Quadruple Line Track Layouts

[John55]

The layout of the 4 tracks is determined by the requirements of the timetable and there is no universal better or worse solution. The SWML timetable has a requirement to switch between fast and slow lines so paired by direction is the only workable solution. On other routes the requirements are different so the layout is different.

One of the more interesting layouts was that which used to exist between Charing Cross and Metropolitan Junction where the layout from North to South was;

UP Fast
DOWN Fast
DOWN Slow
UP Slow

Which seems odd until you know the longer distance trains would call at Cannon St before passing through London Bridge. It also explains why the waiting rooms on platform A are much newer than those on platforms B & C.

 

[MK Tom]

That's the same layout I was referring to south of Harrow on the Met.

The WCML south has a need to switch from slows to fasts but that's still paired by use. I think it's more about what the timetables were back in Victorian times than what they are now! Seeing as the amount of resignalling that would be needed to switch between layouts.

 

[jopsuk]

It isn't the same as the Met- as you say in your first post, the met is
UF US DS DF
the one above is
UF DF DS US

 

[MK Tom]

Ah sorry my mistake!

 

[Trog]

This was also the location where part of the film "Passport to Courage" starring Dirk Bogard was made, and on April 2nd 1962, Fowler 4MT 42325 and a train of 25 wagons were driven through the sidings and into the tip to form a spectacular train crash scene. The locomotive and wagons were never recovered and were subsequently entombed under the Scratchwood services car park.

I used to work with an ex-signalman who worked that box at the time.

At Napsbury, there was a siding on the Up side which served the Middlesex County Asylum. I believe there may also have been a connection into the former Handley Page aircraft factory because of the way the cutting has been cut away on the Down Side.

I think that is where the branch from How Wood on the LNWR St Albans branch came in.

Napsbury was the only Midland (London Extension) station which consisted soley of an Island platform on the slow lines. That is why the signalbox was situated in between the Slow lines rather than to one side of the line. I deliberately exclude Kentish Town from that.

I think Welsh Harp station was also a single island from 1890 to 1903.

I was on site for the removal of the track on the round the platform alignment at Napsbury, and the connecting up of the new straight alignment. We had a bit of a slow start as the welders did not turn up, and the STO in charge had to cut the rail himself.

It was a very spooky access point to use at night through the grounds of the mental hospital.

I also remember being told of a ballast cleaning job there years ago. They started work over night as usual and come daylight the mental patients were lining the fence to watch what was going on. During a stoppage one of the patients asked one of the PABC operators what they were doing and when they had started. On being told that they had been working all night. The mental patient said "And they say we are silly."

 

[Bald Rick]

That's a hangover from the days when it was electrified to Shenfield- only the local "metro" lines were wired up whilst the Mainline to Norwich etc wasn't (as I understand it). Therefore, at the time, "Main" and "electric" made some sort of sense.

Nope - all lines were wired at the same time, however the electric services were generally confined to the electric lines. There was always a plan to get to Southend and Norwich, it just took 37(?) years to get to the latter.

 

[John Webb]

......At Napsbury, there was a siding on the Up side which served the Middlesex County Asylum. I believe there may also have been a connection into the former Handley Page aircraft factory because of the way the cutting has been cut away on the Down Side.....

The connection across from Napsbury to the LNWR line at How Wood was a temporary arrangement while the Midland line was being built and was disconnected soon after the 'London Extension' was completed, and was never used for public traffic. The building of the Hadley Page airfield (1920s?) removed most of the remaining traces of the connection, other than a short siding or two.

 

[Trog]

There is more to see at the How Wood end with a fair sized embankment diverging from the Abbey Branch line, and I think abutments where the branch crossed the main road.

 

[Penmorfa]

When the down slow was reinstated between Hartford junction and Acton Bridge a couple of years back, it became the down fast. So the arrangement of tracks now is down fast, down slow, up fast, up slow.

 

[swt_passenger]

Clapham Jn to Barnes is operated like that as well. Makes sense for the upcoming junction, with the faster trains going via Richmond, and the slower route via Kew and Brentford.

There were some plans online (the SRA's Waterloo International report from 2005, and pretty much dormant) to revert it to a 'normal' paired by use layout, but only if the Windsor side is four tracked all the way into Waterloo.

Oddly enough, (and going off topic a bit), given TfL's recent call for a 4 tph service to everywhere on the inner suburban lines, that may be something they woud have to do to achieve their aim?

 

[Old Timer]

I think that is where the branch from How Wood on the LNWR St Albans branch came in.

Thanks, funnily I have had little o do with that Sta Albans branch, having been over it only once, many years ago.

I think Welsh Harp station was also a single island from 1890 to 1903.

Yes of course !. Do you know I had quite forgotten about that ! What a wally !

I was on site for the removal of the track on the round the platform alignment at Napsbury, and the connecting up of the new straight alignment. We had a bit of a slow start as the welders did not turn up, and the STO in charge had to cut the rail himself.

It was a very spooky access point to use at night through the grounds of the mental hospital.

Not helped by the occasional screams that would come from there !


We had several suicides at Napsbury, in each case the person had removed all their clothes and left them in a neat pile alongside the track. ON one occasion the signalman had just receive On Line from Radlett down the Fast when he looked out and saw one of the inmates stood naked in the track !

Napsbury was also the location of the staff fatality, around 76 or 77 I think, where the signalman was crossing over the Fast lines back to his car to get something we think, when he got wiped out by the empty Nottingham news vans running up the Fast.