Next LUL line?

[Peter Mugridge]

Battersea Power Station appears to be cursed!

I have wondered about an extension of the Northern Line from Morden to Sutton in the past.

 

[ntg]

I don't think there will ever be a completely new "tube" sized line. Any new lines are likely to be, as with Crossrail, full "heavy rail" gauge with OHL- there's no reason with modern tunnelling machines to build a small tunnel; with TBMs the cost of tunnelling something the size of the Channel Tunnel is only marginally more expensive than a tube line, with the main problem being spoil disposal! Might as well build big and get the benefits of space.

I also agree with this. The only future metro lines will be trams or elevated light rail schemes, given the array of local proposals and the fact the government seems to have recently decided such schemes are the way forward (cf. "Green light for trams", Abbey Line conversion).

Especially given the integration of rail in London and the impending Oyster expansion, there's no point in having tube gauge railways running through London when full heavy rail is an option.

It makes me wonder if we'll in fact see lines like the Metropolitan be converted back into standard heavy rail. It would be a ready made crossrail. now that would be ironic! Chelney/Crossrail 2 will seemingly remove large sections of the Central and District lines from the tube map (or not if the newer metro maps remain popular).

It is a shame the Green Party crossrail will never happen though.

 

[HSTEd]

We should really build Crossrail 2 to Berne Gauge, especially if the tunnels on the District Line section would need rebuilding anyway to take trains larger than S-stock, the lack of commuter trains to connect too at each end renders the stock captive anyway and building to that loading gauge allows double decker trains to be introduced in the future a la RER.

 

[ntg]

Absolutely. There's only so much you can do with adding carriages and lengthening platforms. If we don't plan for this now we'll have to increase the gauge of all the tunnels within 50 years anyway.

 

[jopsuk]

but so-called "Berne" gauge is not as big as you think.

What would be ideal is UIC GC gauge, which is what HS1 is built to.

 

[swt_passenger]

but so-called "Berne" gauge is not as big as you think.

What would be ideal is UIC GC gauge, which is what HS1 is built to.

'Berne Gauge' or PPI was defined in 1914 or something. A heck of a lot has changed since then, it is really only of historic interest now...

 

[Waddon]

I sort of hope the Northern extension to Battersea doesnt go ahead, they should extend instead from Kennington down to Balham as a fast line, stopping only at Stockwell. Would be a massive boost to capacity in Clapham, which is critically overcrowded, especially with those tiny narrow island platforms at two stations, and a huge increase in speed from the outer boroughs... but I suppose we have to keep the Americans and the property developers happy

 

[tbtc]

It makes me wonder if we'll in fact see lines like the Metropolitan be converted back into standard heavy rail

Does anyone know how many more people could fit onto full sized train (either with "378" seating, or conventional) compared to an Underground train?

 

[Nym]

Define fit...

I've seen 200+pax fit onto a single 158 carrage before now, wasn't comfy though. (I was layed out in a luggage rack...)

 

[tsr]

I propose:

Reading-Heathrow-Kingston-Sutton-East Croydon-Bromley-Bexley-Dartford-Thurrock then onto one of the East Anglian lines somewhere.

I can imagine that the economic benefits for southeast London and East Anglia could be quite impressive in the long term, not to mention the extra connections for Kingston.

This would be like a parallel Crossrail, in a tunnel in the suburban/urban areas, with both fast and stopping services. I would think an interchange with a shuttle to Stratford International and another one with a shuttle to Harwich would both be good. Harwich less so.

You could envisage a service from Bristol, say, or somewhere in Wales, calling at Reading, Heathrow, East Croydon, the HS1 interchange, Ipswich and Norwich or another place in East Anglia.

An alternative could be to run it straight into Stratford onto the Norfolk/Suffolk route but then options for Essex might be more limited.

Then, of course, you'd have an option for Gatwick-Heathrow via Redhill, East Croydon and Kingston, with a tunnel starting south of East Croydon, joining the West-East route at an underground junction station, which would also link up with Tramlink.

 

[ntg]

Does anyone know how many more people could fit onto full sized train (either with "378" seating, or conventional) compared to an Underground train?

Capacity aside, an Aylsebury to Southend route might be worth pursuing, both places having formerly been (in the depths of history, latterly) London Underground destinations.

 

[LE Greys]

For a true Tube line, instead of running the Chelney route to Wimbledon, send it westwards to Barnes, Chiswick and Gunnersbury, where it would divide into two. The northern branch would continue to New Brentford, Osterley and Southall, whilst the southern branch would follow the Kew Bridge loop down to Feltham, then cross to Heathrow. Not exactly Airtrack, but it makes access easier, serves a part of London with no current Tube service and replaces the Feltham bus link.

