The massive redevelopment at Earls Court took a step closer to fruition in November 2012 when the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea gave its outline planning approval. The London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham had already given their outline consent in September and, as Sir Terry Farrell’s grand vision for west London looks to become a reality, we ask what the implications are for the rail routes in the area: the West London Line and the District routes through Earls Court.
The planned development
This is a huge redevelopment, straddling two London boroughs which are working with the Greater London Authority (GLA) to create an integrated strategy for the Earl’s Court and West Kensington Opportunity Area. The first phase of the plan, the Seagrove Road development alongside West Brompton station, received full planning permission in March 2012.
Earl’s Court and West Kensington Opportunity Area
A surprisingly large part of the site is owned by the railway, including the LUL Lillie Bridge depot and the various running lines. TfL also owns the entire block of land beneath the Earl’s Court exhibition buildings where the lines west of Earl’s Court diverge, although this is subject to a long-term lease to Capco.
Land ownership, taken from the Joint Supplementary Planning Document (apologies for the poor image quality)
Is this a rare opportunity to create a step-change in capacity, to resolve long-standing bottlenecks and to future-proof for rapidly growing transport demand?
The District Lines around Earls Court are among the most overcrowded on the system, and the projected overcrowding on the West London Line (WLL) is proving a challenge for TfL. The unexpectedly high level of demand generated by new services on the WLL will combine with flows created by the Earls Court development. Even with 8-car trains, the resultant overcrowding threatens to tarnish the Overground success on which TfL’s aspirations rely.
Sadly, while there is a vibrant vision for Earls Court, there does not appear to be one for the WLL. As London’s population continues to rise it is outgrowing the city core, with the result that rail demand on the orbitals continues to outpace even the most optimistic projections.
West London Opportunity Areas, from the September 2011 Opportunity Area Planning Frameworks
A glance up and down the line reveals more Opportunity Areas, at White City (10000 jobs, 4500 homes), Battersea (25000 jobs, 16000 homes) and the gateway to Park Royal (14000 jobs, 3600 homes) at Old Oak Common. The new Old Oak Common HS2-Crossrail interchange is also projected to generate significant traffic along the WLL to Clapham Junction. As these Opportunity Areas become major traffic generators in their own right, will the WLL become as busy as the District is now?
Yet rather than future-proofing, the WLL alignment is being pared to the bone and will be hemmed into a concrete box below the new development, precluding any future expansion. What does this mean in terms of future capacity and operational resilience?
TfL’s position is presented below, but first let’s take a closer look at this fascinating part of the London rail network.
The Lillie Bridge tangle
The Carto Metro map below shows how the various lines interweave, noting that the Piccadilly Line runs beneath the District Line from Gloucester Road through Earls Court. At West Kensington East Jn there are effectively four levels of railway: Piccadilly, District, WLL and, at a slightly higher level, the Lillie Bridge Depot. The Tubeprune website expounds on the Depot and its slightly eccentric access arrangements from both West Kensington and Olympia.
Adapted from Carto Metro, courtesy of Franklin Jarrier
The confluence of routes here prompts a perennial proposal to create a new interchange, which the Earls Court development might allow. TfL have looked at this and see no advantage: good interchange already exists at Earls Court and West Brompton, and the existing stations are closely placed which means a new interchange would have to replace them. The preferred strategy is to improve capacity at, and pedestrian access to, the existing stations.
The Carto map also omits the old Lillie Bridge Sidings on the WLL, which extended from Brompton Road north to Earls Court Jn. The legacy of this is a wide alignment right through to Kensington Olympia. On the east (Up) side the Lillie Bridge Sidings extended north into the Warwick Road Goods depot, the site of which (north of the West Cromwell Road) is now, inevitably, a Tesco car park. The Railway Clearing House map below shows these depots and gives a sense of the complexity in the area.
An extract from the Railway Clearing House map
The map below is derived from an 1872 Board of Trade accident report at Lillie Bridge Sidings. Remarkably the layout changed little in the following century. When the Brompton & Fulham Goods depot was built a line was extended alongside West Brompton station beneath the road bridge to join Lillie Bridge Sidings, and this became a long Down Goods loop in the 1970s extending to Earls Court Jn.
