As part of our series on the recent Kent Route Study, we look at what it refers to as the ‘Victoria Metro Services.’ It is nearly impossible to do so, however, without also looking at services via the Catford loop that either terminate at Blackfriars or continue through central London via the Thameslink core. As a result, those services are covered here as well.
Included within the Route Study in the Victoria Metro Services is a slightly anomalous service from Victoria to Dartford via Nunhead and Bexleyheath. This is really quite separate from the other services and we hope will look at this in isolation in a separate article. It will not be covered here.
A slightly modified SouthEastern diagram showing the routes covered by this article
Back to pre-Channel Tunnel days
To understand the main routes we are talking about and the potential options available, we have to go back a long way in time to the days of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s – way before the Thameslink Programme was being implemented. In fact we need to go back and look at services prior to the opening of the Channel Tunnel.
Before Eurostar, in the days when getting a train to the continent meant the boat train, many of the services in the South Eastern Division of the Southern Region of British Rail had remained largely unchanged for a long time. This was certainly true of the group of services that generally started from either Orpington or Sevenoaks. The Sevenoaks services would be routed via the delightfully named Bat & Ball station. These services would continue to Victoria or Blackfriars either on the main route via Kent House and Herne Hill or via the Catford loop line (via Bellingham).
Bat & Ball station in 1962. Photo by Ben Brooksbank
Of the two routes to Victoria from Shortlands available to fast trains, the direct one via Kent House and Herne Hill was (and still is) generally used in preference to the alternative via Bellingham and Catford. One reason for this is a small time saving, but another consideration is that passing loops at Kent House meant there was more capacity for a mix of fast and slow trains.
Trains start and terminate at Kent House
Current day layout at Kent House (as taken from Carto Metro)
As an alternative to using the four tracks through Kent House station to enable fast trains to overtake slow trains, platform 2 at Kent House could be used to terminate short workings from Victoria or Blackfriars. Whilst terminating a train at Kent House potentially prevented the opportunity for a fast up train to overtake a slow up train, it also meant that there was a unoccupied train path between Shortlands Junction and Kent House, which reduced the likelihood of a fast train being slowed down in the first place.
The service in the good old days
In addition to the facilities at Kent House, there were also options available for the same manoeuvres to be carried out at Herne Hill – provided the relevant outermost platform was not occupied by a train travelling via Tulse Hill and/or Elephant & Castle.
The services in question had been well established for many years and can be thought to have consisted of:
- An all stations service all day from Orpington to Victoria. This was really the backbone of the services provided.
- An all stations service all day from Sevenoaks to Blackfriars via Bat & Ball. This provided an alternative destination for those joining east of Beckenham Junction and ensured that stations on the Catford loop line had a service.
- Various supplementary short distance peak period services via Herne Hill to provide extra capacity. Typically these might start from Kent House in the morning or terminate at Kent House or Beckenham Junction in the evening.
- Various supplementary trains from Orpington that ran fast from Beckenham Junction to Victoria in the morning and vice versa in the evening. Whilst these provided a faster service for those further out in the suburbs, the primary operational benefit was that these trains didn’t further stifle capacity on the two track section between Shortlands and Brixton since they did not call at any stations on this section of line. It was therefore possible to regard them as fast trains when on the two track section and so they fitted in very well with the succession of other fast trains originating from outside London.
Off-peak it wasn’t so great
For much of the 1970s and 1980s the off-peak services was much sparser. The Catford loop only had a half-hourly service. More surprisingly, for many years, the quite busy Orpington – Victoria service was also only half-hourly. Even in those cash-restricted days, it was said that British Rail wanted to run every 15 minutes on the Orpington – Victoria service during the working week. The option of a 20 minute frequency was not really possible on a two track line with so many fast services based on a 30 minute interval service.
The reason for not having a 15 minute frequency on the Orpington-Victoria service was stated to be that the signalling did not allow a sustained 15 minute service throughout the day to be mixed in with the fast services from the coast. As if to verify this, the 15 minute off-peak service was provided some time after the line was resignalled and control centralised and moved to Clapham Junction.
Eurostar needs train paths
With the opening of the Eurostar route from Waterloo to the Channel Tunnel in 1994, the regular pattern had to be altered to fit in the Eurostar trains. This required a complete rewrite of the timetable and the only saving grace was that in the morning peak the Eurostar trains were predominately going against the local peak flow.
Things could have got much worse in 2003 when section 1 of what was then called the Channel Tunnel Rail Link was opened. This meant that Eurostar trains destined for the Channel Tunnel could not stay on the southernmost pair of tracks from Shortlands to Bickley in order to travel via Orpington and the Sevenoaks tunnel to Channel Tunnel portal. Instead there would be a need to travel via Swanley and join the Channel Tunnel route near Ebbsfleet. To do this they would need to cross tracks on a flat junction at either Shortlands or, less likely, at Bickley or Swanley. Having a train nearly 400m long crossing vital junctions, on the flat, during peak hours using the railway infrastructure that existed at the time would have probably wrecked any semblance of the existing metro timetable.
To avoid a Eurostar conflict at the critical junctions, there was the alternative option of sending Eurostar services via the Catford loop line. This would have added only 3 minutes to the journey time, but would have meant traversing more junctions (albeit less critical ones). More problematically, as we shall see, the Catford loop line, despite the relative paucity of trains, does not have spare capacity due to its awkward mix of stopping and non-stopping trains.
The issue with Eurostar trains was not one that could be fixed by mere re-timetabling. To resolve this major issue, the sort of thing that can cause diplomatic disquiet if handled badly, the decision was taken to provide a grade separated junction, in place of the flat junction, at Shortlands. This would minimise conflicting routes. The cost at the time (£80 million), seemed enormous, for something intended to resolve a problem that would only last for four years – by which time the full Channel Tunnel Rail Route to St Pancras would be open.
The Kent Route Study acknowledges the usefulness of the grade separated junction when referring to capacity restraints:
Shortlands Junction, where services via Herne Hill and the Catford Loop diverge, where a previous grade separation scheme has removed many of the clashes
The Route Study follows the mention of Shortands Junction as a constraint with a mention of other significant constraints. These were identified as Swanley Junction (where trains to Sevenoaks via Bat & Ball diverge from the main line), the mix of fast and slow trains and signal spacing.
Eurostar trains no longer take up train paths
In November 2007 the Channel Tunnel Rail Link was opened all the way through to St Pancras. This put Victoria and Blackfriars South Eastern metro service possibilities back to where they were before, but now with less of an issue at Shortlands junction. In fact, not only had Shortlands Junction been upgraded, but enhancements had also earlier been made to the Chislehurst junction complex as a result of needing to introduce the Eurostar services. In addition to that, Orpington now had eight platforms (four terminating) instead of the six platforms (two terminating) that it had in the days prior to the Channel Tunnel. These additional platforms were also created as a consequence of Eurostar. The previous option of terminating on the through tracks at platforms 4 and 5 at Orpington was simply no longer tenable.
Trains no longer start and terminate at Kent House
With the Channel Tunnel related enhancements still in place, but no longer any Channel Tunnel trains, the benefits of running the limited peak service of trains starting from or terminating at Kent House made much less sense as the conflicts caused by running to the east of Beckenham Junction had largely disappeared.
Then Thameslink comes along
The benefits of being “back to normal” were not to last for long. With the final approval of the Thameslink Programme came the need for the bay platforms at Blackfriars to be taken out of use for a number of years (and the eventual replacement of only two out of the original three). Any service using the bay platform needed to be incorporated into the temporary Thameslink timetable in operation for the duration of the works – or removed from the timetable.
And so it was that potential for a stable pattern of services came to an end in March 2009 when the terminal platforms at Blackfriars were closed for major reconstruction of the station. This meant that any service to Blackfriars had to be a Thameslink through service.
The timetable was amended to try to ameliorate the situation by running various peak hour Thameslink services that really did not fit any pattern. So today we have, for example, the 07:28 Orpington to Bedford service via Herne Hill, the 07:47 Orpington to Luton service via Bellingham and Catford not calling at Ravensbourne or Beckenham Hill and the 08:02 Beckenham Junction to Bedford service.
The baseline timetable
The “baseline timetable” for Victoria and Blackfriars in the Kent Route Study for Victoria metro services is far from obvious. Indeed the Kent Route Study does quite a good job of referencing the baseline timetable without actually telling you what it is. A big help is provided by means of an extraordinary spider diagram of trains arriving at a London terminal between 08:00 and 08:59. This is figure 2.7 in the Route Study. Unfortunately it does not show stopping patterns, so is not quite as informative as it could be. One cannot distinguish between a train passing through a station and one stopping there.
The extraordinary spider diagram in the Route Study
The first real surprise in the baseline spider diagram is that it is extraordinary how many peak hour trains will be nowhere near the maximum length permitted. Getting very slightly off-topic, of six trains from Hayes arriving in central London in the morning peak hour only two are 10-car and the other four are 8-car. Needless to say none are 12-car. This is on a line which Network Rail shows to be the most overcrowded.
The second surprise, highly relevant to the current topic, is that the baseline timetable shows just four trains arriving in the morning peak hour at the two terminal platforms at Blackfriars.
To find what these are you have to be good at following lines to see where they lead. The spider diagram seems to show that two of the trains terminating at Blackfriars are from Maidstone East via the Catford loop line and the other two are from Orpington via Herne Hill. In fact the latter are the 07:28 and the 07:47 services we referred to earlier. The 08:02 from Beckenham Junction, also referred to earlier, seems to have disappeared but there will be a new 08:21 Beckenham Junction to Victoria service consisting of just six carriages.
Also of possible interest are the 07:34 and 08:04 Bromley South – Victoria. Assuming these are all-stations services, these almost seem to be a replacement for the Kent House – Victoria trains of a previous generation. It is not apparent how this would work in the timetable. Do they terminate at platform 2 at Bromley South in the peak period or do they start empty from further down the line and first pick up passengers at platform 1 at Bromley South?
The Catford loop service
In the Route Study the Catford loop is referenced in the Victoria metro services and the Blackfriars metro services which includes Thameslink.
Something that will be very different pre- and post-Thameslink Programme is the Catford loop service. The Catford loop line is a bit of an operational nightmare. The basic problem is that there is nowhere for one train to overtake another anywhere between Shortlands Junction and west of Peckham Rye. More realistically, it needs to be treated as double track without passing places between Brixton Junction and Shortlands junction. Not only does it have a mix of fast and slow traffic, it is also a freight route – though no freight is scheduled during peak hours.
Difficulties operating the Catford Loop
To make matters worse, the short section between Peckham Rye and Nunhead has to also accommodate the half-hourly Victoria – Dartford services. A further consideration is that the nature of the stations along the line is very different. The southernmost two Beckenham Hill and Ravensbourne are very quiet with Ravensbourne having a surprisingly rural feel about it. Bellingham is somewhat busier with Catford being the busiest station on the loop – but it is nowhere near as busy as the adjacent Catford Bridge station. As a group these stations are probably half as busy, if that, as the stations on the direct route to Victoria via Herne Hill.
Future prospects for the Catford loop service
Attitudes change over time and it is now thought that a substantial reason for the lack of patronage on the Catford loop is due to the poor service. There now seems to be a determination to provide a 4tph (train per hour service) in the off-peak. The Route Study does not directly discuss this so we will have to see what, if anything, happens about this.
A further issue for the loop is the need to provide something more than 2tph in the peak. With the line needed for fast services (eg Thameslink to Maidstone East), having a 4tph regular all stations service is not a practical option. The current solution is to resort to having fast trains stop selectively at individual stations. This leads to very uneven intervals at some stations. All the baseline scenario commits to in the Route Study is:
Additional service on the Catford Loop to retain current service levels (seven trains over the 3-hour peak period (07:00-09:59)
which actually seems to be considerably worse than what is provided today.
On a slightly different issue, in preparation for the eventual Thameslink timetable for the recast services, whatever they may be, the stations on the Catford loop line are now managed by Thameslink. This may have been done because it was envisaged that the bulk of trains on the loop would be Thameslink trains to Sevenoaks via Bat & Ball. Shortlands station and stations east thereof continue to be managed by Southeastern. This even applies to Bat & Ball station, which, as explained by Geoff Marshall in one of his many delightful station videos, is managed by Southeastern even though the service is almost exclusively provided by Thameslink services.
The takeover by Thameslink of the Catford loop services and stations does make a lot of sense when you consider that 8-car Thameslink trains are stabled at Bellingham sidings. Whilst sidings can be reallocated, the Thameslink trains have used these exclusively for a long while now.
What the Route Study offers
Finally, getting to the Route Study and its utterly predictable anti-climax, anyone looking for infrastructure improvements will be severely disappointed. We discover that there are virtually no plans for infrastructure improvements along the relevant routes. In fact the only real infrastructure improvements proposed are those to stations.
5.15.4. At Denmark Hill, the main issues identified are congestion on the platforms, stairs and interchange footbridge, and at station entrance / exit gatelines, both in the morning and evening peaks. By implementing the proposed interventions, it is anticipated that there will be reduced queuing at the bottom of the platform access staircases and decongestion at the main gate lines, with improved passenger safety and reduced passenger walk times.
5.15.5. At Peckham Rye, crowding and congestion have been identified in both the morning and evening peaks on platforms, access stairs and at the main station entrance/exit gateline. The options identified will inform choices for funders in the short/ medium term, and input into wider regeneration schemes being master-planned for the area.
5.15.6. At Bromley South, passenger crowding in both the morning and evening peaks has been identified on the station platforms and interchange bridge. Removal of buildings on Platforms 3 & 4 will aid in short/medium term decongestion in these areas, but consideration of longer-term congestion relief options should be made to resolve future capacity concerns.
5.15.7. At Brixton, passenger crowding occurs with passengers leaving the station from Platform 1. The only exit is a metal staircase to the ground level. There is no access to Platform 2 either. Passengers queue back from the staircase onto the platform making train dispatch difficult as passengers wait on the wrong side of the yellow line or struggle to alight the train.
