"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message , at 09:40:48 on Wed, 3
Dec 2008, Andrew Heenan remarked:
Crossrail WILL reach Reading, offering myriad onward opportunities
(look at
a rail map - where else should it go?); Crossrail WILL reach Ebbsfleet
(it
would be crazy not to, until HS1 is extended to Heathrow!); Crossrail
will
not stop at Shenfield, looking slightly confused, perhaps a little
embarassed.

But don't expect such obvious common sense until just after it opens -
the
'current package' is all about getting the bloody thing built without
too
many people whining "We Can't Afford it - Cancel It".

Once it's built, people with brains will start to say Shenfield? Abbey
Wood?
Other Stations Halfway To A Logical Junction? Get Real!

And where is the obvious place "past Shenfield"? Colchester is the
nearest that makes sense.

Southend Victoria? It is as close to Central London as Reading is.

Peter Smyth

On Wed, 3 Dec 2008 20:56:27 -0000, "John Rowland"
wrote:

Paul Corfield wrote:
On Wed, 3 Dec 2008 18:15:53 +0000, Tom Anderson
wrote:

Outside Manhattan, the subway is substantially, perhaps even mostly,
elevated. It includes sections running on top of roads, and the
marvellous and entirely aerial Broadway Junction:

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=40.677957%2C-73.902283
http://www.hopetunnel.org/subway/nyct/010219/117.jpg
http://flickr.com/photos/hielkeoud/2613825920/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/coverwi...on/3014806927/
http://flickr.com/photos/jpchan/2368185126/

The Street View mode on the google map is a pretty good way to take
a look round the structure.

Curse you Mr Anderson - that Google Street View is just too good.
That looks the most amazing structure and I'm sure there are other
amazing subway junctions to sit and peruse. I fear I may go square
eyed while undertaking more research. Now if only the Americans would
stop treating visitors like potential terrorists I'd be persuaded to
go back to NYC to take a closer look.

They seem to have a lot of "bridges" which are practically a couple of rails
in the air. The only time I've ever seen the underside of a train in England
was in the subway (i.e. pedestrian underpass) under the Volks Railway.

Have you seen the Bridge near the end of Dirty Harry, on the road up
to San Quentin? That carries very heavy Rail.

On 3 Dec, 20:22, MIG wrote:
Shenfield is a junction* and also a place where people from Harold
Wood etc can change to longer-distance services. *

Reading will have four local trains an hour arriving from the east
(two semi-fast ex-Paddington, two starting at Slough), so from a
passenger's point of view, those kinds of journeys are well covered.
The only thing missing is being able to change at Reading onto a
direct train to east of Paddington. Given the time differential and
the fact most services at Reading are going to Paddington anyway, I
don't think that's a huge loss.

Maybe that's what will happen. *Or maybe the stations between
Maidenhead and Reading will lose their service.

Station, singular. There's no population to speak of in between.

U

In message
MIG wrote:

On Dec 3, 5:53*pm, Graeme Wall wrote:
In message
* * * * * 1506 wrote:

[snip]



IIRC, earlier in the thread I conceded that converting the Hammersmith
Branch to a Crossrail extension is perhaps not a good idea.

On the positive side this means that the branch will remain something
of a preserved example of early urban transit. *Between Westbourne
park and Goldhawk Road, the route is in essence an "Elevated". *There
are not too many examples of "Els" left anywhere in the world. *Only
Chicago has signifficant sections remaining.

You've not looked at south London lately then...

Isn't there a sort of circular elevated route in Paris? It's been a
long time ...

Line 2 has an elevated section which crosses the throat of Gare du Nord.

And, of course, there's the District/Piccadilly line between Ealing and
Hammersmith

--
Graeme Wall
This address is not read, substitute trains for rail.
Transport Miscellany at http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail/index.html

On Wed, 3 Dec 2008 12:29:15 -0800 (PST), MIG
wrote:

Isn't there a sort of circular elevated route in Paris? It's been a
long time ...

Lines 2 and 6 form a circle although you have to change between lines at
Nation and Charles de Gaulle Etoile in order to do the full circle.

There's also Line 5 that shoots through the roof of Gare d'Austerlitz
and then across the Seine.
--
Paul C

"Graeme Wall" wrote

And, of course, there's the District/Piccadilly line between Ealing and
Hammersmith

One that hasn't been mentioned is the DLR between Tower Gateway and
Crossharbour - partly on the 1840 brick viaduct of the Blackwall Railway and
partly on concrete viaducts 150 years newer. In its time it has seen rope,
steam, and electric traction, and part of it is, at least more or less, on
the alignment of a section of the Millwall Railway which was once
horse-worked.

