On Dec 27 2007, 6:26*pm, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
08:46:24 on Thu, 27 Dec 2007, Paul Weaver
remarked:

A decision on whether to extend the £16billion Crossrail scheme to Reading
will be made in the New Year, it emerged today.

If it is, then presumably the current semifast services from Reading
will be relegated to all-stops, and there won't be much choice for
passangers from the Slough-Reading corridor

Is that what another poster referred to in a different thread as "St
Alban-isation"? (I took this to be a reference to BedPan electrification
meaning mainline services no longer stopped there).
--

Yes, you took right g

But St Albanisation (I coined it!) in this context would mean
eliminating inter-city stops at Slough. (Then you would have what
might be called Sloughification )

I think what is being referred to here is a downgrade, ie more stops
inserted, of the current semi-fasts Reading - PDN.

Kester

In message
, at
00:18:07 on Tue, 1 Jan 2008, remarked:
A decision on whether to extend the £16billion Crossrail scheme to Reading
will be made in the New Year, it emerged today.

If it is, then presumably the current semifast services from Reading
will be relegated to all-stops, and there won't be much choice for
passangers from the Slough-Reading corridor

Is that what another poster referred to in a different thread as "St
Alban-isation"? (I took this to be a reference to BedPan electrification
meaning mainline services no longer stopped there).

Yes, you took right g

But St Albanisation (I coined it!) in this context would mean
eliminating inter-city stops at Slough. (Then you would have what
might be called Sloughification )

I think what is being referred to here is a downgrade, ie more stops
inserted, of the current semi-fasts Reading - PDN.

I don't think the suggestion is that all trains that stop at Reading
then stop everywhere to Paddington. So the long distance trains would
probably miss Slough on the grounds that Slough had been St Albanised by
Crossrail's all-station-stoppers.
--
Roland Perry

On Tue, 1 Jan 2008, wrote:

On Dec 27 2007, 6:26*pm, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
08:46:24 on Thu, 27 Dec 2007, Paul Weaver
remarked:

A decision on whether to extend the £16billion Crossrail scheme to Reading
will be made in the New Year, it emerged today.

If it is, then presumably the current semifast services from Reading
will be relegated to all-stops, and there won't be much choice for
passangers from the Slough-Reading corridor

Is that what another poster referred to in a different thread as "St
Alban-isation"? (I took this to be a reference to BedPan electrification
meaning mainline services no longer stopped there).

But St Albanisation (I coined it!) in this context would mean
eliminating inter-city stops at Slough. (Then you would have what
might be called Sloughification )

Sloughing, perhaps.

http://www.esquire.com/style/grooming/sloughing1107

tom

--
Things fall apart - it's scientific

On Mon, 31 Dec 2007, Adrian the Rock wrote:

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.

Morden's only Z4, granted, but the other two are hardly representative
cases.

I accept it's a bit different north of the river, where LU lines
generally do go further out,

Quite!

but many of them don't run parallel or even near to NR lines anyway.

No. But you can still compare their extent. But certainly, for the point
you're making, they're not helpful.

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.

I'd say that Ealing Broadway is the Brixton of the west - it's somewhere
where LU lines stop noticeably short, because they've reached a major
interchange and traffic generator, and the onward route is already covered
by NR. I don't think that's typical (although it's certainly not uncommon,
so maybe i'm kidding myself here!). Also, bear in mind that the District
used to go beyond Ealing Broadway, all the way to Windsor, in the 80s. The
1880s, that is.

A quick look at the Chiltern timetable suggests that trains to High
Wycombe mostly go on to Aylesbury or Banbury; i think that makes such
trains outer suburban services, and thus that the Central line service is
the inner service on this route.

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.

True. Although the Victoria line is an interesting, if ultimately futile,
counterexample.

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.

Hmm. I'm not entirely convinced about Richmond; i think the District and
Windsor lines have a relationship a bit like the Jubilee and Central at
Stratford, where one terminates having provided a slightly
round-the-houses route, and one carries on straight through to the fringes
of the city.

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.

Vs the Jubilee, which provides a yet innermore layer of service on that
route.

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.

Okay, i see, apologies.

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.

Yes, i think you're right.

... 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.

Ah, right. Now, here we come to the fundamental and age-old argument about
Crossrail, and all other such projects: should it be a suburban service,
like a funny tube line, or a way to let long-distance trains run into
town? For Crossrail, the argument was settled in favour of serving London
(except for Maidenhead); for Thameslink 2000, in favour of serving the
home counties. The argument was also fought over Chelsea-Hackney, with
proposals to run trains to Peterborough, Cambridge, Farnham, Southampton,
etc; i think it's too early to say that that's been settled at all!

I don't think the decision is about a lack of ambition, it's about the
priorities of the stakeholders and, to some extent, the situation on the
ground. The reason we're debating this is, i think, because we're from
different camps: what really matters to me is improving transport for
London, and what matters to you is improving it for the whole of the
south-east.