 

[tripleseis]

And what about the possibility they keep touting of Chiltern running Aylesbury to Watford? (Could this be worked into the EWR patterns?)

If Croxley goes ahead along with East-West it would mean people in Watford will be able to travel to Oxford by train without having to go via London. It would ease the A41 between Watford and Aylesbury too.

 

[Mutant Lemming]

When Barnet FC were proposing to build a 10'000 seater stadium at Copthall they did envisage an extension from Mill Hill East to Copthall which would have also served some proposed new housing. All the plans were opposed vehemently by well-to-do locals and shelved.
Re-instating the Bakerloo to Watford Junction and maybe even along the path of the old LM branch to Rickmansworth (a lot of housing has been built nearby) are a few outside possibilities.
With the current mega-spends earmarked for Crossrail, Thameslink 2000 (!), HS2 and a new London airport with associated transport links, it is highly unlikley any large scale projects with the associated massive spends involved are likely to happen in the capital.

 

[Statto]

I haven't seen the article, so am wondering whether it was a TfL plan or some sort of speculative article? Just curious as Slough seems to be a bit far out for the Underground?

So are some stations on the NW section of the Met line, & Epping on the Central line, i can see the idea of the Underground linking Heathrow with Slough, it'd save passengers comming from West of Slough for Heathrow on having to go through Central London then back out again, or transfer to the Rail link Coach at Reading.

 

[LE Greys]

So are some stations on the NW section of the Met line, & Epping on the Central line, i can see the idea of the Underground linking Heathrow with Slough, it'd save passengers comming from West of Slough for Heathrow on having to go through Central London then back out again, or transfer to the Rail link Coach at Reading.

I can definitely agree with that, so much to that it's going to become an amendment to my proposed west end of the Chelney, thus linking Feltham-Heathrow-Slough. I might delete the Southall branch as well, despite the fact that there is a ready access route to the main line station.

 

[HSTEd]

Lets have a "High Speed" Crossrail line, using Cl395 style trains that can run at 140mph or faster outside the central core tunnels.

The objective being to spread the London commuter belt out as far as possibel with commuter style service, spreading the benefits of the economy of the capital over as wide an area as possible.

 

[Nym]

HSTEd, could say that there was a missed opertinity with the Thameslink Stock to have that specified for 125 and do linespeed improvments galore N of the thames, can't on the south, 3rd rail.

Or the same for Crossrail, but at the moment it's rather one sided, If the docklands branch wasn't there, or the Shenfeild Shuttles where shared between Liverpool St and Crossrail, then you could quite conceivably had services running (and still could actually) Oxford - Cheltenham, Swindon / Bristol - Norwich etc.

 

[Crispy75]

South London currently has a lot of track that has to do double duty as urban metro and long distance rail. A proposal that I've seen several people argue for is to not create new underground metro lines. Instead, get the long distance trains underground in the suburbs and run them non-stop to 2/3 stop "crossrail" tunnels under the city. The stations are the expensive parts of undergound railways, so building metro lines with lots of stops is very expensive. By putting the long distance trains underground, the South London rail network can be reconfigure for much better interchange and frequency, turning it into a proper metro like North London's tube.

 

[jopsuk]

On the other hand, if you go to the expense of tunneling the "Metro" lines, you get a system that is much more resiliant to bad weather- outer suburban and long distance would be affected anyway, outside of London, even if they ran in tunnels from the suburbs.

The point about totally seperating metro and other services is defintely sound however. That's (partly) why a "freight orbital" should be a key part of the london infrastucture- get through-freight off the North and West London lines

 

[HSTEd]

Or the same for Crossrail, but at the moment it's rather one sided, If the docklands branch wasn't there, or the Shenfeild Shuttles where shared between Liverpool St and Crossrail, then you could quite conceivably had services running (and still could actually) Oxford - Cheltenham, Swindon / Bristol - Norwich etc.

Well if they were going to do something clever with those spare 8tph that were in teh original Crossrail specification they could have run 10 coach fixed formation 140mph capable trains to bristol or even Cardiff, using the GWML fasts west of Paddington.

Now that would be a high speed metro, would have to work out what to do with them in the east though.

(Sub Hour journey times from Bristol and 1hr30 or something for Cardiff potentially thanks to insane acceleration of Cl395 style stock and the higher top speeds made possible by the upcoming upgrade)

EDIT: This is assuming the trains were all routed via Bristol Parkway, with 4tph to South Wales and 4tph to Bristol, however it might be better if the trains to Bristol were to be routed via Bath despite the longer journey times and the loss of "Turn up and ride" frequency at the Parkway station.