In the case of Denmark Hill one can’t help thinking that really there should have been a comprehensive integrated upgrade done when the Access for All facilities such as the new footbridge were put in a few years ago. For Bromley South one has to go back further, but multiple opportunities have been missed with the building of the relief road above the tracks at the country end of the station and the shift of the epicentre of the town away from the southern part of the High Street outside the current entrance.
On the line capacity issue, we have the unimaginative proposal frequently trotted out by Network Rail that increasing train length where needed to the maximum allowed is all that is necessary – and if it isn’t then run trains that have a higher density rolling stock capacity (generally interpreted as doublespeak for fewer seats per carriage).
3.9.2. The peak services on these routes operate in 4-, 6- or 8-car formation. The maximum length that can operate on metro services currently is 8-cars due to platform length restrictions on the route and at Victoria. The analysis indicates that six additional vehicles will be required by 2024, which could be accommodated through lengthening existing services to 8-cars or switching to higher density rolling stock. All the platforms on the route can accommodate the services lengthened to 8-cars or some alternative higher density rolling stock types.
As with the London Bridge metro services, this conclusion seems hard to believe given the expected population increase and the belief that, even if the population remains stable, the number of journeys increases as we become a more mobile society.
At least the Route Study does discuss what restricts capacity in case it is envisaged that more is necessary. It does briefly mention extending the length of metro trains via Herne Hill but quickly dismisses this because it has a BCR of 0.4 – 0.6. One may well question the methodology.
On the basis of extra generated income in the short term, it is fairly obvious that train lengthening schemes in suburbia are going to struggle to make a good business case as the extra income derived is going to be relatively small and the costs of the project in a crowded city will probably be large. Yet, intuitively, many people would argue that being able to catch a train to work in the morning is just something that is necessary for a city to function. Possibly the basic problem is that Network Rail are looking for something to increase capacity by 10-15% in the short term and are not looking too hard at the longer term. A longer maximum train length potentially gives you 25% extra capacity at least and this is seen as overpriced overkill.
Potential infrastructure improvements ignored
Other options looked at are addressing the age old problem of junction conflict at Herne Hill. This does get a very brief mention
In addition to the platform extension scheme at Herne Hill station, a flyover scheme has been looked at, which would unblock this bottleneck.
This doesn’t really provide enough information to enable stakeholders an opportunity to make an informed choice. It does not even mention the bolder Turn South London Orange proposal of tunnelling under Herne Hill on the Victoria – Kent House route to enable fast trains to avoid the station altogether and at least remove the conflict between fast and stopping trains.
Also getting a very brief mention is the possibility of work in the Kent House area:
Towards Kent House, the option for some four tracking has been examined.
This, almost certainly, should have been a reference to a prolongation of the existing four tracking rather than worded to suggest that currently the line was only double track at this location.
Absent in the Route Study is any kind of explanation of why longer four tracking at Kent House would be helpful, although one can hazard a guess. Network Rail’s lukewarm-at-best support for this extension of the four track section at Kent House is probably pipped by TfL’s enthusiasm – it is one of the very few track infrastructure proposals they made in their submission for taking over Southeastern services. However, even TfL, in their devolution of rail services in South East London submission, talk of “small scale investments that could be pursued” rather than outright positive enthusiasm.
Hard done by or treated reasonably?
There are many areas of the country where commuters feel that they get a raw deal. Those from the South Eastern suburbs of London would probably have more good cause than most for feeling that it has been many decades since there have been significant improvements made (especially with regard to capacity) with their interests primary at heart. They have lost direct services from Bromley North and on the Greenwich line they have lost the direct service to Charing Cross. Future benefits that are and will happen are pretty much limited to the rebuilding of London Bridge and Crossrail.
The rebuilding of London Bridge station with consequential benefits for London Bridge Metro commuters was more of a side-effect of the Thameslink Programme, rather than a specific scheme to improve services on the South Eastern side of the station. The benefit of Crossrail to South East London is limited to just two new stations south of the river Thames – and one of those had to be fought for by local MPs and the borough where it will located.
It seems that the Kent Route Study is offering most commuters in South East London more of what they have been used to – virtually no improvement at all and, in places, some regression compared to what was formerly offered 20 or so years ago.
“Those from the South Eastern suburbs of London would probably have more good cause than most for feeling that it has been many decades since there have been significant improvements made (especially with regard to capacity) with their interests primary at heart.”
Is Victoria as useful a terminus for SE commuters as Charing Cross or Cannon Street? If you take an 800m catchment (~10 mins walk) around the latter two the area is predominantly employment uses, whereas for Victoria it takes in a lot of residential streets and most of HM’s garden. There is also the eastward shift towards Canary Wharf and Stratford to consider – Victoria is further from both of those. I appreciate it’s there for historical and capacity reasons but would anyone build an 19-platform station there if the land was vacant now?
Couple of things in the route map picture Beckenham Hill and Bellingham are the wrong way round also the article mentions future thameslink services to Maidstone east which I believe are to be routed via London Bridge and the Chatham loop instead route via Catford and Elephant & Castle.
Jimmy Jones,
You’re right. The diagram is incorrect! It’s not me. This is the diagram issued by Southeastern in their timetable. The original is available for download here (timetable 7).
Not the first time Southeastern have got their diagrams wrong as quiz participants in our 2015 Christmas Quiz know.
The Thameslink service may be re-routed via London Bridge but the currently approved plan is via Elephant & Castle. If you attempt to follow the spider map you will see two trains marked TL start at Maidstone East and terminate at Blackfriars – assuming I have followed the line correctly. If it runs via London Bridge it will be replaced with something else and the point made will still be valid.
Is there any chance of going back to black on white text so I can read the article and people’s comments please?
The interleaving of fasts and slows through Kent House means that they arrive at the same time at Bromley South, but with not quite enough time to make the connection (unless you hurtle over the bridge). Why don’t they add an extra minute to the slow dwell times at Bromley Souh to make the connection possible for the nimble, and reduce the journey times from Bickey-Orpington to Victoria by 13 minutes? I can see this being impractical in the peak, but very beneficial off-peak. As it is its quicker to get Orpington to Victoria via London Bridge and 2 tubes than directly, so I rarely think of catching the Victoria trains.
There is an option (which will lose one or two sidings at Bellingham) of building a passing loop between Bellingham and Beckenham Hill. The space exists but at the cost of siding space.
Southeastern kept one 6 car networker at Bellingham every night until at least the end of 2014, as there was no room at Orpington to stable it.. (being too full of TL 319s!). It ran empty from/to Orpington to take up service. Since then it has indeed been 3 TL trains – One of which starts/finishes at Bromley south in the to/from Sevenoaks direction, (about 0630 and 2015), and the other two I’m pretty sure finish at Sevenoaks 2245/2315 and start at Orpington in the morning. I can confirm the morning Peak Bromley south all stations starters come empty from Victoria and reverse in platform 2 at Bromley south. They do have some time in the loop at Kent house on the ECS journey down though to let one or more fasts past them, but only for about 5-8 mins.
And, remembering an earlier article, we still are not getting 12 cars at Hayes!
The political spat between Grayling and Khan has ground real progress to a halt and it appears that the London Assembly are not impressed either.
Under “Eurostar trains no longer take up train paths”, you mention trains terminating at Orpington on platforms 3 & 4. Surely that’s 4 & 5? 3 is the down fast….
[I am sure you are correct. I have changed it. PoP]
Trains do still terminate on platforms 4 & 5 BTW….
[I am not surprised. But the point I was making was that this wasn’t tenable so long as Eurostar ran through Orpington. PoP]
When the Victoria-Orpington service was increased from 30 to 15 minute frequency by taking the former Eurostar paths (albeit in a revised timetable). This was only possible in the off-peak for a variety of reasons. However, Bromley South starters have been added increasingly over successive timetables. The current service is fed from/to Victoria by a number of different services.
0530 ex Victoria, calling at Wandsworth Road and Clapham High Street only
(becomes ECS (Empty Coaching Stock) to Maidstone East)
0607 ex Victoria, non stop
0625 ex Victoria, all stations via Herne Hill
0655 ex Victoria, all stations via Herne Hill
0719 ex Victoria, non stop (ECS)
There are also Thameslink services from Blackfriars
0740 ex Blackfriars (orig. Luton), not calling at Beckenham Hill, Ravensbourne or Shortlands
0820 ex Blackfriars (orig. St Albans) non stop via Herne Hill
0850 ex Blackfriars, calling at Kent House only (0908-0921) (ECS)
With the exception of the 0530 ex Victoria all trains terminating at Bromley South from the north do so at Platform 2 (down slow) and depart back towards London from the same platform.
@Southern In the 1980s Hoborn Viaduct via Herne Hill trains did leave from Platform 3 at Orpington. I caught the 07:53 to school for 6 years. I don’t know where the down fasts went while they were turned round there.
PS I expect they did that because they needed to get onto the fast up to take the western chord towards Bickley, before the eastern slow up chord was added.
I expect so…. I have gotten off a Hastings train onto platform 5 in the past due to a broken down train blocking platform 3, so perhaps this was more frequent in the past.
I also expect the track layout at the London end has changed substantially since the ’80’s due to the new platforms. Was the Eastern slow chord added at Petts Wood added as part of the Eurostar changes?
I expect it was connected with platforms 7&8 allowing all Victoria/Holborn trains to depart on the slow lines. Eurostar would have come on the fast up to the west and back on the down slow to the east. I bet they were delighted to get rid of all those conflicting moves. The fast up wasn’t as fast then, not only did the Victorias call at Petts Wood platform 1 on the fast line, but some London Bridge trains did too, running fast from PW to LBG.
As someone who used to live on the Catford Loop, I do firmly believe that the patronage is affected by the frequency of the service. It doesn’t feel like a turn-up and ride. It feels like a “I’m probably going to have to wait 20 minutes for a train”.
I think many people prefer the 4tph service on Hayes line, rather than the 2tph service on the Catford Loop, especially people who live in the Catford wider area who can make a reasonable choice between the two lines.
The best way to get from Bellingham to Canary Wharf (apart from cycling, which is definitely the quickest in rush hour) is to get a bus to Lewisham and change to the DLR. To me, this shows a failing of the network because everything is so London-centric, and yet this journey is a simple N-S straight line.
If the DLR could be extended down to Catford and beyond, and the Catford Loop could sustain a 4tph service, you might find that the Hayes line suddenly becomes quite a lot less busy.
Also, I detest it when I’m told that Crossrail goes to South-East London.
In reality, Abbey Wood and Woolwich are no more South-East London than Heathrow is South-West London (Heathrow being further south than Abbey Wood/Woolwich). It’s just that the river happens to create this geographical boundary.
Many people who live in Lewisham have never been to Abbey Wood even just once in their lives, so would consider Crossrail to be a complete irrelevance to them. There’s no way that someone in Lewisham would travel out to Abbey Wood so that they can hop onto Crossrail to go anywhere.
So let’s stop pretending that Crossrail affects South-East Londoners.
@AJ
“There is an option (which will lose one or two sidings at Bellingham) of building a passing loop between Bellingham and Beckenham Hill. The space exists but at the cost of siding space”
But that is quite close to Shortlands where four tracking starts, so a passing loop nearer London would surely help service patterns more. There must be space somewhere – though I guess it needs to be quite a long space, though the passing points don’t need to be in exactly the same place for each direction
Great article and on my old stamping ground.
Tiny typo “There are may areas of the country…” [Fixed PoP]
few comments:
– Eurostar: it is quite remarkable that the metro service ran as well as it did when Eurostar ran down through Shortlands, also interleaved with some of the coastal fasts (though from memory the Catford Loop took up more of the strain for these than subsequently). Also relevant to your point re ‘Having a train nearly 400m long’ was the restricted speeds of Eurostar trains – many crawled through this section of the line (20-30mph), putting the concerns re 8-car trains clearing key junctions elsewhere in the SE area into context 😉 – an early memory is hearing the low whine echoing across Shortlands valley of the first Eurostars as they wended their way through.
– Kent House: does anyone know what specific benefits TfL think would arise from extending the passing loop? NR would appear to be correct in this instance as PoP acknowledges. It seems rarely used these days (compared to when Eurostar ran, or even since the semi-fasts went). Also an irrelevant point re the carto.metro image – the updated map round Kent House shows a (rare) mistake as the spur to the Birkbeck line was abandoned before use(?) and only ever single track…
– re short runs / early terminators: there may also have been some AM peak Holborn Viaduct services which actually started at Shortlands in the late 70s/early 80s. My parents seem sure of this, don’t know if anyone has the old timetables to hand to verify.
– re Shortlands junction – from memory there was considerable disquiet at the time about the process Railtrack went through to secure the CPOs and even some muttering about one house being demolished which it turned out not to have been necessary to level. Also hasn’t the grade separation now removed all conflicting moves from the junction? If so, don’t understand why the Route Study still refers to it as a ‘constraint’.
– re Beckenham Junction – are there any plans for the spur to New Beckenham now that Bakerloo south of Lewisham has been ditched? The Route Study is silent on this.
– re Catford Loop
1) Freight not being *scheduled* during peak hours – perhaps, but it certainly happens (or at least did a couple of years ago)
2) Patronage being poor; from personal experience this seems largely down to the atrocious reliability of the 319s / TL more generally, (though this now appears to have improved with the new stock) – coupled with the 2tph service. ‘Build it and they will come’ seems of relevance here.