Peter

MIG wrote:
The problem to my disordered mind is that Crossrail will have to be
duplicated by local diesel trains all the way to Maidenhead in order
to cover the bit from Maidenhead to Reading (which is a huge hub).

It would probably be more useful, and even out capacity usage, to run
Waterloo to Reading via LHR and Slough, then all stations Maidenhead to
Reading. Then all trains starting at Paddington could be non-stop to Slough.


The reason is presumably to save on some miles of electrification, but
it's not a logical place to terminate the services while making a
sensible use of paths.

Might be more sensible to electrify to at least Oxford, otherwise there
will still need to be an awful lot of diesel trains.

Colin McKenzie

--
No-one has ever proved that cycle helmets make cycling any safer at the
population level, and anyway cycling is about as safe per mile as walking.
Make an informed choice - visit www.cyclehelmets.org.

Christopher A. Lee wrote:
If you want another modern example, how about BART? Outside the city
centres it is elevated apart from sections in the central median of
freeways.

And Manila has one, on concrete viaduct right through the centre, ISTR.

Colin McKenzie

--
No-one has ever proved that cycle helmets make cycling any safer at the
population level, and anyway cycling is about as safe per mile as walking.
Make an informed choice - visit www.cyclehelmets.org.

On Tue, 2 Dec 2008, Peter Masson wrote:

"Tom Anderson" wrote

No, Crossrail should stop at Slough, and concentrate on being an
affordable and effective suburban railway, and not a pie-in-the-sky all
things to all people scheme.

Crossrail will go to Maidenhead, Heathrow, Shenfield, and Abbey Wood.
Any strong pressure to change any of these destinations is more likely
to mean that Crossrail doesn't happen at all than that changes will be
made.

Yes. I'm not quite mad enough to argue for changes at this stage - rather,
i point out that the scheme is not optimal. It shouldn't really be going
to the GWML at all - the Waterloo lines would be a much better
destination, but for obscure reasons, they were dropped from consideration
a very long time ago.

Subsequent add-ons are possible - Reading is the obvious one, so that
diesel trains out of Paddington can be eliminated from the Relief Lines,
while the Main Lines can become a totally 125 mph railway.

By which everyone at Reading travels to London. Nobody at Reading is going
to get on a Crossrail stopper to London when they could get a fast train.
The only market is for local commuting into Reading, and that market isn't
big enough to justify the expense.

Gravesend is a long shot, but may be needed for (and financed by)
development in the Thames Gateway.

Ditto.

Another destination west of Paddington would be nice, but no-one has
come up with any convincing case.

Hampton Court! The SWML is crying out for Crossrail - a single-seat ride
along it into the City would relieve Waterloo, the W&C, and the southern
Circle. The trouble is that you'd need to bore quite a bit more tunnel in
central London - probably on a route something like the 1938 Northern line
plan:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/twic/1591807010/sizes/o/

Perhaps diving into tunnel at Battersea, and running Victoria, perhaps
Green Park and then Oxford Street. Not at all cheap.

Richmond - Kingston did not attract universal support. Amersham -
Aylesbury would be nice, so that the Met line can concentrate on
Uxbridge and Watford, while the fast lines beyond Harrow-on-the-Hill
would become single use by Crossrail, and electrified at 25 kV OHLE. But
traffic density is insufficient to generate a business case. More trains
can't be pushed down the GWML - there's not teh demand, and capacity is
needed for freight west of Acton Yard. So I think we're stuck with the
Westbourne Park reversing sidings.

Realistically, yes.

tom

--
We don't contact anybody or seek anybody's permission for what we do. Even
if it's impersonating postal employees. -- Birdstuff

On Wed, 3 Dec 2008, 1506 wrote:

On Dec 3, 10:02*am, Mr Thant
wrote:
On 3 Dec, 17:46, 1506 wrote:

I didn't think there were too many left in NYC. *I can only recall one
short section in Manhattan. *Do the other Boroughs have many Els left?

Brooklyn is chockablock with them, and I think most of the Subway
network in Queen's is elevated.

(also, I'd question whether you can build a true El with brick
viaducts, given the lack of space underneath them)

Point taken, although I wonder what options were available in the 1860s?

Piles of compacted commoners.

tom

--
There's spaceships, snappy dialogue, death cultists, likeable characters,
underwater combat, assassinations of public figures for their own good,
zombies, Batman references, robots, memes, talking cats, and stars used
as flamethrowers. -- Alx, on 'Implied Spaces'