The Earls Court development will entail the demolition of the huge new Earls Court 2 exhibition space built in the 1980s over the WLL and LU Lillie Bridge depot tracks, which will reopen this wide railway alignment from West Brompton north. It is a rare opportunity to safeguard four-tracks from south of West Brompton station through to Kensington Olympia. This is, however, not to be.
Lillie Bridge Sidings in 1872, a layout that survived largely intact for a century, with multiple tracks through to Olympia.
The first phase of the Earls Court development at Seagrove Road is being built on the site of the Brompton & Fulham Goods depot, and the boundary between the development and the WLL is being retained as a wetland wildlife area, reminiscent of the WLL’s previous incarnation as the Kensington Canal. The elegant road bridge on the west side of West Brompton station is a remnant of this era: an old canal bridge.
The extent of the railway infrastructure is also shown in a fascinating 1928 aerial photograph below, looking roughly north. The District Lines out of Earls Court are uncovered, with West Brompton station on the right and the Lillie Bridge Sidings extending up the WLL towards Kensington Olympia. Below these, i.e. to the south-west, is the LU Lillie Bridge Depot, with the main shed extending much further south than today.
More maps and fascinating pictures telling the history of the area are to be found on the developer’s website, including this extract from the Environmental Statement.
Photo courtesy of Britain From Above
A comparative view today, looking south-east. Source: Design and Access Statement Addendum, December 2011
The development
The Earls Court Masterplan shows a “Lost River Park” running above the WLL alignment, but it takes a lot of digging through the planning documents to find how much railway land will be taken, and what is left of the WLL beneath. Essentially the plan cocoons the WLL into a two-track box throughout.
Extract from the Masterplan showing the “Lost River Park”, below which lies the WLL
The cross section below is taken from the planning documents, at a point close to St Cuthbert’s Church, alongside which will be a large new building with the eloquent working title of WV01. The cross-section of the existing structures is misleading, suggesting that the WLL is already boxed in. The reality is quite the opposite, as shown in the recent photo below and on the photos included in the planning documents themselves: the WLL is still an open and wide alignment at this point.
The view south from the A4 road bridge, with a District Line train heading west and a Freightliner light engine heading north on the WLL.
The cross-section above is across the middle of the earlier picture. This will become a two-track alignment boxed in beneath the new development.
A similar view south in the 1970s with the west sidings still in place, although the Down Goods loop from West Brompton (on the west side) has been lifted.
So much for the WLL, but what of the District Line? Noting the extensive TfL freehold in the development area, is there also an opportunity to improve the junction arrangements on the District Line at the Earls Court West Junction?
A new flyover was provided here in 1914 which allowed eastbound District services from West Brompton to cross westbound to Hammersmith, but at the time it was not possible to take these eastbound services over to the northernmost Platform 1. The result, as explained on Mike Horne’s blog, is that:
…High Street trains were in the right hand platform but turned left at Cromwell Road, while City trains were in the left hand platform and needed to turn right. Clearly this created a conflict, so delays continued. With rising traffic this is a really unhelpful arrangement and offers a real constraint to developing services, an issue only mitigated by the relative infrequency of trains to High Street or Edgware Road (not necessarily something to be proud of). The long term answer is to improve the flyover arrangement, but this is clearly impractical with all the railway lines confined within the piling of a working exhibition building. That is, until now.
TfL maintain that there would be negligible gains from further grade-separation here, and that an additional crossover and operational improvements already built into the upgrade program will allow the service pattern to operate more efficiently over the flat junctions at Earl’s Court.
In terms of the additional demand generated by the development itself, the planning applications were supported by the November 2011 Earl’s Court & West Kensington Strategic Transport Study Review. This detailed multi-modal study assessed the projected travel demand using the TfL Railplan model and other data, based on an agreed set of development scenarios.
In essence the study found that, given planned capacity increases on the routes serving the development area (District, WLL), 2031 crowding levels will be similar to today. Hence the redevelopment will need to provide extra capacity: in concourse areas and gatelines, step-free access, platform lengthening and improved interchange, including with other transport modes.
Given that the Earls Court development is not served by one single station at the centre, but by three stations on the periphery, it is expected this will spread rather than concentrate demand. But if that demand exceeds expectations, as has been the trend in the last ten years, then the only route with the potential to expand is the WLL. Yet this is being hemmed in beneath the new development.