3) Whilst e.g. Ravensbourne is in a semi-rural setting, it has a sizeable potential catchment area within pleasant walking distance of people needing to get to the City/London Bridge. It also has free parking. As per previous comments on the subject, it remains my belief that the poor service on the Catford Loop is one of the reasons that the Hayes Line is so overcrowded as locals are unwilling to use the slow Southern service via Birkbeck and will flock to, for example, New Beckenham / Clock House / Hayes itself (being surprisingly geographically close to Bromley South)
4) Passing loops; there is certainly space south of the Bellingham sidings for a (short) loop, though this would presumably require major civils as well as closing Southend Lane to reconstruct / widen the bridge. It seems unthinkable that the sidings themselves would be sacrificed given the scarcity of provision and the continuing need to stable 8-car (or shorter) stock for the foreseeable future. Another often-mentioned infrastructure improvement for the line is to link to the Hayes Line at the point the two lines cross (whether this is techinically possible or operationally desirable is another question)
Lastly as a victim of the LBG rebuild on the SE side, I remain scarred for life and refuse to cash this as a ‘benefit’! 😉
P.S agree 100% with ‘Ranting of Catford’ @ 13:29
@Tim: No the Shortlands junction hasn’t quite removed all the conflicts, there is still at least one: When heading from Bromley South to Catford, a train on the Northern pair of tracks will prevent a train from Kent House from joining that pair.
There is a similar problem at the Ravensbourne end where the spurs from the southern pair and northern pair merge…
@Tim/SHLR
Indeed, the flat junction is on the Victoria main fast lines when they merge with one of the routes onto the Catford Loop, and as SHLR says, when the fast and slows merge at the south end of Ravensbourne. It also looks on Carto Metro that the down slows from Victoria into Shortlands have to cross the up fast going the other way
Stuart:
Solution to that problem is to re-order Shortlands Jn – Swanley Jn to DD-UU rather than DUDU, however, this would then definitely cause problems @ Chislehurst.
And, you’d have to resignal & re-arrange a point lead or two and …
( Maybe not? )
Tim
Point:4
There appears to be room where the lines cross, S of the Catford stations, for single-line leads on the “outside”, so you could have Hayes-Up-to-Catford loop & loop-to-Hayes-Down line spurs. But anything more substantial, for the remaing 2 flows could be … difficult.
Re-doubling the Beckenham spur would be a lot cheaper.
Is there a larger version of that route spider diagram? Google images didn’t find it.
Victoria’s 8 car limit, how many platforms would be lost if they were all made 12 car? I see that Liverpool St is losing one to be long enough for the short high level Crossrail service.
Toby,
The only thing you can do is access the original (page 20 of this document [PDF] and try and extract it. The best I could do was snip what I could see on screen but that obviously depends on your screen size.
Tim,
The Kent House to Birkbeck spur was fully built and connected (with a signal box at each end). According to Andrew Hajducki (The Railways of Beckenham) there is no record of any train having used it. It achieved its purpose though of one railway company persuading another to use common sense or it would get around the problem in question by running a service on the spur.
Later it was severed at the Kent House end and used as a siding. But, yes, it was only single track.
Tim,
Lastly as a victim of the LBG rebuild on the SE side, I remain scarred for life and refuse to cash this as a ‘benefit’!
You may disagree but I believe that the alternative of not doing the work would have rendered London Bridge close to unusable at times – worse than now. It was really struggling – especially with the old platform 6.
Don’t compare now and then. Compare now with what now would have been had the work not been done.
@SHLR / Stuart, thanks for clarification re Shortlands Junction. It would be interesting to expand on how frequent these remaining conflicting moves are, how much they do act as a current constraint on capacity, and (more importantly) what lessons could be learnt – if any – for future infrastructure / grade separation improvements.
@PoP – only (half) joking, I know it will be much better all around upon completion and needed a complete rebuild in any case.
However I do remember one of the final points from one of your earlier articles re the LBG works which were to the effect of ‘SE passengers will have to endure years of pain for little, if any, overall improvement *for SE passengers* upon conclusion’. (please forgive me if I have misquoted, will try and find the original article/quote)
You seem to make much the same point at the end of this article re the Chatham/Catford Loop lines, quite rightly imo.
I attend the regular public meetings for users of the Catford loop, attended by representatives of both Thameslink and Network Rail. We have been told that a regular 15 minute service for both peak and off-peak is confirmed for 2018 (though only a 30min service beyond Blackfriars). We’re also pushing for a 30 minute service interval for trains to Victoria as the PIXC busters introduced in December in our line have been incredibly popular.
Re passing loops – the study does mention the possibility of rebuilding Nunhead station to accommodate a loop.
I recently read in a Network Rail document that a goods loop was being considered between Nunhead and Peckham Rye (the viaduct is certainly wide enough, but two roads bridges would need replacing).
With regard to conflicting moves at Shortlands Junction, it is not uncommon for stoppers from Beckenham Junction onto the fast lines being held up for up fast trains to cross over from the slow lines. (An anomaly between Shortlands and Swanley being that fast trains usually run on the northernmost “slow” lines and slow trains run on the southernmost “fast” lines).
I clearly remember a daily morning train starting back from Shortlands platform 4 towards the Catford Loop which was operating in the mid 1990’s. I believe the reversing facility here was lost with the junction rebuild.
There has also been a lot of talk elsewhere of an off peak 4tph on the Catford Loop from 2018 (2tph Sevenoaks to Kentish Town and 2tph Orpington to Blackfriars bays with extensions to St Albans and Welwyn Garden City in the peaks). Thameslink are opening a new depot at Orpington to cover this service. How the extra train will fit in at Orpington is unclear. I’m wondering if it will use platform 1 and the fast Tonbridge Loop to reach Bickley as the slow side and the bay platforms are often delayed by conflicting movements with the current service levels.
Slightly off topic I still don’t know why with all the investment in Thameslink they didn’t run the OHLE down to Elephant/London Bridge where they can work around a failure more easily. 24tph through the core is a wonderful goal but one failure of the AC/DC changeover at City TL or Farringdon and there’s your 24tph completely out the window. A huge opportunity missed.
Interesting times ahead.
@Trevor I can’t see Thameslink using P1 the fast up from Orpington to Bickley. It would stall the fasts when it stops at Petts Wood (and during the rush hour they are truly fast, not stopping at Orpington either), and would have to cross back across both fast lines to get back to P1 from the slow down.. P5-8 should be able to feed 10 tph onto the slow lines
I wholeheartedly agree with you regarding platform 1 and the fast services.
While it might work in theory I can’t see how they can get two extra trains an hour reversing at Orpington platforms 4-8 all day without it having an adverse effect to the rest of the service in the real world. Trains are regularly delayed departing and arriving at Orpington bays with current service levels… Unless they extended two of the 4tph SE Victoria services to Sevenoaks but then it just moves the problem down the road and there’s no demand for it anyway.
The spider diagram is wrong in that it shows all Hayes trains going via Hither Green which is obviously impossible!
Also only the Hayes-Cannon Street trains go through Lewisham in the peak.
It could also be argued that St Johns and New Cross only apply to Cannon Street services.
@Pop Thanks for the link. I made a png and svg from it. Apologies for the odd hosts, imgur downsized the png and didn’t accept the svg.
http://svgur.com/i/1Ry.svg
https://image.ibb.co/b5Pjak/Spider_Diagram.png
Kent house 4 tracking:
At Kent House and Herne Hill there are technically opportunities for fast trains to overtake slow trains, but in the current timetable these aren’t used because they hold up slow trains for too long.
If you extend loops to include 2 stations, say by four tracking from Kent House to Penge East, then overtaking becomes much more plausible. It would probably facilitate a increase from a 4tph to a 6tph pattern on the Herne Hill route, for both slow and fast services. This makes it exciting – particularly for TfL!
However, if Thameslink at Herne Hill stays on a 15 minute cycle then it isn’t as useful as it sounds.
Shortlands Junction conflicts:
The conflicts at Shortlands are:
1) between trains coming from the up ‘slow’ and to the down ‘fast’ (used by up fast and down slow services respectively) both via Herne Hill;
2) between trains coming from the up ‘slow’ and to the down ‘fast’ both via Catford; and
3) between trains going from the up ‘slow’ to Catford and trains coming from Herne Hill for the down ‘slow’ (i.e. fast trains)
You timetable around all of these with parallel movements for fast trains (on the ‘slows’) to/from each branch. This would be straightforward were it not for the flat junctions at Herne Hill, Bickley, Petts Wood, Swanley, Brixton, Nunhead and Cambria Junction.
The crayons suggestion of an Up,Up,Down,Down track arrangement for Shortlands is a promising one – if you e.g. put the fast services on the outer tracks then with no further grade separation you eliminate all three of the above conflicts, but introduce a conflict between Up Fast Catford services and Up Slow Herne Hill services. The nightmare then comes from working out how to get Up Fast trains back to the north set of tracks before Bickley Junction, and getting Bromley South station to cope.
Sort of sums it up that SE trains don’t know where their stations are and the planners don’t know where the trains go.
The infrastructure here has been squeezed until the proverbial pips squeak, and there’s not a lot anyone can do short of CR3.
Or the stuff that can be done will have little effect and be so expensive that CR3 is the best option…
@ANONYMOUS CLOUD, 30 April 2017 at 14:08
“Kent house 4 tracking:
. . .
If you extend loops to include 2 stations, say by four tracking from Kent House to Penge East, then overtaking becomes much more plausible. It would probably facilitate a increase from a 4tph to a 6tph pattern on the Herne Hill route, for both slow and fast services. This makes it exciting – particularly for TfL!
However, if Thameslink at Herne Hill stays on a 15 minute cycle then it isn’t as useful as it sounds.”
Even if stoppers remained at a fifteen minute interval, the Penge – Kent House long loops as described in the Route Study could allow an additional fast train to overtake each one en route. That increase in capacity could help reassure longer distance Kent commuters and their political representatives that their interests were being looked after.
Just caught up with this article. My main comments relate to PoP’s remarks about NR’s planning. Having gone through some of the NR documents I was struck by NR’s preference for effectively transferring the growth risk to the TOC / DfT franchising department. While it is obviously sensible to get the “most bang for your buck” from every train path by running long trains it is not the only answer nor is it necessarily the optimal one that gives a meaningful capacity uplift for a given sum of money. I get the sense that there is almost a hidden agenda here which is to avoid spending on costly infrastructure if at all possible. I also suspect that what was handed in by TfL for devolution purposes was hastily rewritten at the last minute to reflect TfL’s constrained budget under the new Mayor. Previously TfL had been rather more bullish about new trains, extra frequency and infrastructure spend. Suddenly a lot of that went post May 2016. We all know what happened next.
I won’t pretend to understand all the capacity constraints as I don’t use the lines in question very much and never in the peaks. It does all feel, though, as PoP says that this a “boring” commuter railway that will remain locking in “boringsville” so far as the DfT are concerned. Nothing remotely substantive or “exciting” is planned for an incredibly busy bit of the network that has a lot of potential if only anyone could be bothered to exploit it. Heck even the Barking – Gospel Oak line has more exciting prospects than the entire South Eastern commuter network. On a slightly wider point about the Overground it is worth just noting that the updated patronage numbers for the full 2016/17 year show that the orange lines added 74m passenger journeys over the year and that’s with the GOBLIN part / fully blockaded for several months. Imagine what South Eastern’s inner lines could garner with some solid operational performance, investment and marketing / identity given what is happening to population levels.
WW
Yes
However, and it’s very difficult to say this, but the SE of London’s rail services appear to be suffering from … let’s call it “Edinburgh Tram syndrome”. (?)
Where the politicians of all sorts & parties, based in several different locations [ Westminster, GLA HQ, Kent – plus the DfT ] are all pushing their own private agendas & pet schemes & simultaneously trying to punish their pet hates, with no actual consideration for the commuters & passengers in the area.
And, as for “Integrated planning” or joined-up-thinking” I’m afraid you are into flying pigs territory!
@WW – The GOBLIN line was underused and it was easy to increase capacity and attract traffic. The SE suburban services were developed in the 1920’s by a company which had a strong incentive to attract traffic, and was very successful at it. The north of London railway companies had little incentive to promote their suburban traffic when their main income was long haul and coal. South of the Thames, suburban services were developed as rapidly as they could be. They were where GOBLIN is now in around 1926.
@WW:
I get the sense that there is almost a hidden agenda here which is to avoid spending on costly infrastructure if at all possible.
Yes, that was the feeling I got too… But not just that, it was more of a sense that they just wished the whole thing had gone away. Perhaps the authors were expecting devolution to go ahead and then it would all have become TfL’s problem, so they really hadn’t put much thought into it…
@RogerB – not so much coal (Midland excepted) as the fact that earning a crust from suburban traffic was much harder than from the longer distance markets -not an option south of the river. Note, too,that for all operators, the major commuting market was within the conurbation – even into the ’90s,the bulk of NSE’s commuting traffic still came from within the GLA area, although that was beginning to change quite quickly by then.
@ Roger B – I was referring to today’s context and what is planned in terms of development. There is more planned on the GOBLIN than there is on South Eastern if you look at NR’s proposed “solution” which is to do next to nothing. The railway is clearly woefully under resourced in terms of rolling stock which results in unacceptable overcrowding, the infrastructure cannot accommodate service levels that the public expect and no one seems to have a plan. I am sure SER were an admirable outfit in the 1920s but some of their spirit would appear to be lacking today.
@ SHLR – I am sure NR produced an appendix to one of their documents which went through TfL’s previous plans for these South Eastern lines. It’s actually an interesting read but, of course, TfL were required to change their plans and Mr Grayling isn’t interested either. Therefore NR have clearly done some work to look at TfL’s proposed infrastructure interventions but, as of today, it’s sort of stuck in no man’s land with no one showing any interest. Whether any of the bidders end up being brave enough to look at any of it remains to be seen.
@Graham H
Surely, however much the publicists might have concentrated on the Cheltenham Flyer and the Flying Scotsman, the core business of most of the north-of-the-Thames companies was coal. (Even the Great Eastern, which served no coalfields directly, got in on the act with the “Joint Line”, a collaborative venture with the GNR to avoid quadrupling the GNR main line whilst giving the GER some useful income).
The GER shared with the Southern companies both a lack of indigenous coal, and a large suburban network. I don’t think this is a conicidence
@WW
“I am sure SER were an admirable outfit in the 1920s”
For practical purposes the SER ceased to exist in 1899, when it merged with its former bitter rival the LCDR to form the SECR, although they remained legally distinct until both companies were merged into the Southern Railway in 1923.
