Richmond, the SWT services to Kingston/Hounslow loop
etc; W Ruislip see above. The Met&GC line is unusual in that only the
outer suburban service (Alyesbury) runs over NR tracks, with the
Metropolitan line providing the inner suburban service. But note that
even this has multiple tiers - Amersham semi-fasts vs Uxbridge/Watford
stoppers.

Inners are usually all-stops. A service to Aylesbury would be an outer.

Indeed. Were the GW&GC to become an arm of Crossrail, I would
certainly envisage inners to (at furthest) High Wycombe with separate
outers to Aylesbury.

Part of Crossrail's problem is that it tries to straddle the fence between
inners and outers, providing both a high-frequency, short-distance service
in town, and a fast long-distance service at the fringes...

I think we're broadly agreeing there are some issues around this,
anyway.

... Well, at the
western end: the Shenfield service is a straightforward all-stops
to-roughly-the-edge-of-Z6 service. It's the attempt to go to Maidenhead
and Reading that's causing schizophrenia...

That's one view, but I would turn the coin on its head and say it
shows a lack of ambition to run only that far on the eastern stretch.
This is why I'm concerned about the 'Ken factor' having too much
influence, as their formal responsibilities stop at Z6.

I'd surely have thought there would be a market for through trains
from places like Colchester and Southend to points west of London -
Heathrow is surely a no-brainer, but the Thames Valley itself is a
thriving business zone and this would make it far more accessible from
Essex. Again, think how successful Bedford - Brighton is. I have
used those trains many times for easy changes onto the MML at Luton
(though obviously now St P Thameslike is finally open, there's much
less need to do that).

... The ideal solution would be for Crossrail to go to Slough on its own pair of tracks...

Yes, capacity on the GWML is a major issue even today. And we haven't
even mentioned the freight traffic that comes down the Acton Wells -
Acton East (Poplar chord) link yet! I don't know about Slough, but it
certainly could do with 6 tracks as far as Airport Jct.

Adie

On Dec 31, 3:09 pm, (Adrian the Rock) wrote:

That's one view, but I would turn the coin on its head and say it
shows a lack of ambition to run only that far on the eastern stretch.
This is why I'm concerned about the 'Ken factor' having too much
influence, as their formal responsibilities stop at Z6.

I'd surely have thought there would be a market for through trains
from places like Colchester and Southend to points west of London -
Heathrow is surely a no-brainer, but the Thames Valley itself is a
thriving business zone and this would make it far more accessible from
Essex. Again, think how successful Bedford - Brighton is.

There probably would be the market for it - I think the bigger concern
is capacity. The Shenfield line has something insane like 15tph during
the peaks at the moment, and is likely to have more under Crossrail
(with some terminating at Liverpool Street).

It's one of the busiest NR lines in London - I assume the thinking is
that there's no point weakening the service for those passengers in
the hope of improving travel times between Chelmsford and Reading.

Jonn