In Pursuit Of The Perfect Train Design
This is the title of an article in Rail Technology Magazine, in which Adrian Shooter, the chair of Vivarail discusses their Class 230 train, which is soon to go into trial service on the Coventry to Nuneaton Line.
The article is certainly worth reading.
How To Spend Five Million Pounds
Whtton station has recently been rebuilt. I was alerted to the completion by this article in Rail Technology Magazine, which is entitled £5m upgrades completed at Whitton station.
I took these pictures this morning.
It is a no-frills design, which uses a lot of painted steel beams and classic brickwork.
I think it is true to say, that they’ve spent the money on what a station like this needs.
- Full length platforms
- Lifts
- Adequate platform cover.
- New cafe and booking office.
- More than one ticket machine.
- Bicycle parking.
- Seats
The one thing it needs, is a bit of colour!
But then, the station is in the London Borough of Richmond and flowers could be the solution. Before Overground – Highams Park, shows a station with a group of community gardeners.
Certainly, the grass needs to grow!
It’ll be interesting to see this station in a couple of years.
For more on how the station was designed and built, this page on the Innovare Systems web site.
This is said.
The station will rebuilt by Innovaré Systems using the i-SIP building system. The system uses structural insulated panels (SIPs), high performance building components which will complete the thermal watertight structure within one week, compared to the 8 weeks which would normally be required using traditional construction.
This off-site construction method will both simplify the works and provide a highly energy-efficient building for the public to use. The construction will be carried out during daytime hours to avoid unnecessary night time disturbance.
Looking at the impressive quality, I’ll think we’ll see more use of this system.
Feltham Station
I hadn’t intended to go to Feltham station, but whilst talking to a South West Trains driver, he suggested I go to look at the improvements there and the level crossing.
Location
This Google Map shows the station’s location to the South-East of the Airport.
Heathrow Airport And Feltham Station
Feltham station is the station in the South East corner of the map.
A Modern Station
Feltham station is a modern station, as these pictures show.
If it has one problem it is the level crossing at the Western end of the station.
Services
The station is well-connected with six trains per hour (tph) to and from Waterloo on weekdays and 5 tph on Sundays.
But there are a long list of stations, who have in excess of 2 tph connections to the station on weekdays and good connections on Sundays. The list includes.
- Clapham Junction
- Putney
- Reading
- Richmond
- Staines
- Twickenham
- Weybridge
- Windsor and Eton Riverside
It is an impressive level of connectivity to the buses that serve Heathrow’s terminals.
I was at Feltham station for about twenty minutes and saw several newish buses drive off towards Heathrow.
A railway called Heathrow Airtrack was proposed, but abandoned to link Waterloo to Heathrow, via Feltham.
It doesn’t seem to be mentioned much these days.
I just think, that because the services through Feltham are at a level of one train every ten minutes and because the line has several level crossings, that trying to squeeze an airport service into the mix, although probably not impossible, was difficult and would give rise to too many objections to fight off.
An Alternative Link
But Heathrow may have the solution in their hands and that would be to use an enlarged version of the Heathrow Pod system, that I wrote about in A Visit To Heathrow Terminal 5.
Or they could use some other charismatic system, that flew people at helicoptor-height over the route to and from Heathrow.
Several systems come to mind; cable-car, tram, monorail, a modern Schwebebahn or MAGLev.
The Schwebebahn in Wuppertal, was built over the River Wupper in the early Twentieth Century and it still running today. I wrote about it in The Wuppertal Schwebebahn. You wouldn’t build anything like this, but the construction of the Schwebebahn shows that you can put a lightweight railway over a river.
This Google Map shows Feltham station in greater detail.
Feltham Station And The Longford River
Note the Longford River, which passes under the station.
This Google Map shows Terminal 4 at Heathrow Airport.
Heathrow Terminal 4 And The Longford River
Again note the Longford River.
So could some form of lightweight aerial railway be created to run at perhaps fifteen metres above the river and some of the roads in the area. This picture shows the Heathrow Pod that connects some car parks to Terminal 5.
The Heathrow Pod Crosses To Terminal 5
The Terminal 5 system is described here in Wikipedia and is 3.9 km long. I estimate that Feltham to Terminal 4 would be about 6 km.
As Heathrow are thinking of using the Heathrow Pod system to go all the way to Kingston, I would suspect that Feltham would be in range.
My big worry would be, that the number of pods required to transfer passengers to and from Feltham might be too large for the system.