Although the co-operation of the SECR was an improvement on the pre-1899 dog-eat-dog situation, it still suffered (and still does) from wasteful duplication of resources* (everywhere from Catford to Canterbury having two separate stations, on different lines) and was, by most standards, much the shabbiest of the three main constituents of the Southern. It was the only one of the three not to have any electrified mileage at all at the Grouping.
*Bizarrely, Kent/SE London is one of the few areas where the rail privatisation fans could have had true competition, but it has always been let as a single franchise.
@Timbeau
Kent had coal extraction, but it was not on the scale of the north clearly and the distance to London markets was much smaller so presumably haulage wasn’t as lucrative. There was also continental traffic including mail which the the two companies fought over vigorously. One of the legacies of the previous two companies in Kent is a very dense network even far out into the east where even today almost all towns are connected to each other by some means by rail, something other parts of the country at similar range from the capital of the country lack. Some of the duplication of facilities was removed by the Southern rationalising lines and stations in Thanet for example, but the inability to change between lines easily in Canterbury remains, although practically there’s probably little demand for that and new circular services around the coast provide plug some of the connectivity gaps. I think there is some consideration of a Canterbury link in the Route Study to enable a direct Ashford-Faversham link, reversing at one or the other of the existing Canterbury stations.
@timbeau – I very much doubt that the private companies valued the named Cheltenham Flyer and similar prestige trains as much as the railway romantics claim. Most main lines offered 5 -6 “intercity” services each day and there was also the lucrative mail and parcels traffic which travelled with them. In terms of asset consumption, these were relatively light, whereas coal – as in the Midland case – required four tracking and a coal train in every block. Compare and contrast the GC London extension and the Midland.
Tilmanstone Colliery was tiny compared with the clusters of collieries in S Yorkshire or the Nottingham coalfields.
@ Timbeau – thanks for the historical correction. I only quoted what was said in the post I was replying to. I’m afraid railway history is not something I’m particularly interested in so the detail just passes me by.
@Graham H
The named expresses got the publicity, but coal was indeed what provided the dividends (if any!)
The Kent coalfield only really started producing in quantity after WW1 – the first discovery was made during the abortive Channel Tunnel workings in the 1890s
@timbeau – my original point was that suburban traffic was less attractive than intercity operations; north of the river,operators had a genuine choice in terms of use of capacity as to how to maximise the return on assets, south of the river,not. Add in, as we all agree, the option of coal as a further competitor for the available capacity, and the choice as to whether to develop suburban traffic was a no brainer.
I’m not sure the Men of Kent would agree about the ‘wasteful duplication of resources’ – as Mark Townsend points out it means you can actually travel around Kent by train, not just to London.
Removal of similar duplication elsewhere in the Country is now regretted, or even reversed e.g. by Chiltern.
Yes the SECR was the poorest of the constituents of SR but it served a smaller population, the Medway Towns conurbation is smaller than Portsmouth and Southampton, the Thanet towns combined are smaller than Brighton.
@Roger B
The rail network in Kent would be much more conducive to traveling around Kent if Canterbury, Maidstone, Bromley etc each had one station serving both routes instead of duplicating facilities. The Southern did manage some integration in Chatham and in Thanet.
But it remains a mystery why the privatisation programme of the 1990s didn’t decide to let the ex-|LCDR Chatham and ex-SER networks, which are still largely independent of each other, as separate franchises, which could genuinely have competed.
Re: timbeau – surely that’s obvious: the train operating companies that were franchised in 1995-97 were simply the incorporated incarnations of the train operating units which came into existence on 1st April 1994, and each of the TOUs was basically a new name for one of BR’s existing sub-sector constituent elements. Network SouthEast ran the South Eastern division as one operation… fiat South Eastern Trains!
@Balthazar/Timbeau – if the Treasury hawks had ahd their way, SE would have been split into 4 or 5 separate entities (I have already related the saga of being asked to study breaking SWT into about 10 entities). This idea of smaller TOCs, which was around in the early stages of privatisation, foundered ostensibly on increased costs, but also I suspect because of the delays to implementation – as has been pointed out,privatisation effectively took the subsectors as then existing, stripped out the infrastructure side and used the resultant organisations, albeit with some minor tweaking, as the basis for the franchise offer. As the then SoS boasted: “BR have done all the spade work for us” – and so, alas, we had.
One compelling argument against small/microfranchising that has emerged subsequently has been the scale of the transaction costs on letting. These are largely invariate to the turnover and for the small franchises represent a significant fraction of the turnover. Bidders glumly remarked at the time that what they actually seemed to be bidding was the cost of bidding…
@Balthazar
The TOUs could have been carved up differently – wasn’t Thames & Chiltern one unit under NSE? And there have been plenty of changes to the structure subsequently – what was Central Trains is now part of Arriva Trains Wales, East Midland, Cross Country and London Midland.
Graham H
Bidders glumly remarked at the time that what they actually seemed to be bidding was the cost of bidding…
And that does not seem to have lessened at all ( Unless, just maybe, you are an “open operator ?? ) – if anything it’s probably got worse, hence the small numbers of bidders for each area as the operating leases come up for grabs.
@timbeau – prompted by the exchanges about the significance of different traffics in the days of the big four, I reflected a bit more on what revenues might have looked like,consulting the WTTs of the day. With very heavy caveats, a typical “north of the river” operator might face on the radial routes from London something like:
“InterCity” – 3 to 5 routes each served by about 6 trains a day with, say 10 cars apiece, half full @ a typical fare of 2-3 guineas. Say £25k a day
Trunk haul coal – 1-2 routes (including feeders): 30-40 rakes of 50 x 10 ton wagons at a typical rate of £1 a ton. Say £20k
Commuter routes – 3-4 routes of 30-40 trains of 6 cars half full on average @ 5/= fares – say £17k
Other passenger services – perhaps 100 services ofall sorts with typically 5 trains/day of three cars, each train with perhaps a couple of dozen punters paying small fares – 3/6 – £4k?
Other freight – no more than 20 trunk hauls (but with many feeders, of course) of 50 wagons – say 15 000 tons at somewhat higher rates than coal – £20k.
Mail/parcels/newspapers – ? £5k
We can argue about the detailed assumptions and I make no apologies for having to use very very broad figures. They simply illustrate that long distance passenger revenues would feature highly on the radar scanner, and commuter traffic well behind many other traffic types. More, the matching cost side of all this, even bearing in mind the relatively simple cost allocation techniques du jour, and the imperfect capitalisation of the business, meant that IC operations generated a quarter of the income for a disproportionately small consumption of resources, despite the handling costs of the the then extensive portion working (GW’s express loco fleet < 10% of total loco stock), whereas behind the coal and other freight figures was a vast array of assets such as marshalling yards, trip workings and demurraged stock. Other passenger clearly a basket case, however generous the assumptions made, and commuting traffic somewhere in the middle.
The freight figures are deliberately London-oriented – a national overview would bring in more trip and block freight, with traffics from the ports and the steel works and the iron mines
I have set out these illustrative scenario figures simply to show what would be at the forefront of railway managers' minds in the '20s and '30s, to underline the importance of a small number of high profile trains, and the extent to which (a) coal relied on volume to generate a reasonable cash flow but consumed a lot of assets, and (b) commuting traffic was relatively unimportant in the scheme of things – but certainly took up paths!. Clearly, different operators faced a different mix =GW had quite trivial commuting activity but a heavy portfolio of rural and semirural activities,whereas LNE had morecommuting to its name but fewer London coal flows than,say,the LMS.
The analysis also shows that SR, lacking the scope for many long distance services, and having little coal traffic,didn't have much choice but to develop the commuter trade.
My apologies for writing at length. It would be nice to refine some of these assumptions but a work of weeks,I fear,in the absence of much published material.
Graham H
Have you come across David Turner?
He used to have a very informative web-site, now archived, but maintained & extant
HERE.
And, as he says, he is still working in the field of late C19th-early C20th Railway Economics & his current site & contact details are:
here, as well
I recommend everyone interested in that specific sub-field to have a look.
@Graham H: Thank you for the insight, however approximate it might be!
It certainly puts the historical context into perspective.
@Greg T: It’d be funny if no one turned up for a bid…
Graham H absolutely loved the reference to guineas for inter city passengers whereas everyone else has to make do with £s or shillings!
@130 🙂
@Greg T – very many thanks for introducing me to Turnip Rail – a lot to digest there (York quite a hotbed for serious railway analysis – my former colleague Carolyn Dougherty has studied there and produced a number of useful scholarly articles on early railways which overlap with David Turner’s work)
On the shape of pre-war railway businesses, what I was aiming to do was to produce a tool kit (I’d have done a spread sheet if I was any good with Excel ), where others could play with the factors and research costs and revenues. (I am particularly leery about coal tariffs, where there is very little information and I based my assumption on a markup to the likely average price of a ton of coal.)
My dad mentioned that the Midland main line, although carrying vast quantities of coal wasn’t particularly efficient in asset utilisation. During WW2 he recalls nose to tail coal traffic sometimes barely moving a single block throughout a shift. The goods lines were largely signalled as permissive block so an engine could almost buffer up to the brake van of the train in front. On other routes with significant lengths of only double track, freight had to keep a move on to get out of the way of the passenger trains, although there were usually long gaps between those at certain times of the day. The Midland Railway was an early proponent of the ‘short and frequent’ passenger service however which probably meant gaps between them were insufficient to run very much freight. Thus the widespread quadrupling was necessary fairly early on.
@Graham H
Indeed, both long haul passenger and coal were significant north of the Thames. But south of the Thames there was neither – no coal (at least until the Kent discoveries) and little chance of any passenger journey much over 70 miles before running into the sea.
@timbeau – precisely my point, as explained. (The LSWR did, of course, have the West Country longer distance traffic but a single, highly seasonal route).
Let’s not forget that the SER and the LCD competed for passengers and mail to the Continent. I seem to recall that the upstart LCD snatched the mail contract from under the SER’s nose. So there was some profitable traffic of notionally more than 70 miles.
@RogerB – undoubtedly, there were profitable traffics within the Southern area, as the Southern made a steady if unspectacular profit. Was the Continental traffic as important to them as intercity traffic was to the north of river companies? Unlikely – the typical distances were shorter – on average perhaps half of a “northern” intercity journey; and the frequency was lower. Transposing those two factors into my outline model would reduce the “intercity” proportion of the total income from 25% to something nearer to 5. Nice to have,of course, but not a deal breaker, and more awkward to manage in some respects and therefore more costly (some dedicated stock, customs clearance,and so on).
@Roger B
The LCDR and SER did have the lion’s share of continental traffic, (and the LSWR for transatlantic journeys) but they were only responsible for (and got revenue from) the first 75 miles or so of such journeys. (Maybe 100 miles if the channel crossing was made by a railway owned steamship). Still relatively short-haul compared with the Midland, LNWR or GWR’s hinterland. And although the users of such services tended to be well-heeled, with a high proportion of first-class fares, the numbers involved were very small.
All those companies that operated steamer services made much of them, in publicity, at least. And judging by the capital expenditures, were expecting a decent return on revenue.
As of 1922 [ Note 1 ] the following companies either operated steamers or had a share in a “joint” steamer service:
SE&CR – cross-Channel
LBSCR – cross-Channel
LSWR – cross-Channel & Channel Islands [ Note 2 – also GWR ]
GWR – cross-Channel & Channel Islands & Ireland
LNWR – Irish Sea ( Inc IoM?)
L&YR – Irish Sea & Belgium [ Note 3 ]
MR – Irish Sea
GSWR – Clyde steamers
CalR – Clyde steamers
NBR – Clyde steamers
NER – none ? [ Note 4 ]
GCR – none ?
GNR- none
GER – Belgium & Netherlands
LTSR – a ferry
I think the Belfast Steam Ship Cy, City of Cork & IoM Steam Packet Cy had substantial railway holding of their ownerships, too.
Notes:
1: Source – timetables & adverts from a 1922 Bradshaw reprint.
2: The LSW, GW & LNW operated “Ocean Liner specials” of course.
3: Only company to operate services on both sides of the country, I think.
4: Both the NE & GC had huge dock & port facilities, of course, but did not appear to run steamer services themselves.
If I get around to part 5 that will be on freight so …
Any more comments about freight, coal, ferries etc. unless very directly related to passenger travel on the Victoria metro services will be deleted.
PoP
In which case, there will be none, because, certainly in the past, the specific Cross-Channel services were so few in number as to probably not affect the local/suburban services at all (!)
E.G. On the SECR, 4 trains a day, all from VIctoria & all out of the rush hours
@Ranking Trevor
28th April 2017 at 19.08
how the extra train will fit in at Orpington is unclear. I’m wondering if it will use Platform 1 and the fast Tonbridge loop to Bickley…
This becomes more realistic when you consider the fast trains originating from Maidstone East via Swanley joining the fast line at Chislehurst Junction and running fast to London Bridge, through the core and on to Cambridge (TL7).
@PoP
That is surely the point – what are now the Metro services were developed precisely because the pickings from ferry, freight etc traffic were so thin (and fought over so bitterly). Also why none of the LCDR’s three routes to Victoria (via Crystal Palace, West Dulwich and Catford) were ever quadrupled – which is in turn why the Metro services are so hard to fit in with services deeper into Kent.
@Timbeau: Via Crystal Palace? Via Beckenham Junction????
For what it’s worth, with regard to freight on the route (which receives short shrift from some commenters here) I understand there are often days when 60+ run. They are not all Channel Tunnel freights but mostly aggregates traffic and engineering trains.
Sit on a station on the North Kent and you’ll see a stream of stone trains from Angerstein and Grain.
SuperMacInroe,
Yes, I too was a bit surprised at the short shrift. Hopefully to be given a different perspective if I get around to part 5.
@PoP: Just looking at some of those freights on Real Time Trains. Very interesting… I assume engineering trains includes the measurement trains of which this appears to be one.