And I have now worked out where they would come from in the east:
4tph Norwich (additionally serving stations currently on the London-Ipswich route), 2tph Clacton, 1tph Colchester Town, 1tph Braintree
heading to in the west:
4tph Cardiff/Newport, 4tph Bristol Temple Meads/Western-Super-Mare

Train services would be paired so each 2+tph Eastern destination has an even split of trains to each western destination. Colchester Town and Braintree would swap over to gain 1tp2h to each one.
This would free several trains per hour at both Paddington and Liverpool street stations and would possibly enable diversion of WCML services into the former (or even HS2 when it opens) and possibly even the relegation of Fenchurch street to a peak-hours only station in the east.


The tube style nature of the contained services on Crossrail means that there would be little problem delaying or rearranging trains on the fly to fit the longer distance train timetable as they are effective at turn up and ride frequencies along the entire length of the route, especially so in the Paddington-Stratford core that would be shared between the services.

 

[jopsuk]

If you upgraded both routes to 140mph throughout, you'd be looking at, what, an hourish each for Bristol and Norwich? Two and half maybe for the end to end?

 

[HSTEd]

If you upgraded both routes to 140mph throughout, you'd be looking at, what, an hourish each for Bristol and Norwich? Two and half maybe for the end to end?

Yeah, probably actually less than that since the Crossrail website claims 17 minutes from Stratford to Paddington, which is the only place it has to run all stops by design.

North of Shenfield you are probably limited to 100mph by all the level crossings and the like but even so you can probably do Norwich with a decent stopping pattern in 90 minutes using trains that can accelerate like a 395.

 

[tbtc]

They are clearly being very "careful" with Crossrail, ensuring that it will only have short distance services at the start.

Using it for longer distance services sounds good, but then the same could be said about using Thameslink for Leeds - Brighton/ Southampton, or using the WLL for Birmingham equivalents.

Maybe in the medium term, but not in the next few years...

 

[341o2]

Not that far when you consider how close Heathrow is to Slough. And would be no further than Watford either!

Reminds me that Watford was once served by the Bakerloo, and the work started, and abandoned to extend the Northern line from Edgeware to Watford, a proposal to extend the Piccadilly northward to Potters Bar was never started.

 

[Slugger Onions]

The Chelsea - Hackney route is still safeguarded and is now the responsibility of Crossrail;

http://www.crossrail.co.uk/route/safeguarding/chelsea-hackney-line

This is something I don't understand.

I thought that Crossrail was for larger suburban trains with larger loading gauges, underground stations, etc. and to link commuter lines that currently terminate at Paddington and Liverpool Street.

So why is the Chelsea-Hackney line going to also be for larger suburban trains with larger loading gauges, underground stations, etc?
Do the commuter lines feeding Wimbledon need linking to central London?
Will these larger trains and their longer platforms be a better solution and give a better service than the smaller metro trains that the long-established plan had?
Is it worth losing the originally planned-for station at Piccadilly circus and the link it would have with Victoria and Tottenham court road?

I personally think it would be better to keep it a metro line to tube loading-gauge as was long-planned than to build it to national rail loading gauge. Surely there's other tunnel routes that would be better as crossrail 2 that could link commuter lines via interchanges with tube stations?

 

[trentside]

I personally think it would be better to keep it a metro line to tube loading-gauge as was long-planned than to build it to national rail loading gauge. Surely there's other tunnel routes that would be better as crossrail 2 that could link commuter lines via interchanges with tube stations?

I'm inclined to agree with you.

I'm presuming the reason for the change is the desire for larger trains, but the larger tunnels will surely make the project more expensive and more difficult to construct through central London, especially when it comes to providing interchange at the already complex LU stations.

Of course, I'd imagine that were the line to be constructed it would be designed to be driverless (were it for LU use).

 

[Eagle]

Do the commuter lines feeding Wimbledon need linking to central London?

If it gets trains away from the chronically congested Clapham Junction and Waterloo, then yes definitely.

 

[stuartmoss]

I think the Slough suggestion to Heathrow makes total sense. If you look on Google Maps you can see that Slough is virtually a part of the Greater London conurbation anyway, close enough to Heathrow and certainly no further out of Central London than Amersham, in fact it looks closer.

 

[trentside]

I think the Slough suggestion to Heathrow makes total sense. If you look on Google Maps you can see that Slough is virtually a part of the Greater London conurbation anyway, close enough to Heathrow and certainly no further out of Central London than Amersham, in fact it looks closer.

I've been thinking a little about this recently, wondering whether it would be possible to introduce a limited stop Slough - Heathrow - Central London service. I'd imagine that by utilising the four tracking from Northfields you could introduce a limited stop service from Slough, serving the Airport and then express to London calling at Acton Town, Hammersmith then all stations to Arnos Grove.

Obviously, you'd have to find sufficient paths and probably a new place for an engineering test track.