Crossrail link to Reading hangs in the balance

My completely off-the-wall idea is to join up Crossrail with the
Hammersmith & City and run Crossrail trains (from Shenfield) that
would otherwise terminate at Paddington on to Hammersmith. After all,
Crossrail as proposed is just another tube line - Shenfield is closer
than Amersham, hardly further than Epping or Upminster.

The pattern could be:

4 fast Heathrow
4 slow Heathrow
8 Maidenhead / Reading
8 Hammersmith

Or 12 Hammersmith if Ken can't get BAA to agree to HeX on Crossrail.

For Crossrail it would save all the expense of the sidings and ghost
station needed to satisfy Health & Safety re passengers staying on
terminating trains at Paddington.

There would be a huge benefit to the Circle Line. All Circle and
Wimbleware trains would continue beyond Edgware Road, providing for
the first time since 1868 a proper much-needed frequent service from
west to north Circle, dramatically improving performance by removing
the conflicts and bottleneck west of Edgware Road. Running as a
Teapot line (Wimbledon - Edgware Road - Aldgate - High St Ken -
Edgware Road - Aldgate and vice versa) would solve the Circle problem
as well.

The two lines virtually intersect at Paddington anyway so joining them
shouldn't be too difficult. Platform lengthening and ancillary works
at the H&C stations, plus a new Royal Oak, would be challenging, but
no doubt not insurmountable.

Tom Anderson wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Jan 2008, paulweiser.uk wrote:
>
>> My completely off-the-wall idea is to join up Crossrail with the
>> Hammersmith & City and run Crossrail trains (from Shenfield) that
>> would otherwise terminate at Paddington on to Hammersmith.
>
> You're not the first person to suggest this. I can't remember who
> was, at least on utl, but it's a cudgel i've taken up. It's an
> excellent idea.
>> The pattern could be:
>>
>> 4 fast Heathrow
>> 4 slow Heathrow
>> 8 Maidenhead / Reading
>> 8 Hammersmith
>>
>> Or 12 Hammersmith if Ken can't get BAA to agree to HeX on Crossrail.
>
> Which they won't.
>
> Current plans, the last i heard, only have 10 tph going beyond
> Paddington - 4 tph to Heathrow, 2 tph to West Drayton, and 4 tph to
> Maidenhead, all all-stops, i think, although exactly what happens at
> the far end is still up in the air. That's 14 tph to dispose of at
> Paddington, which would be a doubling of the current H&C frequency.
>
> I think the constraint on frequency at Heathrow is the need to
> reverse. This is one reason the Airtrack plan is such a good one -
> you can run trains on from T5 to Staines and reverse there, where
> there's room for a higher-capacity layout. That would let more trains
> go to Heathrow (well, Staines), although at the expense of other
> destinations i think.

Not sure about that Tom, doesn't the current airtrack proposal only have
terminating trains from Staines originating both at Waterloo, and from the
Woking direction (including Guildford). In other words the 'HEx' tracks at
T5 are arranged as entering one pair of platforms, from the central area,
alongside a currently unused space for trains from the 'airtrack' route
only. Side by side two platform terminii, rather than a four platform
through station?

Clearly if Crossrail had dual voltage units there is no basic reason they
couldn't carry on onto the SW lines, but does the T5 station even allow for
this future possibility?

Paul S

And there I was thinking I'd invented it! I won't even mention my
earlier rather more hare-brained idea of splitting the Bakerloo west
of Paddington to take over the Hammersmith branch...

Be that as it may, the Circle Line problem I was referring to was not
the flat junctions, fiddly though they are, but the problem of running
round in circles exacerbating delays and preventing recovery, which
led to the current (I believe) proposal for the Hammersmith - Aldgate
- H St Ken - Edgware Road "teacup". My suggestion would replace this
with the Wimbledon - Edgware Rd - Aldgate - H St Ken - Aldgate loop.
Any late running can thus be absorbed by reduced layovers, short turns
at Moorgate or Putney Bridge etc etc.

There are no spare H&C paths in all this; they are taken up by the
trains from Wimbledon extended over the north circle. The frequency
end-to-end would be every 8 mins, giving a 4-minute frequency where
the route wraps round itself between High St Ken and Aldgate (via
King's Cross). Earl's Court - High St Ken, Aldgate - Tower Hill and
Gloucester Rd - H St Ken each every 8 mins as at present. [Assuming 2-
min headways round the circle - I'm not sure exactly how many tph run
nowadays; in the good old days of District trains to Hounslow they
managed to squeeze 1 1/2 min headways through the south side.]

The only other change would be rerouting & extension of some Met
trains (presumably Uxbridge) every 8 mins to Barking instead of
Aldgate, in place of the H&Cs.

And if they can run 10 or 12 tph from Crossrail to Hammersmith, even
better - that addresses TfL's other objective of increased capacity on
the Hammersmith branch (which would also be achieved with 10-car
trains at the existing frequency; but the line really needs a more
frequent service with White City et al).

So benefits all round!

Paul W

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