So I think that even if the Heathrow Pod system couldn’t be used for the link, within a few years, someone will devise a system that would create the ultimate airport link between Feltham and Heathrow Airport.
Heathrow Services Post Crossrail
To take some of the pictures for A Look At Stockley Junction, I took Heathrow Connect to the Airport..
My return ticket from Hayes and Harlington station, cost me £8.20 with a Senior Railcard, which must be one of the most expensive journeys per mile in the UK. Especially, as there are only two trains per hour (tph). Considering that I could have done the journey quicker yesterday, using a 140 bus, as the train was ten minutes late.
But it would be difficult to take the pictures I wanted from the bus.
Arriving at Heathrow, I thought that a hot chocolate would be in order, so I set off for Terminal 2.
Passenger friendly the journey is not, so as I wanted to get back, I returned to the station to catch the next train.
I did not see a single sign to Heathrow Connect, with this one being typical.
Where’s Heathrow Connect
I knew where to go, as I’d walked it.
Incidentally, it is easy enough to find the overpriced Heathrow Express, but how many passengers with a brain want to go to the disconnected Paddington?
Some like me might actually want to go to Hayes and Harlington or perhaps Maidenhead.
I didn’t ask, but I wonbder if the advice to go to Maidenhead, is to take Heathrow Express to Paddington and then get a train to Maidenhead. The Oracle (Nation Rail’s Journey Planner) recommends taking Heathrow Connect to Hayes and Harlington, but will all the staff.
Current Services To The Airport
There are four ways to get to Heathrow by public transport.
Heathrow Express – 4 tph to and from Paddington. – Overpriced
Heathrow Connect – 2 tph to and from a series of stations along the route to Paddington – Infrequent and overpriced.
Piccadilly Line – Slow, frequent, usually reliable and the most affordable.
Bus – For a lot of those living near the Airport, this is the preferred route.
This map from carto.metro.free.fr shows the layout of the rail and Underground lines.
Rail And Underground Lines At Heathrow
Simple it isn’t!
But that is what you get if you dither over the next runway in the South-East for forty years.
Heathrow’s rail links are so very Topsy, unlike those at Birmingham, Edinburgh, Gatwick, London City, Luton, Manchester, Southend and Stansted.
Not all the others are perfect, but they’re getting better.
Crossrail
Crossrail will be the new wayto get to Heathrow and in some ways it is a replacement for Heathrow Connect. This is said under Future in the Wikipedia entry for Heathrow Connect.
From May 2018, Crossrail trains will replace all Heathrow Connect trains between London Paddington and Heathrow terminals 2, 3 and 4. Furthermore, as of December 2019 all services will run through the new tunnels at Paddington to central London destinations including Bond Street, Liverpool Street and Canary Wharf
So, it would appear that there will no substantial improvement until December 2019.
This is a detailed timetable, with particular reference to going between Heathrow and the City of London and Canary Wharf.
- May 2018 – Heathrow Connect will be taken over by Crossrail. We’ll certainly see better signage and service under Transport for London’s management.
- May 2018 – The Crossrail start schedule on Wikipedia, also shows that the shuttle between Heathrow Central (Terminals 1,2 and 3) and Terminal 4, will be transferred to Crossrail. Terminal 5 will be reached by using Heathrow Express from Heathrow Central.
- May 2018 – Heathrow Connect in the guise of Crossrail will be serving erminals 1,2, 3 and 4, but not Terminal 5. Will we be seeing new Class 345 trains and a higher frequency to Heathrow? I woulden’t be surprised if Heathrow Airport, try every trick to keep Crossrail out of the Airport, to protect the revenue on Heathrow Express.
- December 2018 – Crossrail services between Paddington and Abbey Wood will start, thus linking Paddington to the City of London and Canary Wharf. There will probably be a longish walk between the two parts of Crossrail at Pasddington, but the tunnel across London, will give Paddington the much need-connectivity, it’s needed since the Second World.
- May 2019 – Crossrail services between Paddington and Shenfield via Whitechapel will begin, thus meaning that many travellers East of Paddington, will use a single change there to get to and from Heathrow.
- December 2019 – The full Crossrail should open, meaning that there will be direct trains between Abbey Wood and Heathrow Terminal 4 calling at Canary Wharf, Liverpool St-Moorgate, Farringdon, Tottenham Court Road, Bond Street, Paddington, Heathrow Central and all the stations in between.
