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| Re: West London Line & West Coast Main Line (Was: Cockfosters) (369170) | |||
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Re: West London Line & West Coast Main Line (Was: Cockfosters) |
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Posted by Rail Blue on Sat Jan 13 14:40:07 2007, in response to Re: West London Line & West Coast Main Line (Was: Cockfosters), posted by David Fairthorne on Sat Jan 13 13:52:59 2007. That's true, so my remarks about the South London Line are irrelevant. But at some point (say Balham) your through train would have to cross over (at grade) to the fast tracks, which are at or near capacity in the peak hours.It's just about impossible to use the Victoria Fast Lines to capacity without: 1) running virtually no fast trains to London Bridge 2) making very heavy use of the single track Streatham Fast Spur (to the "Portsmouth" (i.e. Epsom) Line) 3) doing awful things to local trains to Croydon The at capacity section is through East and South Croydon stations. This raises a more serious objection to any long-distance service via the West London Line. Because not many people work in the West London Line area, such a service would not carry all that many passengers during peak hours. Therefore, in common with the Gatwick Express, it would not make good use of the available capacity of the Brighton line in the peak hours. There are various little things that would help, for instance: - Do something to the Tattenham Corner Branch. This is currently a big waste of slots across East Croydon. It's not a very popular line with commuters as it's much quicker (if currently rather illogically more expensive) from its outer end to travel into Epsom and catch a train from there. The obvious thing to do is an LRT conversion - finally build the street-running section from Croydon to Purley, then pick up the branch, run all the way to Tattenham Corner, then run into Epsom on Ashley Road and terminate on the station forecourt. - Make rather better use of the possibility of cross-platform transfers at Hayward's Heath - this can be used to provide fairly empty trains at Three Bridges and Gatwick Airport. - Lengthen the platforms at Salfords station from 8- to 12-cars, then combine short slow trains at Gatwick Airport. - Kill the Gatwick Express - at peak times it's a waste of capacity, off-peak it doesn't provide any meaningful advantage. - Create a bay platform 4 at Redhill so that those short Tonbridge trains don't waste main line slots (the only sizeable place on the line, Edenbridge, can be better served by the Uckfield Line). |
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