Perhaps they should add some coaches and advertise it as the “Kent Explorer”. It seems to be most of it…
@SHLR
That departmental tour is pretty epic. Some of the high speed passenger services from St. Pancras are circular now, doing a tour around the east Kent coast. For example: http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/W80595/2017/05/03/advanced
They also don’t go near Victoria so we’d better leave that here, although South Eastern may have got the idea from the circular steam excursions around Kent that do usually run out of Victoria!
Southern Heights
Top/Tailed class 73’s yesterday. I passed underneath it on my way home in Dover on my way home from work.
That was badly written was it? Must try harder.
@SHLR
[LCDR}”Via Crystal Palace? Via Beckenham Junction”
The LCDR’s (and LBSCR’s) original route to Victoria was indeed via the West End & Crystal Palace Railway. The cut off between Beckenham Junction and Battersea Pier Junction via Penge Tunnel (and the LBSCR’s between Croydon and Balham via Streatham Common) came later. Later still the LBSCR quadrupled the Streatham Common route, and the LCDR built the Catford Loop
Not in Southern Victoria metro land as such but since the ‘long-distance traffic’ has been mentioned, here’s a clip from the 1957 electrification to Margate:
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/a-railway-triumph-aka-inauguration-of-kent-electri
I wonder how and whether the commuter traffic on that route has been sustained since then. For all I know, traffic may have declined from those heady days and thus justifying a reduction in service, thereby releasing paths for metro services.
N.B. I haven’t studied timetables to compare.
GF
1960/61 tt – arrivals before/at 09.00 in London from Margate
6.20, 6.30, 6.55, 7.05
Now:
4.43, 5.17, 5,50, 6.00%, 6.14, 6.24%, 6.35, 6.43%, 6.58%, 7.03.
Those marked with a “%” sign are to St Pancras.
More trains overall, but one fewer ( “inside” Gravesend ), but all of them will interact with suburban or outer-suburban services, once past Gillingham or Rochester
@Graham Feakins -for what it’s worth, L&SE management was telling the Department that by the early ’80s, the Kent Coast commuter traffic was in long term decline after the initial boost following electrification. This was attributed to those who had relocated to Kent now retiring in situ. Certainly, the Kent Coast resorts, especially Thanet, which had retained a certain cachet for a generation and a half after the war, have now got some of the worst social problems in the south east.
How far this secular trend will be/has been reversed in the long term by rising London property prices is perhaps unclear – the spectacular continuing rise in London property prices seems to have stalled, at least in inner London and at least for the time being, but in outer London, they continue to roar away. This may suppress the rising demand for inners to the benefit of towns such as Maidstone and Canterbury, bearing in mind that the cost of an annual outer season ticket has fallen from something like 1-1.5% of the cost of a 4 bed house to about half that.
@Graham H
“the cost of an annual outer season ticket has fallen from something like 1-1.5% of the cost of a 4 bed house to about half that.”
The cost of an annual season ticket has actually increased ahead of general inflation (RPI +1% in recent years)
But house price inflation has run at more than double the rate that season tickets have.
Mark T
Even if stoppers remained at a fifteen minute interval, the Penge – Kent House long loops as described in the Route Study could allow an additional fast train to overtake each one en route.
I’ve been thinking about this a while. It’s two stops from the end of the Bromley passing loop at Shortlands to Kent House. It feels to me that it would be a very uneven service if you added a slow train to pass between Penge East and Kent House. What am I missing? I’ve never seen the point of this extended loop.
@timbeau – yes,I knew that; It’s the house price differentials that,combined with annual season ticket costs that are major determinants as to where people locate. There are a good many academic studies of that .My point remains that the season ticket price element of that calculation has declined noticeably in recent years, helping to drive people to commute further.
@Graham H
Indeed, and this restricts the development of Metro services as well. With more long distance services there is no opportunity to improve frequencies on inner suburban services (still less running skip-stop services from Zones 5/6, as used to happen). Longer trains (and therefore platforms) are the only option left for the operators, but even these have their limits – it doesn’t seem to make a difference whether a train is 6, 8 or 10 cars long, everyone still crams on the carriages nearest the buffer stops at the terminus.
timbeau: If you are literally right that “everyone crams on the carriages nearest the buffer stops at the terminals”, and the extra carriages are unused, then the line is, by definition, not at full capacity.
If it is a slight exaggeration, and you are just saying that these carriages are more tightly packed than the others, then the extra carriages (and the longer platforms to go with them) are not really wasted, and any spare capacity left in the country-end carriages is just that, spare capacity.
Ian Sergeant,
Regarding Kent House loops, I suspect there are less useful in the modern world and to some extent they are a hangover from steam days. I was a bit surprised though when there was a comment stating that they aren’t currently in timetabled use for passenger services.
Maybe that is the idea behind extending them. As they are they currently achieve very little. So probably worth maintaining but maybe not worth renewing when the time comes. Therefore either make them long enough to be useful or get rid of them.
As mentioned in the article they were very useful. The up loop enabled a Kent House – Victoria (or maybe it was Blackfriars) service to be run in the morning peaks with the train starting from platform 2. Fast trains could still pass it using the loop.
In the down direction in the evening, trains could run in service to Kent House and if continuing to the depot they could sit at Kent House until a suitable path was available for their onward journey. It was probably needing a path through the old layout at Shortlands Junction that enforced the wait.
@ Timbeau – I will no doubt be told off but surely longer trains and platforms are *not* the only option. Are there not options to raise line speeds, ease speed restrictions, improve signalling and add automatic train operation on these routes? There may also be more expensive options about raising junction capacity through grade separation or similar. Clearly getting the best use of existing paths through longer trains is a sensible first step but we do rather seem to stop there and go no further as evidenced in a lot of this NR route study.
I know I bang about Japanese practice but if we are heading to a capacity crisis then they have had to do a lot of clever things to make their railways as “capacious” as possible. They’ve also made them efficient and reliable so there is a higher probability of the planned timetable being achieved day in, day out and not being compromised by breakdowns and failures. We don’t seem to have quite the same focus on these things in the UK and seem happier to use performance regimes and similar to set a target to aim at and do no better.
WW
Yet, we have had a “recent” example ( 5 years ago, now) …. of reinvigorating services & making it all run smoothly, with almost no breakdowns & improving the service.
Which shows it CAN be done – all it requires is political will & therefore the money to implement that will.
I trust we all remember how dire LUL, TfL & many “BR” services were prior to the olympics in 2012? And how, miraculously, money & time was found to significantly upgrade the system, once the show was known to be coming to town? [Remainder snipped for descending into oft-heard conspiracy accusations which do not advance the discussion. Malcolm]
@Malcolm – it is indeed a well-known phenomenon that trains are crowded at the London end – hardly surprising given that it takes a good 2-3 minute fairly brisk walk to reach the barriers from the country end (and then by the time you get there, the barriers are clogged with all the “difficult” cases). For amusement, the treasury’s answer to this was “well,why don’t you just omit the last carriage?”. For further amusement,I told this story to a friend who audited Foxes’ Biscuits, who relayed it to their CEO, who remarked that they had similar suggestions about leaving out the top biscuit in the pack to eliminate breakages.
The passing loops at Kent House may not have timetabled services, but they are fairly regularly used to allow fast services to pass there. Some empties sit in them too in the peaks.
“To find what these are you have to be good at following lines to see where they lead. The spider diagram seems to show that two of the trains terminating at Blackfriars are from Maidstone East via the Catford loop line and the other two are from Orpington via Herne Hill.”
The most ‘easterly’ two Blackfriars terminating lines do indeed trace through to Orpington. The other two are more of a challenge but, once the diagram has been expanded, can be seen to lead to Ashford International and Rainham.
One of the clever things about the design of the new through London Bridge platforms with their exits at mid-way points along the platform, is that Charing Cross services are already seeing people spread themselves along the train rather than all going for the front carriage, so this may be a thing of the past for SE services.
The 0658 from Orpington to the Thameslink route is scheduled to wait 3-4 minutes at Herne Hill in platform 1 before departure at 0731 whilst it is overtaken by a fast train to Victoria. For those that don’t know this does lead to a lot of rushing and people bundling into the carriage by the stairs by people thinking about the train is about to leave when it arrives 4 minutes “early”.
Herne Hill station prior to the mid 2000s used to be a stop on the 94 Maidstone East to Victoria service. These semi fast trains and the faster trains from Ashford also stopped at Beckenham Junction which was handy for tramlink interchange. When the suburban services went every 15 minutes these stops were removed other than one first thing in the morning (0514 from Ashford) presumably for interchange with Thameslink services.
I also believe that there used to be a regular service from Bromley South to Cannon Street via Beckenham Junction and New Beckenham but this was withdrawn in the 2000s?
Someone else mentioned the dual arrival of slow and fast trains at Bromley South and the lack of time for interchange- ideally it would make more sense for the passenger wishing to travel between the suburbs and Kent if the slow train to Orpington arrived 3-4 minutes before the fast train, and likewise the fast train arrived 3-4 minutes before the stopping train but I imagine that is impossible given the journey times and stopping patterns involved.
Brief mention was made of the overcrowding at Brixton which is a function of the known problems at Victoria where the station is often closed, the ability to get a seat at Brixton and also to travel to the City. Woe betide anyone who hasn’t chosen one of the carriages near the station exit as it can take 5 minutes to get out and there are still people on the platform when the following fast train comes through. In recent months station dispatchers have been in place.
I’d be careful about reading too much into the spider diagram. Most importantly the Thameslink consultation would change the diagram significantly for these services. It also doesn’t seem to match the description of what forms the baseline, for example it’s unclear what is the third Catford Loop stopper and the two current peak Orpington – Blackfriars via Lewisham services are missing. The latter two were diverted from Charing Cross when the London Bridge works started so would represent a service cut.
It’s also strange the baseline has three peak hour services on the Catford Loop when there are currently five separate trains arriving at Blackfriars between 8-9am. These are all 8 coaches long so the baseline is a cut on the service today. This is likely to change with the Thameslink consultation as 4 class 700’s is probably equivalent to the current service levels.
@Graham H
” it is indeed a well-known phenomenon that trains are crowded at the London end – hardly surprising given that it takes a good 2-3 minute fairly brisk walk to reach the barriers from the country end ”
The phenomenon is just as common on outgoing trains, and is exacerbated by operators not announcing trains soon enough, so that many people do not have time to get to the country end of the platform even if that would be more convenient for their destination (and latecomers then can’t get on at all). Double-ending stations like Victoria and Waterloo (as has been done at most Thameslink stations in the central area) would solve this problem, and several others.
@WW
Any improvement in inner suburban services is unlikely in the near future. It is surely no coincidence that all the service improvements promised in the new SW franchise are outside the GLA area – doubtless when the bids were being prepared both bidders expected the inners to be taken off their hands in short order, until the Hon Member for Epsom & Ewell shoved his oar in.
@Timbeau
Simply ‘double ending’ an existing terminal where all the principal established tube and street connections are already at one end won’t automatically shift large numbers people to the outer ends of trains arriving or departing. At Victoria there might be an opportunity to help achieve this shift however with the new Crossrail 2 station which is bound to generate significant interchange traffic and which could be sited towards the country end of the complex with new passageways connecting to surface platforms part way along (assuming there’s sufficient width on each platform for the necessary stairs and lifts). Double ending can significantly shorten some travellers’ distance between train and street objective however so is a positive development if it can be achieved economically. Liverpool Street looks interesting in this respect for example where there is much new development to the north of the platforms and the potential for a much shorter out of station walking interchange with the Overground at Shoreditch High Street.
@ Greg – two comments in response. Firstly the Overground is not immune to problems although they are usually a NR asset failure or a freight train issue. However there have been problems solely within LOROL / Arriva’s remit and sometimes it’s taken a while to resolve these. It remains to be seen if Arriva on its own, with a tougher contract, can maintain LOROL’s high standards. Secondly yes there was money available for the 2012 Olympics transport services preparation. I would argue, though, that the risk of reputational damage and failure being broadcast worldwide was the greatest incentive on TfL and all the operators and maintainers to make sure things didn’t go wrong. There was also a huge planning effort involved. These are the things that probably made the difference.
@ Timbeau – I assume that the DfT instructed bidders to ignore the possibility of separation of suburban services not long after Mr Grayling took the helm and made his views known inside the department. From that point on bidders could offer improvements for the full franchise term if they wished. The headlines from the announcement of the new franchise do offer some inner area improvement – new trains, better Sunday services and some small “faster journey time” possibilities. Obviously we don’t know *how* some of these changes will be implemented and whether established service patterns are going to be thrown in the bin with the resultant moaning and wailing from certain quarters. We know that the DfT only want improvements on longer distance runs because of the revenue impact / growth potential. Suburban services are a meddlesome faff that don’t deserve much improvement.
@Timbeau, Mark Townend
As you both say, adding entrances/exits at the non-town-end to terminals (double ending) would add station capacity, relieve some of crush at the current gatelines, spread out passengers on trains leading to higher utilisation of their capacity, all of which maximise use of fixed and mobile space restricted assets. In other words, wringing out more of the assets.
But this is nowhere in this Route Study, nor any others that I recall, so is not a ‘policy’ of DfT, NR or the ToCs. Certainly adding such second entrances/exits would be quite expensive, likely too dear for some stations, but is worth investigating.
Those of us in the West Country are ever grateful to Isambard K for foreseeing the need for ‘double ending’ – are we the only London terminus? Not sure if the benefit will still work if we want to interchange to Crossrail – anyone know?
Double ending Victoria was part of the Chelsea-Hackney line plan, with the southern entrance by the coach station. Crossrail 2 retains this site.
@WW -perhaps the prime candidate left for double ending might be Waterloo, to provide quick walking links to Westminster. (The existing subway is only marginally helpful, as it’s hardly more than a couple of car lengths away from the barriers).There is already an existing underpass exiting conveniently just by the Lying-in Hospital.