Have you come across the Superlink proposal? That's a version of Crossrail
put forward by some old railway hands that does exactly what you want. One
of the interesting features is that it would attract a lot more farebox
revenue, and so would cost the state less, even though it's a bit more
expensive to build.

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.

Absolutely! A service from the depths of the home counties to the middle
of London would be very popular indeed. As would such a service from
Shenfield, of course .

tom

--
Things fall apart - it's scientific

On Mon, 31 Dec 2007, wrote:

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).

The trains from beyond Shenfield could run on the fasts, as they do now.
You'd need a junction at the portal if you wanted to handle both
long-distance trains and suburban ones.

tom

--
Things fall apart - it's scientific

My completely off-the-wall idea is to join up Crossrail with the
Hammersmith & City and run Crossrail trains (from Shenfield) that
would otherwise terminate at Paddington on to Hammersmith. After all,
Crossrail as proposed is just another tube line - Shenfield is closer
than Amersham, hardly further than Epping or Upminster.

The pattern could be:

4 fast Heathrow
4 slow Heathrow
8 Maidenhead / Reading
8 Hammersmith

Or 12 Hammersmith if Ken can't get BAA to agree to HeX on Crossrail.

For Crossrail it would save all the expense of the sidings and ghost
station needed to satisfy Health & Safety re passengers staying on
terminating trains at Paddington.

There would be a huge benefit to the Circle Line. All Circle and
Wimbleware trains would continue beyond Edgware Road, providing for
the first time since 1868 a proper much-needed frequent service from
west to north Circle, dramatically improving performance by removing
the conflicts and bottleneck west of Edgware Road. Running as a
Teapot line (Wimbledon - Edgware Road - Aldgate - High St Ken -
Edgware Road - Aldgate and vice versa) would solve the Circle problem
as well.

The two lines virtually intersect at Paddington anyway so joining them
shouldn't be too difficult. Platform lengthening and ancillary works
at the H&C stations, plus a new Royal Oak, would be challenging, but
no doubt not insurmountable.

On Fri, 4 Jan 2008, wrote:

My completely off-the-wall idea is to join up Crossrail with the
Hammersmith & City and run Crossrail trains (from Shenfield) that
would otherwise terminate at Paddington on to Hammersmith.

You're not the first person to suggest this. I can't remember who was, at
least on utl, but it's a cudgel i've taken up. It's an excellent idea.

The pattern could be:

4 fast Heathrow
4 slow Heathrow
8 Maidenhead / Reading
8 Hammersmith

Or 12 Hammersmith if Ken can't get BAA to agree to HeX on Crossrail.

Which they won't.

Current plans, the last i heard, only have 10 tph going beyond Paddington
- 4 tph to Heathrow, 2 tph to West Drayton, and 4 tph to Maidenhead, all
all-stops, i think, although exactly what happens at the far end is still
up in the air. That's 14 tph to dispose of at Paddington, which would be a
doubling of the current H&C frequency.

I think the constraint on frequency at Heathrow is the need to reverse.
This is one reason the Airtrack plan is such a good one - you can run
trains on from T5 to Staines and reverse there, where there's room for a
higher-capacity layout. That would let more trains go to Heathrow (well,
Staines), although at the expense of other destinations i think.

There would be a huge benefit to the Circle Line. All Circle and
Wimbleware trains would continue beyond Edgware Road, providing for the
first time since 1868 a proper much-needed frequent service from west to
north Circle, dramatically improving performance by removing the
conflicts and bottleneck west of Edgware Road.

Is it much-needed? I think a more important benefit would be improving the
service along the north side by removing a lot of H&C passengers and
simplifying the network, making it more reliable.

Also, bear in mind that it would mean Paddington regains the two H&C
platforms, which might benefit GWML passengers a bit.

Running as a Teapot line (Wimbledon - Edgware Road - Aldgate - High St
Ken - Edgware Road - Aldgate and vice versa) would solve the Circle
problem as well.

No it wouldn't. The main problem with the Circle is conflicting movements
across the various flat junctions, including Praed Street, where the H&C
joins. The Hammersmith & Crossrail plan eliminates that junction
altogether; the Teacup plan puts even more trains through it than at
present.

So what are you going to do with the H&C paths that are are freed up on
the Circle? You could run more Met trains through from Baker Street. You
could use it to strengthen the Circle service, but that would mean taking
paths away from the District on the south side, which is unlikely to be
popular. You could run a partial Circle, from Gloucester Road (with a
couple of new crossovers, i think) to Aldgate. You could extend the
Wimbleware to Aldgate, and possibly strengthen it.

The two lines virtually intersect at Paddington anyway so joining them
shouldn't be too difficult.

Even better, the H&C is in a dive-under around where the Crossrail portal
needs to be, so it'd be simplicity itself to link them together.

Platform lengthening and ancillary works at the H&C stations, plus a new
Royal Oak, would be challenging, but no doubt not insurmountable.

