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| Re: West London Line & West Coast Main Line (Was: Cockfosters) (369197) | |||
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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 17:20:12 2007, in response to Re: West London Line & West Coast Main Line (Was: Cockfosters), posted by David Fairthorne on Sat Jan 13 15:54:40 2007. Neither the Tattenham Corner nor the Caterham branch has very high ridership, and both have short platforms, so it seems logical to serve them with short trains. But I don't think commuters on these branches would appreciate street-running.Caterham's probably redeemable. I can't be bothered to dig out the stats, but my perception is that on the Tattenham Corner branch only Reedham and Smitham have significant ridership benefitting from the current arrangement (and these stations can obviously be moved to the Main Slow Lines). The effect of the western end of the Tattenham Corner Line being an abject failure is actually quite spectacular - the various roads into Epsom (and to a lesser extent Ewell, Cheam, and Sutton) from the Downs get very busy very early, then any street (not to mention Epsom & Ewell Borough Council's two free car parks that were supposed to serve Court Recreation Ground!) vaguely near a sensible railway station gets littered with commuters' cars all day. - 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. Not sure what you have in mind here. Run 4tph of 12-car expresses an hour out of Victoria: 1tph Clapham Junction, East Croydon, Hayward's Heath, Burgess Hill, Hassocks, Preston Park, Hove, Shoreham, Worthing, Barnham, Bognor Regis. 1tph Clapham Junction, East Croydon, Hayward's Heath, Lewes, Polegate, Eastbourne. 2tph Clapham Junction, East Croydon, Hayward's Heath, Brighton. Then use 4-car trains to form the following connections into/out of those trains: 1tph Gatwick Airport, Three Bridges, Hayward's Heath (wait to be overtaken by Bognor fast train), Wivelsfield, Plumpton, Cooksbridge, Lewes, Glynde, Berwick, Polegate, Eastbourne 1tph Gatwick Airport, Three Bridges, Hayward's Heath (wait to be overtaken by Eastbourne fast train), Wivelsfield, Burgess Hill, Hassocks, Preston Park, Hove, Portslade, Shoreham, Worthing, West Worthing, Durrington, Goring, Angmering, Littlehampton 2tph Gatwick Airport, Three Bridges, Hayward's Heath (wait to be overtaken by Brighton fast train), Wivelsfield, Burgess Hill, Hassocks, Preston Park, Brighton These 4-car trains would be half of 8-car trains, the other half going to: 2tph Horsham (stopping) 1tph Littlehampton (semi-fast) 1tph Portsmouth & Southsea (semi-fast) There would of course be theoretical capacity to strengthen one half or other of these trains to 8 cars (although there are short platforms on the Eastbourne route), so long as this 4tph did not originate on the Thameslink route (and presuming that Salfords has been lengthened). Actually, this 4tph should probably (as they'd provide the main Gatwick service) switch over the the Quarry Lines and run into Victoria. (Any WLL trains (up to 4tph) would fit nicely through whilst all the combining/decombining at Gatwick and stopping at Three Bridges was going on.) At peak times an extra 4tph can be found by making the in/out connections at Hayward's Heath separate trains, running fast on the additional side. This would then leave the matters of: - providing a service via Redhill (probably terminating at Gatwick) - providing London Bridge / Thameslink service (these last two may nicely add up) - deciding where to send East Grinstead / Uckfield services (London Bridge is better operationally) - working out how the heck to serve Balcombe (this is the downside of nice interchanges at Hayward's Heath) |
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