SWT trains plans (via Vince Cable)

[CalderRail]

Not sure if all (or any) of this has been previously posted;

http://us6.campaign-archive1.com/?u=60995e2b940263245ad65daa7&id=dbb816712a

On Friday 28th March, I met the Managing Director of South West Trains, Tim Shoveller, to press for action on residents’ concerns over congestion on the main routes via Twickenham, lack of step-free access and poor services on the loop and Shepperton line.

Tim Shovellor explained that rail travel continues to rise – by 2% pa – despite the recession and higher fares; so there is constant, growing pressure on an infrastructure which is now over 125 years old. He discussed with me the main planned improvements:
10 car trains to reduce congestion at peak hours are now being introduced on the Windsor line service and will be rolled out over the next year

In July, a programme will be launched for introducing 150 new carriages over the next three years, permitting all Reading as well as Windsor trains to have 10 car trains. The Hounslow loop (Whitton / Twickenham / St. Margaret’s) will have ten car trains next year and the Shepperton line by 2017.

Waterloo International is being brought back into service. Platform 20 is already being used occasionally, and will be in full use from 19th May. Platforms 21 and 22 will be reopened in June with a temporary bridge to the rest on the station.

Station improvements at Twickenham are set to start, initially with work on the footbridge and step-free access, in time for the Rugby World Cup.

Next is Whitton Station, subject to confirmation in June. Whitton is the number 4 out of 184 stations in line for improvements and this should now happen. St. Margaret’s is lower down the priority list, but with a 500+ petition behind it, I will press for early work.

Service improvements involve complex signalling adjustments but there are plans to increase frequency on the Hounslow loop on Sunday (Whitton; Twickenham; St. Margaret’s) and there is a good prospect of moving to a 15 minute gap between trains at Strawberry Hill by May 2015. Disappointingly the Hampton – Shepperton line is unlikely to see improvements in frequency before 2017 on current plans.

To help passengers find out what is going on when services are disrupted, there is growing use of Twitter @sw_trains
There is the prospect of steady improvements in reducing congestion on the train service; with Waterloo Internation reopening, some increase in services as well, as station development at Twickenham and Whitton. This is progress but more needs to be done.

The Lib Dem team will keep campaigning for step-free access at St. Margaret’s station and for service improvements for Hampton.

Best Wishes

Vince Cable
MP for Twickenham

 

[hassaanhc]

Aren't the Waterloo International platforms to cover the extension of the Suburban P1-4? So once all International platforms come back and the Suburbans go out of use they are back to square one :neutral:.

Would welcome the improvement in the hourly frequency on Sundays, quite a drop in frequencies on the lines in the area on that day. The Hounslow "loop" services do not run which instantly reduces 2tph. This also leaves no direct services on Sundays between any station out of Hounslow-Barnes Bridge and Whitton-Mortlake. Meanwhile Twickenham/St Margarets/Whitton have 1tph each on the Windsor line and both directions of the Kingston Loop (at Twickenham still has 2tph to Reading). Strawberry Hill, the other station mentioned, has 1tph in each direction on Sundays and 2tph for the rest of the week which they are looking to double on Mon-Sat. I'd imagine it would be extremely helpful for rail travel between the major town centres of Twickenham/Kingston/Richmond and reduce pressure on the bus services, after all 1tph isn't exactly convenient!

 

[swt_passenger]

Aren't the Waterloo International platforms to cover the extension of the Suburban P1-4? So once all International platforms come back and the Suburbans go out of use they are back to square one :neutral:.

No. For about the last five years they have been saying that all the international platforms will need to be fully used. The main issue has been the scope of works in the station throat to re-align all the 8 lines between Vauxhall with the revised groups of platforms. As a side issue to the main suburban lengthening they also want to adjust the few remaining short platforms in the middle part of the station to 12 car length as well.

AFAICT it still hasn't been decided how long (i.e. 10 or 12 car) all the new platforms on the site of P1-4 will be, you may recall that originally they intended to 'lose' 1 and 2 permanently, to avoid having to build anything outside the footprint of the existing approach viaducts.

They have also pointed out somewhere that they want to transfer an entire 'service group' into the international platforms, so that passengers don't have to decide whether their next train will be in the main station or not. That seems to suggest most of the Windsor side trains will go in there, with all the necessary junction changes to allow parallel moves in and out.

The CP5 plan includes this:

The agreed high level programme scope fully reopens Waterloo International Terminal and
the approaches to platforms 20-24, with infrastructure works at Queenstown Road,
additional turnback facilities, facilitating up to 20 trains per hour across the Windsor line
service group. The scope also includes the extension of Waterloo platforms 1-4 to
accommodate 10 car trains, station works at key locations across the route and a package
of supporting mainline capacity improvement works.

Note the 'mainline capacity improvement works' is explained later as involving new infrastructure at Woking. Perhaps the flyover at last, which is key to providing additional main line services - which would need extra mainline platforms as well...

 

[Matt Taylor]

Note the 'mainline capacity improvement works' is explained later as involving new infrastructure at Woking. Perhaps the flyover at last, which is key to providing additional main line services - which would need extra mainline platforms as well...

There is room to extend platforms 6 to form a through line plus adding a single facing new platform 7 by rebuilding the down side ticket hall.

 

[mr_jrt]

There is room to extend platforms 6 to form a through line plus adding a single facing new platform 7 by rebuilding the down side ticket hall.

Pedestrianise (or just convert to one way operation) the High Street/Broadway and you could conceivably fit a platform 0 in on the other side of platform 1. 6 through platforms and the London bay would turn the station into quite the beast...