Recent content by TommyL4

An underappreciated reason could be that the 500 series was developed solely by JR West and primarily tailored to the Sanyo Shinkansen (such as the max speed of 300km/h at the time), while the 700 and N700 series were jointly developed by JR Central and JR West. Given the dominance of the...

If you can understand Japanese, you can tell from the notes that these trains indeed operate on different days, and thus have different names to make a distinction. Nozomi 120 operates on Nov 20-24, 29, 30, Dec 5-7, 12, 14, 15, 21, 22, 26, 31, Jan 2, 11, 15, Feb 1, 8, 9, 16, 22 and 23. Mizuho...

It boils down to your specific destinations. For context, the circular JR line, the Yamanote line, is roughly the boundary of central Tokyo and covers the three major sub-city centers on its western side. The two metro companies offer the best coverage within central Tokyo, and I personally...

To be fair, different from many other services, Thameslink is very similar to the Shonan-Shinjuku Line or the Ueno-Tokyo Line: through services via central London/Tokyo that connect two (or more) distinct lines in different parts of the network, and simply calling it "Thameslink", or something...

A bit off-topic, but I suspect not much additional capacity is available. Morden-Kennington is already 28 (or 30?) tph at peek. 34~36 tph may be doable with better signalling and the split, but the capacity increase is not that large. The Victoria line has went from 28.5 tph to 36 tph since the...

In the long run, indeed. But for like an hour or so, sticking to asymmetrical service patterns is feasible as long as some extra stabling space exists on both ends, and the service can be then gradually adjusted during the off-peak period.

A 2017 post from the Diamond Geezer blog may help: https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2017/03/tubesquash.html, which is based on released TfL data available via the link in the blog. The subject is overcrowding rather than total capacity, though.

I believe the Japanese have always managed to reverse all Tokaido Shinkansen services at Tokyo station with only 6 platforms. Given HS2 will also have 6 platfroms at OOC, is there a specific reason why it's not possible to terminate all HS2 services at OOC if the OOC-Euston section is to be...

Emmm, but Canning Town-Woolwich Arsenal probably will be covered by DLR in the 2000s anyway :D

Quite curious about what upgrading of the line through Sheffield will be like, emmm.

Victoria did have international services decades ago before Eurostar came into being, in the form of boat trains :D

Emmm, if we leave aside sports, changing station names in accordance with commercial interest doesn't seem to be an odd thing for London Underground. Wasn't Brent renamed Brent Cross, after the shopping centre, in 1976? That's only 40 years from now. The case with Overground stations may be a...

As a non-UK citizen, the whole Brexit process just reminds me of Arrow's impossibility theorem, and surely this can't be easily fixed through a series of "binary" votings...

Isn't that exactly why "It's a TFL map":D I personally would love to see Thameslink appear on whatever-its-name-is map, but the criteria would be worth considering. As suggested above, a central London version along with a Greater London version, both with everything on them, would be nice...

My original thinking is something like changing from 12 EB/Richmond-Upminster + 6 Wimbleware + 6 Wimbledon-Upminster/Barking/Tower Hill to 9 EB/Richmond-Upminster + 3 EB/Richmond-Edgware Road + 3 Wimbleware + 9 Wimbledon-Upminster/Barking/Tower Hill, so not as complex an operation as threads 28...