Canal Moorings With Their Own Station
When I came back from Reading into Paddington station yesterday, I walked to the back of the Inter City 125 train and took the bridge to the Metropolitan line station. Before catching my train to get home, I ventured outside to look at the new entrance, which has just opened.
As you can see the entrance is by the canal and the Paddington Basin. It’s obviously not finished yet and won’t be until Crossrail opens in a few years.
It is an area, that is crying out for a decent cafe, restaurant or bar.
Is This The Way To Develop Railways?
It has been announced today that the government has fully approved the Croxley Rail Link. This report on the BBC gives full details. Here’s their summary.
An extension to the London Underground’s Metropolitan Line to serve the centre of Watford has been given the final go-ahead.
The government gave the £118m Croxley Rail Link the all-clear through the Transport and Works Act Order.
The line will be extended to Watford Junction via Watford High Street and two new stations will open, including one near the town’s football ground.
This seems to be a scheme that has a lot of merits.
Personally, it will mean that when I go to see Ipswich play football in Watford, I will avoid the long walk across the town. I think that because of this ease of access, Watford FC will be one of the bigger beneficiaries, as ease-of-access always brings in more visitors to any venue.
This fairly small scheme will have all sorts of benefits. This paragraph is lifted from Wikipedia.
When the Croxley Rail Link is built, direct services into Watford Junction from Amersham would also be possible, thus linking the commercial centre of Watford to the new developments in Aylesbury, as well as providing the Chilterns with transport connections, via the Junction, to the North and other destinations.
I’ve always thought that Watford should be more of an interchange when going north to take the pressure off Euston.
i think we can honestly say that the £118 million that this development will cost, will return an awful lot more in benefits.
But then we’ve got a bit more clever with some of the schemes we’ve started recently.
The Hitchin flyover will take a few minutes off the times for trains on the East Coast Main Line for £47 million. It will be fully open in a few weeks.
Improvements to the Felixstowe branch line and its junction with the main line north of Ipswich, aren’t the biggest of developments, but they will take significant numbers of trucks off the road.
If you go to the Network Rail web site, you’ll find lots of these smaller projects.
I think we should complete all of these before we decide on the detailed route of HS2.
The Shape Of Trains To Come
The replacement trains for the sub-surface lines of London Underground, show a lot of clever thinking to deliver effectively two different but identical trains.
For the Metropolitan line, an eight car train is needed, with a generous proportion of seats, as the line goes a long way into Metroland.
For the Hammersmith and City, District and Circle lines, a seven car train is needed, with longitudinal seating.
Bombardier came up with the S Class train, which satisfies both these requirements. It is a unique design for the Underground, in that it is through-gangway train, where you can walk from end-to-end.
The replacement trains for the rest of the Underground, will probably borrow heavily on this design.
I travel on these trains about once a week or so and feel they are a great improvement on the previous trains. I first used them, during the Olympics to get back from Wembley Stadium, where they were able to move 1,500 or so people a time away from the stadium, in an air-conditioned train. The A Class trains they replaced had more seats, but a smaller capacity and a ventilation system from the 1960s.
The Rebuilt Metropolitan Station At Paddington
The Metropolitan station at Paddington is emerging from the extensive building works at Paddington station.
Note that there is still quite a lot to do, like installing the lifts.
Farringdon Station
After visiting the works at Crossrail, I went to have look at Farringdon station on the Metropolitan Line.
Note how the new station is coming on.
Should London Improve The Sub Surface Tubes?
London’s three sub-surface lines; Metropolitan, District and Circle, are getting new S-Stock trains, but you do wonder if investment in the stations along their core route would improve things no end and perhaps even add more capacity to the lines. It should be said incidentally that the new trains will add more capacity and when they are running at full speed, they should give a further increase in passengers carried.
The part I know best is the Hammersmith and City and Circle lines from Whitechapel to Paddington.
Kings Cross St. Pancras station has already been rebuilt and has good access from the two main line stations and to the three deep lines that meet at the station. It will be even better in a few months, when the buses have been reorganised around the new square opening outside. We tend to forget about buses, but they are often an invaluable way to get to your required train line.
