Ben wrote:
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.

Expensive if you need dedicated tracks, as presumably you intend. If it
was affordable, it would have been proposed instead of the Uxbridge Road
tram.

Your plan also
(a) denies people from Ealing Broadway, West Ealing, Hanwell, and
Southall a direct service to Heathrow which they currently get from
Heathrow Connect,
(b) denies people from west of Hayes a direct service to connect with
the District Line at Ealing Broadway.
(c) denies Ealing Broadway any Crossrail service at all. As Ealing is a
major traffic generator in its own right, this is plain daft.

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

"plain daft". Nicely put, thanks! Adding a stop at Ealing Broadway
would clear some of those things up whilst still giving more leverage
when negotiating with BAA to incorporate the HEx services into
Crossrail than an all stations service (esp with a better frequency).
It's illogical to think that transport improvements can be made
without spending some money.


On 6 Jan, 16:24, "Richard J." wrote:
Ben wrote:
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.

Expensive if you need dedicated tracks, as presumably you intend. If it
was affordable, it would have been proposed instead of the Uxbridge Road
tram.

Your plan also
(a) denies people from Ealing Broadway, West Ealing, Hanwell, and
Southall a direct service to Heathrow which they currently get from
Heathrow Connect,
(b) denies people from west of Hayes a direct service to connect with
the District Line at Ealing Broadway.
(c) denies Ealing Broadway any Crossrail service at all. As Ealing is a
major traffic generator in its own right, this is plain daft.

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

On Sun, 6 Jan 2008, Ben wrote:

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.

Not especially, i think. The first problem with extending the Central or
District west of Ealing Broadway is the station building itself; you'd
have to drive the tracks through it, which would mean completely
rebuilding the station, and possibly the road bridge. After that, it's not
so bad: along the north side of the alignment, you have to take a
car-park, some unused land next to the railway (might be part of an
embankment?), possibly a warehouse and some more car-park, the West Ealing
station building and possibly some houses next to it, some of the West
Ealing sidings (and you have to do something about the junction with the
branch to Greenford here), then some gardens (unless you take unused land
to the south of the alignment and shuffle the tracks over a bit), lots of
Brent Lodge Park, some sidings near Southall, some disused land and
car-park at Southall station, The Crescent, Southall (unless you can put a
viaduct over it), some kind of access road and more car-park, a gasometer,
yet more car-park, some of Minet Country Park, lorry park and sidings at
some kind of works, bits of Hayes & Harlington station, and the edges of
some industrial buildings. Then you're good.

I think there's broadly takeable land all the way to Slough from there,
actually.

Personally, i think a better bet might be to do this six-tracking and use
it for Crossrail, leaving four tracks for Great Western fasts and outers,
with Maidenhead and beyond not becoming part of Crossrail, but getting a
better fast service to Paddington.

Well, i suppose if half the Crossrail trains could be persuaded to go
somewhere other than Ealing Broadway (eg Hammersmith, Watford, West
Ruislip, Richmond, Hounslow), then you could share the tracks with either
the Central or the District. To some extent, Crossrail makes the Central
superfluous round there, so maybe the District could be extended up to
Greenford or something.

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.

Absolutely - and alternative to the Wimbledon District branch would be the
South West mainline suburban services, which are, like the Shenfield
trains, very overcrowded, and responsible for dumping a lot of people onto
LU lines in the middle of town. Indeed, if you look at the studies from
the 80s and 90s, they conclude that a Liverpool Street - Victoria
Crossrail would be a better proposition than Liverpool Street -
Paddington. However, they don't serve Heathrow or contribute to
vote-buying regeneration in the west, so Ken doesn't like them.

The other arm of Crossrail would then be an outer Great Eastern service
(or C2C) to match up with the outer Great Western Service.

To be honest, if you built the Shenfield - South East thing, you could
dispense with anything else for the time being!

tom

--
Yesterday's research projects are today's utilities and tomorrow's
historical footnotes. -- Roy Smith