I talked about this happening in this post nearly a year ago.
Now according to various reports like this one in Modern Railways, it’s going to happen.
I do think sometimes that the planning of Crossrail wasn’t done by those possessed of great imagination, unlike some of those involved in the actual building of the railway.
Extending to Reading would appear to be an improvement that doesn’t need much new infrastructure or trains.
If you look at extending the Shenfield branch of Crossrail, there is no suitable station, as the only large conurbation; Chelmsford has a very cramped station.
51.545613
-0.075794
March 27, 2014
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Construction, Crossrail, Trains |
Leave a comment
I had lunch today in Carluccio’s at Canary Wharf and afterwards went to the excellent Waitrose there to get some shopping that is difficult to find closer to home.
As the DLR wasn’t running due to engineering works, I decided to get the Jubilee line home. I can either change to the Overground at Canada Water station or go to London Bridge station and get a 141 bus home.
But on windy days like this, only a large person would go via London Bridge, as the wind around the Shard makes the bus station a rather unpleasant place.
So I used the Overground!
51.545613
-0.075794
March 23, 2014
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Canary Wharf, London Bridge Station, London Overground, The Shard |
Leave a comment
I went to Brighton to see Ipswich Town play in the town, for the princely sum of £7.95 return.
This was the cost of my Senior Off-Peak ticket from East Croydon to Haywards Heath.
I didn’t need to buy the ticket to East Croydon, as that station is in the Freedom Pass area and from Haywards Heath to Falmer for the AMEX Stadium is covered by the match ticket.
I could have done even better, if there had been a chance the match would have not been played, as Southern offer an interesting offer.
Southern’s Money Back Guarantee
But I’ve checked on this Money Back Guarantee and it looks good. For instance, if you book online and elect to pick up your tickets on departure at your outbound station and say the clouds open and you don’t fancy your awful cousin’s barbecue in the pouring rain, you just don’t pick them up and they get refunded.
51.545613
-0.075794
March 22, 2014
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Brighton, Ticketing |
Leave a comment
I must say, I was surprised that Hitachi are going to make London the worldwide headquarters of their rail business.
It is reported here on the BBC.
51.545613
-0.075794
March 20, 2014
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Japan, Manufacturing, Trains |
Leave a comment
Like nearly everybody in the world, I’d like to get to the bottom of what happened to Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370.
But this page on the BBC’s web site has gone to town with speculation.
So what can I add to the speculation?
According to the /BBC report, the plane flew over the Malay Peninsular. C and I drove through that area on a military road that goes from one side to the other and there was miles and miles of jungle, where we thought we could hear elephants in the distance. One Malaysian doctor told me that they check cars in and out on that road, as there are accidents, where drivers his elephants sitting on the cool tarmac in the night.
So is it a place, where if the plane came down, could it just be lost in all the trees? I won’t speculate further than to ask the question!
If you read aircraft accident reports, as I used to when I flew a lot, you realise that pilots make quite a few silly mistakes, that you’d think they wouldn’t. Who’d have thought for example, before the Costa Concordia disaster, such a thing could happen to a cruise liner, in sight of land on a clear day.
So did the crew make some catastrophic mistake?
In most cases pilot suicide can surely be ruled out, as it would have to be almost a double suicide, unless one pilot had locked the other out of the cockpit and then perhaps shot himself.
We’re obviously left things like the plane exploding and breaking up, but things get more and more fanciful.
One of the problems with any of these theories is that the plane was still transmitting information back to London for seven hours.
Only when we find the plane and its black box recorders, will we have any chance of finding the truth!
51.545613
-0.075794
March 18, 2014
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Flying, Malaysia, Malaysian Airlines |
3 Comments
London needs houses and one of the best places to build them is in the East near the Thames in Barking. The developments are talked about here.
Development has been a bit slow, as the area is badly served by public transport and the Mayor and the GLA have pushing for better rail links to the area.
One plan was to extend the DLR and the other was to extend the Gospel Oak to Barking line of the Overground.
According to this report in the Standard last night, it would appear that the Overground is to be extended. Here’s the first bit.
George Osborne will signal a £150 million rail link to speed up the construction of thousands of new homes in the capital in his Budget this week, it is revealed today.