Whitechapel, Liverpool Street, Moorgate, Barbican, Farringdon and Paddington stations are all on Crossrail and will probably go through a lot of changes to improve access over the next few years. The stations from Liverpool Street to Farringdon, will effectively be connected to two giant double-ended stations on Crossrail, so interchanges to the Central and Northern lines and Thameslink will be greatly improved. In fact, when you look at journeys made in the eastern part of Central London, you can see how Crossrail will transform them. Even a journey as mundane as Liverpool Street to London Bridge will be a lot easier, as you’ll just dive into the Crossrail station to walk to the Northern line at Moorgate. I’ll probably use that route to get to my 141 or 21 bus from Liverpool Street to get home.
The next station is Euston Square, which is one of those stations on the London Underground, that was built in the wrong place. They didn’t even rectify the problem, when the current Euston station was built in the 1960s, by moving it in front of the station, like the corresponding station at Kings Cross St. Pancras. Probably all that could be done is to put lifts into the North entrance to the station and improve the walking route from the main line station. When the main line station is rebuilt, Euston Square station will probably be part of the rebuilding.
Great Portland Street station is typical of many of the Central London, sub-surface stations. Short double staircases lead down to two platforms on either side of the tracks. Lifts or escalators could probably be installed, but I suspect a clever engineer or architect could do better.
Baker Street station is one of the architectural gems of the Underground and doing anything to improve it will be difficult. The junction to the east of the station also makes things difficult operationally.
Edgware Road station, is one that needs significant improvement, although as with many of the sub-surface stations, space is limited. Since the Circle line, stopped being a circle in 2009, the station has become a nightmare, as many visitors can’t understand that you have to change trains to continue round.
Paddington station, when it is fully rebuilt and Crossrail has been opened, may help with the problems of the sub-surface lines. If I come into Paddington from say Bristol or Cardiff, I will take the bridge at the back of the train and walk to the Metropolitan line, from where I get a train to Moorgate for a bus home. But when Crossrail is running from Reading to Moorgate, I might take that route instead, by changing trains at Reading. I suspect that many commuters from Reading, will go direct to Central London stations on Crossrail. After all, that was one of the reasons for which the line is being built.
So it would seem that on the Northern part of the lines, only Edgware Road and Euston Square stations need substantial improvement.
The Flexibility Of Public Transport In East London
After my tea, I had to get home. To get from Pudding Mill station to where I live halfway between Highbury and Islington, and Dalston Junction stations, there are many possibilities.
So I resorted to the Monte Carlo method and took the first train that arrived. It was going to Stratford. I could have walked through the station to the overground, but noticed that despite it almost being the rush hour, the Central line trains towards Central London were fairly empty.
So I took the first one, intending to go to Bank, to take the `141 bus to my house. But at Mile End station, where the Central and sub-surface lines have a cross platform interchange, I decided to get a Metropolitan line train to Moorgate to pick up the bus there. I waited just a minute before I was on my way.
In the end, I went just two stops to Whitechapel station, where I used the quick interchange to get an Overground train to Dalston Junction, where I caught one of innumerable 38 buses down the Balls Pond Road.
I may have used five different modes of transport, but I had a seat all the way and never waited more than a minute anywhere.
Incidentally, CrossRail will change all this, as the simplest route, would be to take CrossRail to Moorgate and then get the 141 bus. Let’s hope they get the bus connection right.
What A Difference A New Train Makes
Getting back to Central London after a match at Wembley has been difficult all of my life, although since the new Wembley Park station has been built it’s been a bit better, especially when the police get their Triggers out.
But these last two days home after 70,000 plus crowds at Wembley have been much easier because of the new 8-car S-Stock trains. These take passengers on the Metropolitan line at 1,400 in each air-conditioned train load, On both days, I went all the way to Moorgate station for a friendly 141 bus almost to my door.
The trains are an enormous improvement and will get better, as track improvements and retirement of the A60-Stock allow higher speeds.
Wot No Rails!
This picture was taken at Whitechapel station on the Metropolitan and District lines.
Wot No Platforms!
The gap will be filled in, to create a big island platform and escalators will be put there to get to the Crossrail platforms below.
A Bendy Train
London of course, has got rid of its bendy buses, but now it has bendy trains on the Metropolitan line. I travelled on one on Friday.
These seem to be doing the job they were designed for, which the buses didn’t do too well.
The Anonymous Widower 