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| Re: Thameslink 2020 inches closer (357631) | |||
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Re: Thameslink 2020 inches closer |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Sat Dec 23 10:24:41 2006, in response to Re: Thameslink 2020 inches closer, posted by Fytton on Mon Dec 18 09:51:50 2006. This begs the question of whether an enhanced service via London Bridge will mean a reduced service from Victoria - which might not be popular with people down the Brighton line.Exactly. The layout through East Croydon is rather limited (actually, the phrase "bursting at the seams" springs to mind - it's why doing in the GEx is so popular among planning types). Anything on the Slow Lines can be paralleled by a West Croydon train, making full use of the Victoria Slow Lines and either pair of London Bridge Lines. The Fast Lines, however, merge (although thankfully, southbound effectively south of East Croydon station) - neither route can be used to full capacity: the London Bridge route can only be filled by diverting trains from the Slow Lines to the Fast Lines, whilst the Victoria route can take the half-hourly "fast" trains from Horsham/Dorking no problem. If these weren't enough in terms of constraints, the layout north of New Cross Gate effectively halves the capacity of the four tracks of the London Bridge Lines, meaning that it's far easier to send more trains to Victoria. If we wanted to base service patterns on leaving the levers well alone, we'd get something like: 12tph London Bridge Slow - West Croydon 12tph London Bridge Fast - Brighton Slow / East Grinstead / Caterham etc 12tph Victoria Slow - West Croydon 12tph Victoria Slow - Brighton Slow / East Grinstead / Caterham etc 24tph Victoria Fast - Brighton Fast Obviously this is silly on many levels, but it demonstrates quite how awful the layout is. I don't know about the Guildford service - that's James Rail Blue's part of London, so I'll leave him to comment. Presumably it's via Forest Hill. Whether it would run fast or slow between London Bridge and West Croydon will really determine how well it does - in general, this route would not attract many passengers from Sutton or beyond if it ran slow (and unsurprisingly, this route's tended to have abysmal service). Routeing the Bookham branch into London Bridge is a very good idea in itself - as Waterloo trains they're really rather wasted as it is the slowest of the three vaguely sensible routes to Guildford. It also solves the issue of running an Epsom - West Croydon service - terminating trains at West Croydon from the west is a silly idea as it blocks the Up Wallington Line; running them to Victoria just about ensures that the train empties out at West Croydon. Ultimately, if TL3k is to work, a lot of other things need to be done, particularly in South London. |
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