Trains into the Airport will be.
- 4 tph – Heathrow Express for Paddington, where many passengers will change to and from Crossrail.
- 4 tph – Crossrail to Abbey Wood.
One will be expensive and the other will be affordable and much more convenient, as it reaches the places passengers want to start or finish their journey.
It looks good, but there are a some questions to answer.
Is eight tph enough trains to and from the Airport?
If you compare Heathrow with Gatwick, Luton and Stansted, eight tph seems good.
However, I found this article in TravelWeekly, which is entitled Gatwick outlines plans for a train departure to London every three minutes.
It gives a very good summary of the train services that will run to Gatwick after Thameslink is completed.
- Four tph dedicated Gatwick Express trains to Victoria
- Six tph to Victoria – originating from East and West Coastway, Horsham/Littlehampton, and Three Bridges/Haywards Heath
- Four tph to Bedford via London Bridge – originating from Gatwick and Brighton
- Two tph to Cambridge via London Bridge – originating from Brighton
- Two tph to Peterborough via London Bridge – originating from Horsham
- Two tph to London Bridge – originating from Littlehampton/West Coastway, and Haywards Heath/Three Bridges.
That is a total of twenty trains to and from London and beyond and most of the South Coast from Southampton to Hastings.
How many better rail-connected airports are there anywhere in the world?
Luton and Stansted are also have aspirations to improve their rail links.
I think that passengers will press for increase in the frequency of services to the Airport and they’ll want more destinations.
After all Shenfield and Abbey Wood are planned to have 8 tph all day to and from Central London, with at least twice as many in the Peak.
How do passengers get to and from Iver, Langley, Maidenhead, Reading and all staions to the West of Hayes and Harlington?
A rail link into Terminal 5 from the West is planned, but something needs to be done before that is completed probably in the mid-2020s.
After December 2019, their will be four routes.
- Go to Paddington and use Heathrow Express – Expensive
- Go to Hayes and Harlington and take Crossrail into Heathrow Central – Requires two step-free changes of train.
- Take a coach from Reading.
- Go to Hayes and Harlington or West Drayton stations and use a local bus.
I can see something innovative being done at Hayes and Harlington station.
There is probably capacity between Heathrow Terminal 5 and Hayes and Harlington stations for a 4 tph shuttle in both directions, that would also solve the Terminal 5 connectivity problem.
Southall could even be an interesting alternative, as there is lots of space.
What Would Be My Solution?
I would use Hayes and Harlington station, as the interchange for Heathrow Airport.
In an ideal layout there would be three slow lines through Hayes and Harlington station, with two island platforms separating the lines. From the South, they would be.
- The Reading-bound (Up Slow) line.
- The Heathrow shuttle line, which would also be used by Crossrail trains going to and from Heathrow Terminal 4. This liine would be bi-directional.
- The London-bound (Down Slow) line.
Between the platforms would be two welcoming island platforms to give passengers a step-across interchange, between trains.
It would need a major rethink of the station.
But consider.
- Passengers from the West for Heathrow would just walk across the platform to get their train.
- Passengers for Heathrow Central could take any train.
- Passengers for Terminal 4 or Terminal 5 might need to wait a few minutes for an appropriate train.
- Crossrail passengers for Terminal 5, would change at Hayes and Harlington.
- Passengers from Heathrow for the West would just walk across the platform to get the train.
- No passenger would need to change platforms using the step-free bridge.
What is being provided at Hayes and Harlington station is very much a poor design.
Will the current Heathrow Connect service between Paddington and Heathrow Central and Terminal 4 be dropped?
I can’t see any point to it, after Crossrail has an all-stations service to the Airport from Paddington.
How do passengers get to and from Terminal 5?
I proposed the shuttle to do this, with passengers changing at either Hayes and Harlington or Heathrow Central stations, to a train going to either Terminal 4 or Terminal 5.
Will passengers be able to use contactless cards to the Airport?
I think if the decision was down to the Mayor, Transport for London or the people of London, Oyster and contactless bank cards would be a way of paying a fare to Heathrow, as it is to Gatwick.
Will passengers like me with Freedom Passes, be able to use Crossrail to Heathrow?
Boris said Yes and I suppose the current Mayor, Transport for London and card holders, will expect it to be possible, as it is on the Piccadilly Line.
Conclusion
The Heathrow spur of Crossrail has not been thought out too well!
The Anonymous Widower 