Orbirail

[Jorge Da Silva]

According to Wikipedia there was a proposal for a orbit railway around London connecting the North London Line, East London Line, West London Line and the South London Line, and possibly the GOBLIN. Any other information about the proposal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbirail

Orbirail was a name for a suggested orbital railway route around London.

It would have connected the extended North London Line, East London Line, the South London Line and the West London Line, possibly including the Gospel Oak to Barking Line. The combined line would have orbited London in Zone 2, Zone 3 and (possibly) Zone 4.

 

[PeterC]

Various proposals have fallen out of the crayon box over the years but this just looks like a rebranding of Overground. My only comment is that the Overground brand, which is well established, should have been kept for orbital routes and a second brand, such as TfL rail should have been used for radial routes under TfL control.

With TfL managed services there is no particular reason why customer facing branding has to mirror the operating concessions.

 

[adrock1976]

The major problem with an orbital railway is that as the trains are continuously going round in a loop, any delays can have a big knock on effect if shared with other routes, unless sufficient layover time is added in at junction stations (which would also block everything else behind on shared track).

London Underground's Circle Line (the 1949 - 2009 incarnation) suffered from that exact problem, which would cause problems in recovering the timetable as the tracks are shared with the Metropolitan, District, and Hammersmith & City. The present day incarnation of the Circle Line that was introduced in 2009 now has fixed terminal points at Hammersmith and Edgware Road, with the Circle Line trains running as a teacup route i.e. Hammersmith - Edgware Road - Kings Cross - Tower Hill - Victoria - High Street Kensington - Edgware Road.

With London Overground, the non Zone 1 terminals routes (not those serving Euston or Liverpool Street) when taken collectively could be considered as having fulfilled the Orbital concept. Although these are separate routes, by containing each side of the box, this means that delays from one section are not transmitted around the whole loop if that makes sense.

 

[NorthKent1989]

I think the Orbirail concept was proposed quite a long time before the London Overground was thought of.

The Orbirail seems to imply that it would run regular services in a zone 2 version of the Circle line, with more branches off shooting to various places.

Personally I think the lines which make up this outer circle line (ie the original LO lines) should be rebranded as the Outercircle Line with LO covering radial lines from central London to the suburbs

You could have services run from Barking round the loop then back to Gospel Oak then on to Richmond for example so you could avoid the issues the pre 2009 Circle line faced

 

[Clip]

They could still join the line at Highbury couldnt they so the ELL joins to the NLL and that would be nearly there surely

 

[swt_passenger]

They could still join the line at Highbury couldnt they so the ELL joins to the NLL and that would be nearly there surely

Not really. Capacity on the NLL is finite, around 8 tph with maybe 10 tph in the peaks. You could only run trains from the ELL onto the NLL if you removed an equivalent number of trains to/from Stratford to make space. There’d also be flat crossing conflicts which would reduce capacity. Grade separation in that area is impossible without removing a number of over-bridges. There are pretty good reasons why true ‘orbital’ through running has never been proposed...

 

[Clip]

I never mentioned anything about capacity merely that they could join it up to nearly get a nice round orbital service of sorts with one less change

 

[Jorge Da Silva]

Not really. Capacity on the NLL is finite, around 8 tph with maybe 10 tph in the peaks. You could only run trains from the ELL onto the NLL if you removed an equivalent number of trains to/from Stratford to make space. There’d also be flat crossing conflicts which would reduce capacity. Grade separation in that area is impossible without removing a number of over-bridges. There are pretty good reasons why true ‘orbital’ through running has never been proposed...

Could you not four track the section between Camden Road and Highbury and Islington. Then extend services to Watford Junction via a Reopened Primrose Hill. Possibly reopen Maiden Lane.

 

[swt_passenger]

Could you not four track the section between Camden Road and Highbury and Islington. Then extend services to Watford Junction via a Reopened Primrose Hill. Possibly replacing the Euston service.

It already is mostly four tracked, but they are 'outer' freight loops. Removing all freight along the NLL, and rebuilding Camden Rd, and property demolition at the junction, to allow four tracks with two via Primrose Hill has been suggested in numerous previous threads. But then you get to the DC lines and there's nowhere for the trains to go, because those lines are already at capacity and users (and therefore TfL) want to keep the service into Euston. See numerous previous threads on that as well.