"Challenging, but no doubt not insurmountable" is a very interesting way
of spelling "expensive" . It's the platforms, OHLE on the whole route,
possibly gauge improvements along the way, resignalling, and changing
Hammersmith to support turning a higher frequency reliably (which only
means adding a crossover or two, i think).

tom

--
only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are
universally valid -- Pope Benedict XVI

Tom Anderson wrote:
On Fri, 4 Jan 2008, wrote:

My completely off-the-wall idea is to join up Crossrail with the
Hammersmith & City and run Crossrail trains (from Shenfield) that
would otherwise terminate at Paddington on to Hammersmith.

You're not the first person to suggest this. I can't remember who
was, at least on utl, but it's a cudgel i've taken up. It's an
excellent idea.
The pattern could be:

4 fast Heathrow
4 slow Heathrow
8 Maidenhead / Reading
8 Hammersmith

Or 12 Hammersmith if Ken can't get BAA to agree to HeX on Crossrail.

Which they won't.

Current plans, the last i heard, only have 10 tph going beyond
Paddington - 4 tph to Heathrow, 2 tph to West Drayton, and 4 tph to
Maidenhead, all all-stops, i think, although exactly what happens at
the far end is still up in the air. That's 14 tph to dispose of at
Paddington, which would be a doubling of the current H&C frequency.

I think the constraint on frequency at Heathrow is the need to
reverse. This is one reason the Airtrack plan is such a good one -
you can run trains on from T5 to Staines and reverse there, where
there's room for a higher-capacity layout. That would let more trains
go to Heathrow (well, Staines), although at the expense of other
destinations i think.

Not sure about that Tom, doesn't the current airtrack proposal only have
terminating trains from Staines originating both at Waterloo, and from the
Woking direction (including Guildford). In other words the 'HEx' tracks at
T5 are arranged as entering one pair of platforms, from the central area,
alongside a currently unused space for trains from the 'airtrack' route
only. Side by side two platform terminii, rather than a four platform
through station?

Clearly if Crossrail had dual voltage units there is no basic reason they
couldn't carry on onto the SW lines, but does the T5 station even allow for
this future possibility?

Paul S

And there I was thinking I'd invented it! I won't even mention my
earlier rather more hare-brained idea of splitting the Bakerloo west
of Paddington to take over the Hammersmith branch...

Be that as it may, the Circle Line problem I was referring to was not
the flat junctions, fiddly though they are, but the problem of running
round in circles exacerbating delays and preventing recovery, which
led to the current (I believe) proposal for the Hammersmith - Aldgate
- H St Ken - Edgware Road "teacup". My suggestion would replace this
with the Wimbledon - Edgware Rd - Aldgate - H St Ken - Aldgate loop.
Any late running can thus be absorbed by reduced layovers, short turns
at Moorgate or Putney Bridge etc etc.

There are no spare H&C paths in all this; they are taken up by the
trains from Wimbledon extended over the north circle. The frequency
end-to-end would be every 8 mins, giving a 4-minute frequency where
the route wraps round itself between High St Ken and Aldgate (via
King's Cross). Earl's Court - High St Ken, Aldgate - Tower Hill and
Gloucester Rd - H St Ken each every 8 mins as at present. [Assuming 2-
min headways round the circle - I'm not sure exactly how many tph run
nowadays; in the good old days of District trains to Hounslow they
managed to squeeze 1 1/2 min headways through the south side.]

The only other change would be rerouting & extension of some Met
trains (presumably Uxbridge) every 8 mins to Barking instead of
Aldgate, in place of the H&Cs.

And if they can run 10 or 12 tph from Crossrail to Hammersmith, even
better - that addresses TfL's other objective of increased capacity on
the Hammersmith branch (which would also be achieved with 10-car
trains at the existing frequency; but the line really needs a more
frequent service with White City et al).

So benefits all round!

Paul W

Re the confusion of Crossrail as an inner or outer service & The
Central/District/Piccadilly western branches:

Just had the thought (and posted it elsewhere) that there might be
benefit from extending the Central line from Ealing to Hayes &
Halington (inner) and leaving Crossrail to do:
*Paddington, Hayes & Harlington, Heathrow
*Padding - Hayes & Harlington - West Drayton, Iver, Langley, Slough,
Burnham, Taplow, Maidenhead, Twyford, Reading.

This gives an express service from central London to Heathrow as well
as decent and simple (reliable) service pattern for the 'slow' Reading
trains. The only thing I can see which might prevent this is whether
it is practical to extend the Central line to H&H.

I've also been convinced that Crosrail isn't best placed to deal with
the Shenfield Metro. A simple 'Wimblefield' tube (via Liverpool St and
Victoria) would do better to match up the demand from the district
Wimbledon branch and the Shenfield Metro. This would relieve the
Circle line and in turn leave the the Piccadilly with just Heathrow.
The other arm of Crossrail would then be an outer Great Eastern
service (or C2C) to match up with the outer Great Western Service.

On 30 Dec 2007, 23:48, Tom Anderson wrote:
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'