It would, however,require a TfL appraisal (ie related total journey times) rather than the more limited DfT approach…
@ Graham H – I suspect you were really replying to Timbeau’s post. Unless I’m missing something I suspect double ending somewhere like Waterloo will not be easy if you need to provide sufficient capacity off and on to platforms and ensure it’s fully accessible too. Some of the platforms aren’t that wide and you’ve got all sorts of issues about do you go down or up to provide the extra capacity and is the structure capable of being bored out / drilled in to support an upper level. Look at the massive expense being incurred to convert the former International terminal which has long and reasonably wide platforms and was fully accessible.
I do endorse LBM’s earlier remark that there is a lack of imagination or even thought about station upgrades. Yes they are expensive and potentially difficult but there is a great big gap here. It’s less of an issue in TfL land but even here it takes a ridiculous amount of time to get a LU scheme from concept to execution. Overground is less contentious / simpler in scope but even here there are funding problems and schemes are being delayed / descoped.
@WW – yes, timbeau- sorry.
I take your point about the west end of Waterloo. Double ending anywhere is a fiendishly difficult thing to shoehorn into an existing built environmentand then often achieved only partially or not at all from the point of view of the platform exits. (Victoria). Charing Cross is the obvious case, where even the side passage to the footbridge couldn’t be left open.
Jonathan,
I find the phenomenon of people changing in the morning from SouthEastern at Brixton to get the Victoria line fascinating. I suspect it is entirely “game playing” to improve the individual’s journey and it doesn’t happen to the same extent in the evening.
I am pretty sure on the opening of the Victoria line and for many years afterwards interchange at Brixton was almost non-existent. Why change at Brixton when you could do it at Victoria?
When people appear to start to act irrationally it is a good sign that the system can’t cope and people are working their way around problems. It makes no logical sense for people to get off at Brixton in the bigger scheme of things. It artificially fills the Victoria line between Vauxhall and Victoria (where capacity is needed) whilst there is spare capacity on Southeastern between Brixton and Victoria because so many people have got off.
It also goes to show that while Victoria station upgrade might improve journey time to and from the platform for many people it does nothing to improve train capacity.
Basically, the phenomenon shows that the Victoria line is unable to cope with demand – not that we didn’t know that.
The platform extension programme could have been a opportunity to add an entrance to Waterloo on Westminster Bridge Road (hardly the back of beyond – indeed it would be well-used both by Whitehall civil servants and Westminster politicians!) There is even a handy Tube station at Lambeth North. And as Waterloo is built on arches, there is space under here.
The existing subway helps a little, but is too close to the barrier line. The stairs to it also face the wrong way (towards the barriers, rather than towards the country end) meaning that everyone has to squeeze past the stairwell to get to or from the five (soon to be seven) cars at the country end of the train, whether they intend to use the concourse or the subway. Information down there is also not as comprehensive as it is on the concourse.
Again, at Victoria, double ending would put the coach station on its doorstep.
@WW “do you go down or up to provide the extra capacity and is the structure capable of being bored out / drilled in to support an upper level” Victoria has already been built over – fitting escalators/lifts from the raft down to the platforms shouldn’t be an insuperable problem.
Lack of public transport connections at one end of the station doesn’t seem to be a problem at the Thameslink stations. These are central London termini where many passengers walk to and from their destinations.
@WW
“The headlines from the announcement of the new (SW) franchise do offer some inner area improvement – new trains , better Sunday services and some small “faster journey time” possibilities. ”
New trains were coming anyway, as part of the 10-car plan. It remains to be seen whether MTR’s trains are a improvement on the 455/456/458/707 mix.
The only “faster journey time” promised for any station in the GLA area is at Hounslow – this is presumably a consequence of the doubling in frequency to Reading, as there are no paths for the extra trains to run via Richmond. Hounslow is also one of the few parts of SWT’s bailiwick where they have competition.
Improved Sunday services are welcome, but do nothing for the overcrowding in the weekday peaks.
Any more info on what the referred-to improvements to in-station crowding at Peckham Rye might entail? The talk of double-ending stations in the comments above piques my interest; as I am sprinting along past the train I am just about to miss, I often fantasise about PMR having entrances at the other end of the platforms. They could even shove a lift in there to comply with the Overground’s step-free access boast from the marketing material of a couple of years back.
POP, i have also seen the growing phenomena of passengers waiting at Brixton to catch the SE train to Victoria! Can only assume it’s getting difficult to get a seat on the tube because of all the SE passengers getting off at Brixton.
@PMR_D: Peckham Rye already has a lift to the Overground platforms, whether or not it is working or can be used by passengers is another problem!
The TfL map suggests it’s not working….
@SHLR, Peckham Rye has been my local station for nearly 20 years, and I’ve never seen the lift on platforms 1/2 in use for passengers. Its location, at the cramped east end of the platforms and very close to the stairs, would make public operation highly unlikely without some kind of rebuild/extension to provide circulating space. As mentioned up-thread a second exit from these platforms at the western end would make more sense.
An additional problem is the time taken to clear the ticket gates at street level. There seems to be a very high failure rate with contactless cards, with many passengers failing to tap out successfully after multiple attempts. As a consequence the crowds regularly block back to all four platforms in the evening rush hour.
Slight tangent, but picking up on that comment about contactless cards. My partner regularly enters at Peckham Rye, using a contactless card. Even though the gate opens, the tfl charge system fails to connect that entry with the subsequent exit and generates two incomplete journey charges. Not a one off, happens every single time he uses Peckham Rye. Kind of puzzled why this error only ever happens at Peckham Rye.
@DavidG: I know, I’ve never seen it in operation either. But then I’ve only used in the off-peak. I thought it was bad enough then!
Adding the second entrance at the Western end would only work if you did it for all four platforms. To do platform 4 would require a bit of a land grab for the lift shaft as well as platform widening along almost the entire length of platforms 3 & 4.
You would also only end up with an entrance on Blenheim Grove, as I suspect Holly Grove would put up fierce resistance. After all two, very expensive semi’s would need to be demolished.
I don’t think an exit to Bellenden Road would be viable either without evicting a lot of garage’s under arches.
@SHLR there is undoubtedly what looks like a lift on the overground/SLL platforms, although I’ve never seen it in use, and indeed have no idea where it stops on the ground floor; it’s not in a public area of the station certainly. If you are a wheelchair user and perhaps know the secret handshake with the ticket office staff, you could probably use it, as long as you are comfortable negotiating the narrow space between the stairs and the platform edge once you get up there.
@SHLR sorry our posts crossed there. I also think that P4 would be problematic. I believe that the platforms already overhang the gardens of the houses along Holly Grove to a certain extent, so you’d be taking up quite a large slice of the garden.
Network Rail have shown a casual disregard for the fate of the businesses in the arches more than once, so I don’t see that stopping them adding something there. The simplest way to do it would be to have an entrance on Blenheim Grove for P1/2, which is also a cut-through to an entrance inside the centre courtyard for P3/P4.
I don’t know whether proposing speculative new station entrances counts as being a crayonista or not. I’m inclined to believe that the proposed improvements are going to be more along the lines of a lick of paint and some slightly wider doors.
@PMR_D: I’d have to refresh my memory of the exact layout of the station, as I’ve only once used platform 3 and never 4. But I suspect a lift would be better placed near the existing stairs as this is commercial space (and there looks to be Network Rail logo on the one with the red doors on Holly Grove).
But for the re-introduction of the lift on Platforms 1 & 2, you could extend the platforms slightly towards Denmark Hill and then introduce some platform edge barriers around the top of the stairs and up to the lift entrance. In the old London Bridge platforms 5 & 6 used to have these.
As for the ticket line, perhaps an atrium should be built in front of the station with an expanded ticket line. Some of the shops in the little arcade might need to sacrificed to accommodate that though. I have forgotten exactly what is being planned and the Southwark web site is not very forthcoming. It certainly looks as though an atrium is not in the plan…
With regard to comments on double-ending Waterloo and Peckham Rye…
Waterloo has a huge amount of under-used arch space underneath it, in a similar way to the original London Bridge. As with the new London Bridge, the capacity solution there would likely involve digging down but I would imagine it would also need to be a holistic rebuild and not simply just a double-end.
Peckham Rye has space in the V between the lines for a new entrance/lifts/whatever but it would require changes of use to the arches below. Given that the arches are let by the railway, it’s not beyond imagination that those changes could be made.
@PoP / Jonathan – re changing at Brixton
A lot of it is, as Jonathan says, about getting a seat per se. Also many people will nominally commute into Victoria only to come south, to, say Pimlico where there is a large HMG / public sector complex.
Peak entry / exit restrictions at Victoria tube (as well as the ‘temporary’ changed tube entrance / exit location) probably make it a zero sum game in terms of total journey time (especially if your train ends up at the dreaded Victoria P1) – when you consider it like that, it can seem postively rational.
Why I do / did this a lot (and have noticed others doing it) is if you are travelling all the way through to KGX / Euston and have luggage with you for an onward journey up north. Changing at Brixton will guarantee both the security of your luggage, and you a seat, all without the crush-loading at Victoria (both at the mainline station, on tube and on platform)!
2/2
So in terms of the ability of the Victoria line to cope with demand, one could argue that the higher tph, new stock, and efficient all-day despatching procedures at Victoria (northbound) shows that the line actually copes quite well.
Education / experience has had an effect as well – you don’t really see people running for a Victoria line tube any more (or as much) as people know that there will be another one in a minute’s time….
@ Tim – I certainly don’t run for Vic Line trains anymore for exactly the reason you cite. The line’s higher reliability is another factor in not needing to hurry or be anxious about when a train may turn up.
People probably take Southeastern from Brixton to Victoria in the morning not because there are no seats left on the tube, but because the tube station entrance is at full capacity, and it’s often a slow shuffle to get to the barrier line. The slightest disruption causes a swift backlog of people up the stairs and onto the street. It would certainly make sense for those who exit to the street at Victoria. Even at the peak time the front two Victoria line cars are nearly empty because trains depart before people have time to walk to the far end of the platform. I willingly miss a departing train so I can reach the empty seats on the next one in. A minute-and-a-half well spent. It then fills to capacity at Stockwell.
Just a quick comment re 25KV AC OLE going south of City Thameslink.
This was indeed proposed at a very early stage in the Thameslink project (with wires extending to Blackfriars), but subsequently was subsequently dropped when it was realized just how much extra signalling equipment* would need to be altered south of the Thames to permit it to happen and the consequences for the projects budget. At the time the proposal was made I also seem to recal concerns raised by the City of London Authorities over the impact of ‘unsightly’ OLE across Blacfriars bridge interfering with views of St Pauls (though I think this predated the ‘enclosed box’ design of station for Blackfiars being selected which would hide the wires anyway)
*For example, traditionally, signalling on 3rd rail lines made extensive use of 50Hz AC track circuits (these not being affected by DC traction return) and these cannot be used within 2 miles of overhead lines less due to the potential for them to be falsely energised by residual AC traction return current in the running rails. Yes there are obviously well established alternatives to allow dual voltage operation but as with all signalling modifications there has to be a good reason to justify the expense incurred.
Bidders for the new franchise have been announced, see here…
I agree with comment above re widening tracks at Bellingham to create a passing point. Another one near nunhead / Peckham Rye is also posssible. The absurdity of the herne hill route is manifest. Today the 8.15 from Bromley South to Victoria… usually 16 min off leak when blows out to 24 mins in the peak took over 30 mins. Entanglement between fast and slow is immeasurably frustrating. They should duplicate from Kent House to Bromley South. And between Sydenham Hill and West Dulwich.
@CAJB
I guess that any services formed of classes 745 and 313 could also be described as “off leak”.
745 or 313 for example.
CAJB
Kent Ho to Shortlands Jn, surely? As it’s already 4 tracks past that point ….
Though good luck trying to force that through Beckenham …..
GT
Gazing idly,as I frequently do,from the window of a train from Bromley South to Victoria via Herne hill,I have given the idea of widening this line to four tracks considerable thought.
Beckenham Junction is indeed tricky,in that one would have to decide what to do with the bay platform and junction on the North side of the formation,but the road-bridge has an empty arch of roughly the right size in roughly the right place.There would probably have to be a small bit of land-take from what was,I think,the down goods-yard…but there are less superable obstacles than this when it comes to full four-tracking this main line London-side of Shortlands Jct..
Slugabed,
Gazing idly as I did many years ago when I worked at Beckenham Junction ticket office, I concluded that the biggest problem is actually the road bridge at the country end of Beckenham Junction station.
Having hypothetically knocked down the station buildings, I couldn’t visualise how the necessary clearance could be obtained. You could raise the bridge height but that would mean reprofiling the crossroads immediately to the south which in turn would initiate a whole sequence of highway height adjustments necessary to accommodate the changed bridge profile.
PoP
I think we both have very different opinions as to what I said.
Best leave it at that,eh?
Beckenham Junction may be tricky, but without coming up with a solution for Herne Hill the number of extra trains will be limited. As such small scale extensions of 4 tracking are likely to have similar issues. The train mentioned above looks to have got caught behind some congestion in the Herne Hill area caused by a late running slow train.
In terms of what has changed with the newly proposed timetables since the article has been written:
The Catford Loop will go to all stations rather than skip stopping even at peak times (with no peak extras) – probably with 20/10 minute gaps which could make loadings fairly uneven. In the morning peak hour one fewer Thameslink train and one fewer Southeastern train from Denmark Hill to Blackfriars compared to today. I’m not hugely confident how long any spare capacity will last.
The route via Herne Hill will switch to some skip stopping in the morning peak with some trains from Ashford stopping at 1/2 stations between Bromley South and Victoria due to the “current levels of poor performance and overcrowding”. While sensible it’s a sign the Route Study may need to consider infrastructure changes. The imaginative timetable solutions would be harder in the evening peak as people from Kent won’t like someone from Kent House taking their seat!
No worse here than anywhere else, I suppose, but……………
I really hope that today’s announcement of breaking up GTR at the end of the current concession doesn’t cause a return of all the ills of the previous “competitive” regime highlighted in the Gibb report.