The Chancellor is expected to indicate he is keen to extend the Gospel Oak to Barking Line — nicknamed the Goblin Line — to Barking Riverside.
It would help unlock up to 11,000 new houses, offices and shops planned in a redevelopment that aims to transform a 350-acre site of industrial and brownfield land.
I wonder how many other projects like this, will turn up between now and the next election? This project is quoted as costing £150million, but as it makes 11,000 new homes viable and probably creates quite a few jobs, this surely is the sort of project that has a high benefit to cost ration. It also has the Overground-factor in that when it opens, it’ll probably attract far more passengers than expected and everybody will say why wasn’t it done years ago.
There are some interesting ones that have been proposed. Some of the ones I like are upgrading of the Marshlink Line and the Tees Valley Metro, both of which I’ve experienced in the last few weeks. None of the ones here, are big rail projects, where lots of new track and new trains are required.
I suspect that after seeing George Osborne’s backing for the Northern Hub and railway electrification in general, I have this feeling that after the Gospel Oak to Barking line announcement, that the budget may have some rail infrastructure surprises from the reinstatement and upgrading of lines to the building of new stations and the refurbishment of old ones.
One thing that seems to have happened in the last few years, is that now the passenger and freight flows on our railways are getting more stable and predictable, Network Rail has implemented some projects like the Hitchin flyover, where the msin purpose, is to make the important lines more reliable and less subject to delay.
51.545613
-0.075794
March 18, 2014
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Barking Riverside, George Osborne, Gospel Oak And Barking Line, Housing, Tax |
2 Comments
Victoria Derbyshire on BBC Radio 5 Live interviewed Bill Hagan, who is a retired British Airways pilot this morning about an incident that happened on BA Flight 2069 on the way to Kenya on the 29th December, 2000.
It is an amazing interview and it should be listened to, by anyone, who’s ever flown. You can here it here on this page. Just look for Bill Hagan and 17th March 2014.
51.545613
-0.075794
March 17, 2014
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | BBC, British Airways, Flying, Radio |
Leave a comment
I’ve taken a lot of views of this new station from the existing Pudding Mill Lane station, but these views are from the other side.
It is quite a large station and I assume that is because it will be used as one of the main entrances to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
Wikipedia says it will open in April 2014.
51.545613
-0.075794
March 17, 2014
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel, World | Pudding Mill Lane Station, Stratford |
Leave a comment
Several cyclists have been killed or injured on this notorious roundabout.
Work has been done to improve it, but it’s still not a great place to walk.
51.545613
-0.075794
March 17, 2014
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Cycling, Walking |
Leave a comment
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve travelled along most of the South Coast by train in two trips; one to Bexhill and the other to Littlehampton and Yeovil.
Effectively the South Coast is covered by two main rail routes; the East Coastway line from Brighton to Hastings and the West Coastway line from Brighton to Southampton.
The fastest trains from Hastings to Southampton take five minutes over three hours with a change of train at Brighton. But there are twenty-three stops.
So it could be a journey that only a masochist would take, but at least you’d probably be in a comfortable Class 377 with a trolley service.
Even if you go via Clapham Junction, it will still take nearly three and a half hours.
So it is definitely a journey where most people would drive. But a lot of the roads are dreadful.
So could anything be done to make this journey faster and better?
The Class 377 trains are 100 mph units, but some of the route has a lower speed limit, but as I found on the route, the slow speed is probably more due to the number of stops than the speed of the trains.
The only improvement being talked about is to improve the Marshlink line from Hastings to Ashford, so that high speed services could run between St. Pancras and Eastbourne.
Judging by the troubles that the current Hastings line is suffering from, it would seem that this scheme might be cheaper than sorting out the Jerry-built Hastings line.
If you search the Internet for South Coast Main Line, you find this document from the East Sussex Rail Alliance.
I think we can file that under In Your Dreams.
The Great Eastern Main line has a similar problem of slow speed which is hopefully being solved with the Norwich in Ninety project.
Perhaps a similar approach could be used along the South Coast.
51.545613
-0.075794
March 14, 2014
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Brighton, Sussex, Trains |
1 Comment
The Anonymous Widower 