Well lowering the level of the tracks could be a solution if the clearance at the bridge at Beckenham is insufficient,
Re the track widening from Kent House to BS – I meant all the way. One of the perennial problems that the fast services from Victoria to the Kent coast / Ashford via Herne Hill have is that they are timetabled to catch up to the stopping Orpington service just as the latter has ALREADY passed the passing point at Kent House. And the stopping service always runs about 5 mins late. As you probably know, by shoving the slow train in front of the fast train near Beckenham Jct where the track goes back to 2 lines only means the fast service slams on the brakes and ends up crawling to BS and arriving at the same time, and as late as, the wretched stopping service. A track duplication starting all the way from KH to BS would mean no miserable slow trains impeding fast ones at precisely the wrong moment. a cheaper solution would simply be to timetable the stopping service to wait at KH for 5 mins in the bay platform, and always timetable the fast service to pass at this point, The magicians at Southeastern always put some float in the timetable (usually saying it takes 8 mins or something crazy to get from Petts Wood to Orpington so that a train that has run late throughout most of its journey magically arrives at its destination on time) – why not have this float moved up the line?
Re the inbound journey i referred to – yes we got caught in congestion. But the timetable is planned to cause the congestion. What is annoying is that some late running /lack of overtaking options makes the congestion farcical.
By that I mean, the late running stopping service leaves Kent House and blocks numerous fast trains behind it. It then causes further congestion at Herne Hill because it is now in conflict with the Thameslink services crossing there. There is no opportunity for the Southeastern train to use what I think is platform 1 and allow the fast trains past. That causes an almighty mess as the fast services then get caught in the traffic jam. The fast services of course are still stuck behind the stopping service through Brixton and all the way to Victoria as it’s mainly 2 tracks the whole way in (the other tracks are used by the Overground). Again, just as the fast services outbound arrive at BS at the same time, and as late as, the Orpington stopping service, so too do they arrive at Victoria as late as the Orpington service (only difference is that it is a few minutes AFTER the Orpington service arrives at Victoria).
If the track were duplicated even just between Sydenham Hill and West Dulwich, fast trains could get past the slow service and have relative clear track into Victoria while the slow train slots in BEHIND the fast service to continue its stopping service. This makes best use of the track in front of the stopping service which is otherwise “empty” as the slow train ambles all the bloody way into Victoria.
@130 – Quite. At the GTR/GN forum I attended this month, Stuart Cheshire – Services Director GTR – explained that GTR was formed as a combination of Southern and Thameslink solely to deliver Thameslink without competition, despite tales to the contrary. To permit such competition in the future would indeed be a hindrance.
Is it more viable, rather than expanding from 2 tracks to 4, to expand it to 3 tracks?
The centre track could be reversible but would be used predominantly in the peak direction, or you could use the additional track at the country end in the country direction, and the additional one at the London end in the London direction.
This would allow faster trains to pass slower ones at the point where a conflict is most likely to occur.
I have no idea if this is any more feasible than 4tracking though?
DJL,
Possibly more viable in the sense of less unviable. To me it seems a bit irrelevant to talk about it when the one option that is on the table and mentioned by TfL and the Kent Route Study (extending the Kent House loops) isn’t happening.
@CAJB your suggestions for holding the Orpington slow for 5 minutes at Kent House would not go down well with the users of that service. The Orpington-Bickley people would all change at Bromley South and take YOUR space!
In the peak you want people to stay on their original train and have the inbound overtaking at Shortlands. Off-peak I’ve argued that the slows should be held at Bromley South to allow Bickley-Orpington people to change onto the fasts in both directions.
The Kent ITT only requires 2tph BMS to ORP off-peak, assuming 2 extra Thameslink services, so you will already get people changing. You might as well get them all on the fasts.
@POP – Indeed it is all somewhat pie in the sky if the relevant bodies aren’t willing to spend any such money. And as others have pointed out such a change wouldn’t really do much to increase capacity anyway since bottlenecks remain elsewhere.
All it would really do is help to reduce delays.
The way I see it the only way to have a substantial increase in capacity is to build extra tracks (for fast trains only – without stations), possibly in tunnel. But I think we all know that won’t be happening any time soon…
Re John B,
“your suggestions for holding the Orpington slow for 5 minutes at Kent House would not go down well with the users of that service.”
Well that is exactly what used to happen on some of them pre Eurostar!
Re DJL and PoP,
Bidders have been asked to propose up to 9 (infra) schemes along with businesses cases, expected passenger loadings etc. as part of their bids. The cost would get added to NR’s RAB…
HS Marshline falls into the above category with plenty of hints (it is singled out) that it will fail BCR and business case in between the lines.
A mix of 3/4 track makes sense as the long loops don’t need to be in exactly the same places for workable timetables…
DJL,
If it is any consolation, part of the ‘Turn South London Orange’ proposal included a tunnel for fast trains (and some others) to avoid Herne Hill with a portal in the Dulwich area and another prior to reaching the Thames. In fact, costwise, this was the major part of the proposal.
I just cannot see that happening in anything but a very successful period of economic growth and I cannot see that being the case for a few years. Even then I suspect there are better ways to spend the money with ATO signalling high on the list.
Beckenham Hill to Stewarts Lane-ish is approximately 10km in a straight line. HS2 high estimate of tunnel costs (2012 prices) is £50m per km. So a tunnel would cost ~£1bn, + fit out and inflation – £2bn today? Not cheap but would solve a lot of problems in one go
Herned,
Yes, the beauty of that idea or similar is that it doesn’t involve building expensive stations so relatively cheap for what it provides. It relies on the idea that there is a lot of spare terminal capacity at Victoria (South Eastern) – which is basically true but might not be so true in future. Also there is the challenge of having longer platforms at that side of Victoria station to take full advantage of any tunnel.
I am not saying either scheme is viable but a tunnel ought to be considered as an alternative if there was any suggestion of serious four-tracking – which doesn’t get over the major issue as to what to do to reduce conflict at Herne Hill.
@Herned: You;d want to add on another kilometre or so: out to Shortlands…
Fair point about capacity, but the SE side of Victoria never seems anything like as busy as the Brighton side (anecdote/personal experience not being the same as data I know)
You could also have a direct link to send freight trains to the WLL and send them via the tunnel too, although I’m not sure how many of them actually run but I assume the paths booked until 2050 or whenever it is are an issue…
@ SHLR I was assuming it would be possible to add a pair of surface tracks from Shortlands to a tunnel portal. It’s only a golf course, what could possibly be the problem!
The next hour sees 12 departures (from 8 platforms) on the SE side, vs 27 (from 10) on the Brighton side, so that implies a certain amount of capacity
Herned,
Usual rule. Don’t look at how it is now, look how it will be.
It is probably the most underused terminus in central London if you consider just the Southeastern side. But there are long term plans to make platform 8 available and fully utilised by the Brighton side. We have already witnessed planned usage creep up with 2tph to Hayes from December 2022 (3tph in the peak).
That should still leave plenty of capacity but probably not quite as much as you thought.
@Herned: Not quite so easy…. There is housing all around except where the entrance is to the golf club. The A222 bridge is also a low bridge (3.6m/12 ft or so…), so the tunnel portal needs to be very carefully planned!
However the golf course would of course make a great tunnel boring launch location! 😉
@PoP: I seem to recall that Victoria (SER) also has issues with platform lengths, which would limit the capacity of the station.
Of course the other problem is with Victoria underground.
Thankfully I don’t have to use Victoria in the morning peak very often but it seems like at least 50% of the times I have they’ve been forced to close the underground ticket hall due to overcrowding. And probably 50% of the times when that hasn’t happened they’ve still had to close the ticket barriers to prevent overcrowding on the platforms.
Most often If I see that the queue is spilling on to the NR concourse then I head straight for the bus instead.
The work going on there at the moment will, one would hope, help with this considerably. But if you start bringing in more trains full of people then that new capacity will get used up very quickly…
One would presume that Crossrail 2 would have been built and was open before anyone started seriously thinking of major upgrades from Bromley South to Victoria. It would almost certainly have a much better business case.
The planned Crossrail 2 station at Victoria would be huge – much like Paddington on Crossrail 1.
Re: ngh 09.53 – so, with the December Modern Railways reporting that the Home Secretary has announced that the Transport Secretary has told her that HS Marshlink is a go-er, where in the chain do we reckon the Chinese Whispers Effect has occurred?!
Re Balthazar
“is a go-er, subject to:”
I presume the Transport Secretary didn’t mention the below sections to the Home Secretary
good luck meeting this lot (and much more)
What’s going to happen if not one of the bidders comes up with the stated requirements? Which, from reading the above, sounds highly likely.
@Herned – if HS2 are still working to £50m /km for atunnel , then they are dead in the water. That’s a 2012 figure, and even then was about half the estimates the industry was using – the NLE costs showed how right the industry was. And that emerging cost is per single bore tunnel, using TBMs and without fitting out costs or the costs of constructing the connexion to the existing network. The costs will depend on subsoil conditions,and one of the features of the Herne Hill area is a a horst (a water bearing “lens” of gravel) and our engineers used to tell/threaten us that tunnelling through that would require very extensive drainage works, and would have awkward knockon effects on the S London water supply. Whatever, it sounded like a whole lot more cost to me.
@NGH -the key figure amongst the filboid studge is £80m – you don’t get much for that. [I’m amused by the RVA concept – one I floated when I sold off the Estonian state railway undertaking to Ed Burkhardt, albeit with much shorter time horizons for the exclusive use for the asset constructor. Burkhardt didn’t like the constraint much but it solved a lot of regulatory problems…]
@GH
[half an hour wasting work time looking at geology maps later…] It would be appear the crayon boring machines (CBMs) would need to go further south in order to stay within clay, but not too far to be a major issue.
On the cost issue, the HS2 cost (£50m) is for all the civil engineering side including portals per single bore tunnel. The contract awards earlier this year were widely advertised as being below estimates… although the press releases don’t say what the estimated figures were based on, so the £50m 2012 estimate may have been significantly revised upwards and then bids came in below the new price. But surely one would expect a government department to be open about that!
Re Herned,
From the EA work in recent years on flood prevention from these horsts (probably the fifth LR article where they have been discussed!) a portal would need to be arround around Sydenham Hill (or just near of Penge East on the far side.as the geology is also bad on the other side of the hill too.
@Herned – 🙂
@Graham H
And there was I thinking that fillboid studge was something the advertisers could persuade us that we really ought to have.
As for the topic itself, the response to the consultation has concluded in favour of 4tph all day between Lewisham and Victoria (all via Lewisham Plat 1/2, split between Crayford and Hayes avoiding the crossover). This ought to be game changer for access to Kings Hospital and the Denmark Hill corridor. It could even be a tolerable way for people in Southwark and Camberwell to get to the Wharf.
Apologies – that comment should have been in the other article about the service via Lewisham
@Quinlet – you mean you don’t get your daily intake?
@Ngh – well whoever dreamed up that process for “extra investment” has absolutely guaranteed that nothing will ever happen. In some respects it’s a work of genius in that it carefully dangles a bunch of carrots that can never be reached. I bet someone is extremely proud to have devised that.
It does, of course, pose some very serious questions about how any major scheme, other than one proposed by Network Rail as essential and accepted by DfT / ORR, will ever see the light of day. So much for “record investment in the railway”.
@ GH – thanks for another addition to the “never heard before” phrase book with “filboid studge”.
Re WW,
I slightly disagree, I can actually see some schemes* getting through that lot, they just won’t be the big headline grabbing schemes politicians think… I.e. we agree on the major point. As I said to PoP and JB this document is a technical work of genius for pointing bidders in certain directions without actually pointing them, it is certainly a step up from other ITT documents of the past including 2016!
The current politicans can’t complain as the free market has said “no” to pork barrel.
*I can see works to provide extra stabling and depot space for more stock passing the criteria. The other side of the depot coin is probably dealt with by eliminating most of the networkers and replacing them with more reliable stock that needs less maintenance (effectively specified in the ITT but not actually specified (Are the ROSCOs really going to want to fit enlarged door opening in the body sides of 20+year old Aluminium bodied units???)
Specifying dwell time modelling of running longer trains with DOO through the “8 car” LCDR routes (via Herne Hill is actually mostly 9 car platforms with SLL/ Catford Loop mostly 8 car) which hints at cheap platform extensions being another possible project on the list** (Already discussed on LR in the last few months!!!) and very important for the Hayes – Victoria services not to reduce capacity on the Hayes line.
** New metro stock with SDO being the other side of the coin but ROSCO funded.
I must admit that I was suckered into the belief that one keeps using the Networkers because the Kent Route Study was skewed that way. However, it seems that this was mandated despite an internal belief that it didn’t make economic sense. So it seems that the writers of the route study were forced to use Networker timings and capacity despite not believing that they would be around in the medium term. This then affects other issues – for example the problem of 12-car trains at Woolwich Dockyard just goes away.
Shades of bid for Thameslink trains order with the trains required to comply with a timetable everyone knows isn’t going to be the timetable once it opens – though probably no-one anticipated just how much it was going to change.
The final version of the Kent Route Study looks more an more like a study to retrospectively point towards the plan that will have already been decided. Douglas Adams would have been proud of how his nonsense science-fiction turns into fact.
I’m sure the Networkers could be fixed with the application of some Snibbo.
I have yet to find a single redeeming feature of the networker trains. Replacing them with the Siemens Thameslink model would instantly improve comfort and reliability and reduce the likelihood of the metro trains delaying fast services. The number of times the networker trains develop lateness down the line for no reason other than they are slow to pull into a station slow to open the doors slow to close the doors and slow to get going again. You really would think a train would be designed to do these tasks rather efficiently.
Re: CAJB – the Networkers replaced EPBs. How much of a redeeming feature do you want?
Seriously, though, at the time they were delivered (when it may not have been realised that a 40-50 year decline in both rail use and London’s population was about to end*) they were seriously a glimpse of the future.
*Talking of which, something that looks at least a bit like the inverse is occurring right now.
As I write, 6 mins from Bromley South to West Dulwich then 14 mins from there as far as Brixton stuck behind a networker. Congestion partly to blame but aging trains exacerbates the problem. Just like Lewisham
Jct belongs in the Victorian age so too are the networkers an anachronism. I just hope the next Southeastern operator has the vision and competence to roll out a programme of renewal akin to the Thameslink fleet upgrade.
@CAJB The new trains may be better in terms of operating them but it does seem that the passenger loses out. Witness this twitter thread started by train travel guru, The Man in Seat 61. The many comments / replies say it all.
https://twitter.com/seatsixtyone/status/938406712670932992
My first taste of a new Thameslink class 700. Great inner-suburban train, but not sure I’d go all the way to Brighton on one.
Future bidders for the Thameslink franchise take note!
Sadly ship spoilt for a happorth of tar. No sockets or tables …. And of course not a sniff of wifi. Regular users understandably aggrieved
Could I please kill dead the moan about Wi-Fi and tables ?
These will be retrofitted as it was realised it was a mistake not to fit them to Class 700. Remember when these trains were being specified Wi-Fi on trains was in its infancy and very experimental.
Apparently retro-fitting of sockets is really hard so we won’t see that – at least not for a long while.
There is a great danger of a discussion of subjective views which we really don’t want on this site – plenty of places elsewhere to do that.
PoP
I know the hardness of seats is an (ahem) “sensitive” subject & is often thought to be subjective, but the vast barrage of complaints visble in the “seat61” entry must, surely count towards some measure of an unsatisfactory situation?
Veering somewhat off-topic (but hopefully not too subjectively), is there a timescale for these retrofits to the 700s? I don’t think I’ve seen one.
Presumably wi-fi essentially is all contained in the ceiling space, which is designed to be easily accessible as equipment that would normally be in bodyend cupboards is overhead to enable the wide gangways. Sockets on the other hand require removal of seats, removal of panels, cutting holes in said panels (which maybe have a surface finish that is under warranty?) and routing cables between the bodyside and ceiling space, requiring removal of more panels and possibly cutting holes. Well, that’s my guess anyway.
There was talk a while ago that seatback tables would be addressed by varying the order for seats to table-fitted examples, replacing some seats in existing trains and recycling the non-table fitted ones back into the build of new trains, in order to minimise waste. But maybe it’s getting a bit late in the fleet build for that?
Greg,
Not at all. There are always issues in which you can’t please all the people all the time and one man’s meat is another man’s poison. The mere fact that a lot of people oppose something doesn’t mean that it is universally disliked. You will always have some people who think that a particular change is a retrograde step. I didn’t want to say it, so as not to provoke further discussion, but I really like the trains.
Given that a lot of the complaints were about two things that will be rectified, I really do not see the point in dwelling on it – particularly in an article which has nothing to do (directly) with class 700 trains or Thameslink.
@ PoP and Greg. Another failure of imagination on DfT’s part was not to insist on the inclusion of spacers between the coach interior and between each pair of seats. It is notable that South West Trains specified these on the short run of coaches they ordered for the Windsor trains. It makes for much greater comfort as it increases the space between each seat and thereby also assists in reducing passengers angling their legs into the main gangway.
I confess I am puzzled about the limited leg room this seems such an obvious error and I can only think the focus on cramming in as many seats as possible led to a failure in specifying the basic ergonomics.
[Allowed because largely factual – but not encouraged PoP]
If you’re long-legged, I can recommend the priority seats on the class 700. They have more leg-room than the rest, and they are both sides of most of the doors.
Whoever thought that putting the seats right up against the window with a heating rail under one leg must have been smoking something though.
Dave & others
It is to be hoped that the 700’s get a complete seat re-fit – at which point they will be very good trains indeed.
The thing about moaning about the seats (or anything else) is that people are far more likely to moan about something they didn’t like, than get on the internet and say they were happy, or didn’t even notice them. Given the numbers of people using the seats then the number of complaints is an absolutely tiny proportion. I thought they were comfortable and didn’t see what the fuss was about, but I don’t use them every day
@Dave: The Networkers are like that too, dragging things back towards SE country. I like that as it gives me the chance to toast my feet in the winter…
The 375’s have very cold floors with no heating to put your feet on… 🙁
Seating for Metro services (highly relevant as the ITT discusses this in lots of detail..)
Dave – The Siemens design team were smoking the contract winners Cigars – they had to engineer a train to meet the specifications (circa 510 pages if my memory is correct) unfortunately they didn’t get some of the details right but then leg space for window seat passengers wasn’t in the specification! It is worth noting that Bombardier with Aventra had a bit more time to go back to the drawing board before the next bids and get the concept right for example under floor heating rather than ducts – this has helped win bids (Anglia, SWR, West Midlands and London Overground).
Maximum non crush loading on the 700s is at exactly 2 standing to 1 seated and aisle space and low dwell times are required. (Crush loading is 3:1)
It is also worth noting that the addition of arm rest spaces on the 707 is one reason they don’t meet DfT Metro spec and are departing from SWR (and not to SE unless they have complete internal refit), The other key Desrio issue being the routing of electrical cabling and equipment between the roof and ceiling thus limiting the ability to fit ceiling mounted grab rails in the vestibules thus reducing standing capacity.
The metro stock specification is laid out very clearly in the ITT…
It may be that one would not want to travel on a Siemens Thameslink train all the way from Brighton to Bedford due to the lack of seat comfort, however I am talking about them being used as Southeastern metro services.
The features that make them fit for purpose include: super-size doors allowing for faster ingress and egress of passengers, masses of space near the doors, only ever 2 seats abreast meaning wider aisles, plenty of hand rails near the door and in the aisles meaning that standing passengers can travel without fear of injury; they are also super quick to accelerate and decelerate, and are air conditioned and remarkably quiet inside the carriage.
Southeastern (or whoever the new operator happens to be) could do a lot worse than placing an order for dozens of the Siemens sets as soon as they take over the franchise.
Where possible on my daily commute from Bromley South to Victoria / Blackfriars, I try mainly to stick to fast services from the Kent coast which are the beautiful Bombardier trains with second class seats that are plusher and more comfortable than most first class seats on other similar services. But on the odd occasion I will travel on a semi-fast old networker to Denmark Hill, pick up a coffee and then continue 2 stops to Blackfriars on a new Thameslink train. It’s invariably packed to the rafters, but the aforementioned attributes keeps the journey (standing up) on the right side of acceptable.
And at the end of the day, especially on metro services, capacity and reliability are far more important then trays on seat backs, wi-fi (despite the governments’ obsession with this as a KPI), etc
@CAJB: Simply changing from 3+2 seating to 2+2 seating would improve the networkers no end.
At present it’s dificult to walk down the aisles as they are so narrow and that’s before you have people standing in the aisles.
Re SH(LR) and CAJB
The issue is that unless you completely gut the networker interior and start from scratch and hack out wider door openings they aren’t going to meet the current DfT spec…
700s would be a vast improvement for SE metro and middle distance services but they have several issues as already discussed so wouldn’t meet the DfT criteria either, namely more grab rails especially in the vestibules and the heating duct arrangement effect on floor space both of which are effectively learnt from in the ITT metro stock spec.
What a wonderfully cynical article. I loved it. The problem with modern train operators is that they don’t have to live with the consequences of their timetables. I took this line for all the 60s and though I never knew the 20 minute service to both Victoria and Holborn Viaduct, it still existed in the rush hours. In the early 60s the knife was out again to shorten the rush hour, much to my inconvenience. There is much puffery by rail management today about train densities today being the highest ever. SR had to work in steam trains with poor acceleration. And trains today have hardly any doors so they stop forever at stations, but that doesn’t seem to count in the statistics. Spending a fortune on a couple of ten car trains rather than 8 in the rush hour solves very little. Continually changing timetables doesn’t work. They never settle down. The SR kept the same timetable for decades and tweaked it. Timetable rewrites like 1967 were always a disaster. A modern iPhone has more power than all the computers NASA used to put man on the moon. But in that time what the customer sees on London’s railways has hardly changed. Apart from the fact that there are no seats. This is a chemical engineering problem about flow rates. Both people and trains. Train fares should be dramatically cut before 7am to force flow to be more even. There should be more doors. But the (many) CEOs of all these companies want to talk about dramatic and costly initiatives at dinner parties, not at simple initiatives to improve incrementally. It’s a modern disease of course. Even if it does make me sound like an old f.
@ Peter Nyholm. Yes, to those of us who were travelling to school during the Kent Coast electrification it does seem to have been downhill all the way since then.
The problem is that we are trying to impose 21st century technology (frequent, long trains, power operated doors, minimal staffing) on a 19th century railway conceived with infrequent, short trains with guards and porters and with slow speed turnouts over at-grade junctions.
Upgrading the existing track etc. to 21st century standards is unaffordable financially, environmentally and socially so the only way to get a 21st century railway through South London would be to tunnel it, like Crossrail, and we can’t afford that either.
This does suggest to me that London has had its heyday and the world will look to new cities where these constraints don’t exist, in the Middle and Far East.
Three wide double doors on a 20m car does not seem overkill. It would be interesting to know why such a feature was not carried over from the prototype PEP – something about PTI or possibly, simply, a desire to drive down costs? One wonders whether it was ever seriously considered subsequently for any of the EMU fleets designed until Crossrail.
Surely such a layout has run its course now for suburban duties?
RogerB: I’d suggest that there *is* another way to get substantially improved service levels on the railway metals South of the Thames, which is to heavily rationalise the route maps and remove the multiplicity of termini which some stations have access to. In so doing it should be possible to reduce the number of at-grade crossings etc. and recover from the ‘damage’ caused to a logical layout by multiple companies all seeking to provide services everywhere.
Which means, naturally, that it will never happen.
@AlisonW: In March last year the DfT did ask stakeholders (p. 12) whether they would “support more radical approaches that would improve the service provided, including… focussing services on a particular
London terminal”.
By November (p. 35) they reported that 89% of respondents to the consultation opposed this and they abandoned the idea. Of course consultations like this tend to skew towards those with a vested interest in the existing arrangements, but the numbers in the consultation are the kind of thing that makes politicians run away screaming.
@Alison
” and recover from the ‘damage’ caused to a logical layout by multiple companies all seeking to provide services everywhere.”
The complexity of the services in South London was not generally caused by multiple companies trying to serve the same suburban destinations – even in the south east, where competition was at its greatest, the LCDR and SER almost always had separate stations in the towns they competed in (Bromley, Catford, Canterbury, Maidstone, etc). Indeed, the individual LDCR, SER and LSWR networks are all very simple branched networks, albeit in two cases they have alternative City and West End termini, but in both cases all trains feed through a single point (London Bridge and Bromley South respectively).
The LBSCR’s network is the only really complex one, again largely due to its two London termini. Simplification of that network would require a lot of broken links (or some major engineering)
“largely due to its two London termini”
to expand on this, I should have added, “……….and its multitude of alternative routes, with no common through point like Bromley South”. An extreme case is Sutton, which has five direct routes to London Bridge and three to Victoria (four in theory), all crossing over each other without interchange. Taking the two Croydon stations together, there are six routes to London Bridge and four to Victoria, again with little or no interchange between them.
It is this lack of interchanges where lines cross which makes it difficult to simplify the network – e.g if all Crystal Palace line trains go to Victoria, how do passengers from that line get to the Tulse Hill/Peckham route?
Re Ben
Purely by chance, I was heading into London on the fast trains through Kent House when I saw we were overtaking a stopping service held in platform 2 yesterday. Checking online later revealed that we weren’t actually overtaking an Orpington/Bromley South originating stopping service, the stopping service had terminated short in platform 2 at Kent House on the way down and was about to leave heading north.
Probably of little interest to most, but I was quite amused that what everyone on here says no longer happens happened…
@The Orange One
What you saw yesterday was a reaction to a track circuit failure at Bromley South which meant the crossover to return terminating trains to London could not be used.
When similar issues have arisen on a weekday, trains have also been terminated short at Beckenham Junction, but I think the bay platform is occupied by a stabled train at the weekend.
It is ultimately a consequence of the Thameslink timetable, which introduced a regular service of terminating trains at Bromley South, where the basic nature of the turnback facility (i.e. none other than a down to up crossover) was bound to lead to regular failure of the scheduled service. On the whole though, the new Southeastern timetable has achieved a fairly robust performance.
@Man Of Kent: Except that they now seem to take a minute or two longer (and regularly can’t meet that) almost across the board in the rush hour.
@The Orange One – Yesterday (and today) the bay platform at Beckenham Junction was in use by trains running off the Mid-Kent line for engineering work between New Beckenham and Hayes: “Trains between London Cannon Street and Hayes will run as normal between London Cannon Street and New Beckenham, then divert to Beckenham Junction”
Simple Question – I dont know the answer.
Why not eliminate Victoria as a terminal station ? Ok some problem in having to cross the Thames on a Bridge – but can a descent into new tunnels, under Green Park and Thence to Marylebone to run onto Chiltern Lines With northern terminations in Aylesbury, Banbury and Birmingham. Effectively Crossrail 3. So new underground stations at Victoria (with Passenger Exits to VCS, Pimlico and Victoria Street (Westminster Cathedral). This would free the Kent Side of Victoria for a commercial/retail use, only retaining Steam Tour Specials on Two Platforms. I would also re-work Ealing Broadway to Permit an Orpington/Beckenham Junction service via Clapham Junction and WLL to Greenford – and Extend onto Chiltern Line Terminate Oxford.
Railmaster,
Simple non-answer. We don’t encourage this sort of speculation. Especially as in this case it has been suggested many times before.
In any case you have answered your own question. Without commenting on the merits of the idea or otherwise, the issue is that, as you state, this amounts to Crossrail 3. Given we haven’t yet got approval for Crossrail 2 yet and realistically 2035 must be now the earliest possible date for this, we must be talking about 2050 at the earliest for your (and other people’s) idea. Meanwhile London has to keep moving for the next 30 years or so.
Come back and suggest it again when Crossrail 2 is about to open.