The WLL ― throttling a strategic orbital route?
Given that the sharing of freight and passenger trains on the WLL limits capacity, is there a case for quadrupling this section to provide loops? Is there a further case to strategically safeguard the entire WLL route allow for future quadrupling?
We explored the issue of capacity on the WLL in the second of our three-part series on rail freight, noting how few paths are available to expand the Overground service. A particular problem was highlighted in the London & SE RUS:
“there is only limited capability for southbound trains to be held whilst awaiting a path through Kent or northbound trains to be held whilst awaiting a path on the WCML. Freight trains must in general therefore be kept moving to avoid delaying the following passenger traffic (and vice versa). The planned commencement of London Overground services via the South London Line to Clapham Junction can be expected to increase this existing issue, given that these passenger trains will use sections of currently freight-only line” (Section 9.7.9)
Our concern was that, as passenger and freight traffic increases, this will significantly reduce operational resilience as delays rapidly knock-on. Arguably, capacity needs to be provided, either as loops or 4-tracking key sections.
At the time we reported that TfL did not agree, and indeed the discussion following the article questioned the value of loops as opposed to keeping freight paths clear and the trains moving. Freight loops don’t really provide more capacity although they may help improve operational resilience on heavily used mixed traffic routes such as the WLL, particularly where these straddle different mainlines between which paths may not neatly align.
TfL’s position was clarified in November 2011:
“The West London Line (WLL) and West Brompton station capacities and future resilience are being assessed under our role as statutory transport authority alongside issues such as Underground line and station capacity, walking and cycling facilities, highway capacities and access, and bus routing and service levels. Following the submission of the three planning applications, this assessment is ongoing and TfL will continue to work with the transport consultants appointed by CapCo, the relevant local authorities and Network Rail (NR).
TfL considers that the predicted growth in passenger volumes on the WLL over the foreseeable future (the next 20 years) can be met by a combination of train and platform lengthening to provide 8-car capability and additional services that can be accommodated within the existing track layout. This would also require associated station capacity enhancements.
Regarding freight, modelling indicates the WLL will continue to be able to provide up to 35 freight paths to and from the Channel Tunnel per day which allows for the predicted growth in Channel Tunnel freight over the next 20 years. The route will also continue to be able to accommodate the current number of freight paths to and from the Kent Thameside ports. The predicted growth from these ports is focused on the London area, so it will not necessarily need to use the WLL. NR is investing in enhancements to Chelsea Bridge to increase the speed of freight trains. It should also be noted that the WLL was subject to comprehensive resignalling in the 1990s to enable it to accommodate a mixture of stopping passenger services and freight trains.
Neither TfL nor NR believe that the provision of freight loops is an effective way to deliver freight services on the WLL. The use of such loops can have an adverse impact on the reliability of passengers services because of the time freight trains take to accelerate from stationary. Keeping freight trains moving over the length of the WLL is the preferred option as it reduces the risk of delay to passenger services.
These comments are consistent with the findings of the London and South East Route Utilisation Strategy, which sets out the rail industry’s view of the enhancements required to meet the predicted growth in passenger and freight demand up to 2031.
Regarding Lillie Bridge Depot, TfL needs to ensure that the London Underground servicing and maintenance that is undertaken at the facility currently can continue either on site or in another location should the full masterplan proposals progress in full. A number of options are currently being investigated, but no decision has been taken. The District line is being improved as part of the full Tube upgrade plan and includes signalling and track replacement. By 2018 there will be a 24 per cent increase in capacity across the line.”
In Network Rail’s January 2012 statement in the Earls Court development planning process (on the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea website, under Meeting Documents, STR8, Appendices) there is clearly no concern over the capacity of the WLL per se, but on specific elements such as West Brompton station, and on the need to ensure gauge clearances within the new tunnels:
“There were three key areas that were raised in the latter dated 16/08/11, these were; a) capacity at West Brompton station, b) the TENS clearance requirements and c) West Brompton Station Platform Lengthening. The developers and their consultant team have continued to push for a conclusion on these matters and it is recognised that significant progress has been made…”
A vision for the West London Line?
It is difficult to avoid framing this discussion as a 1-in-100 year opportunity to safeguard future capacity as part of the Earls Court redevelopment. But is this opportunity being realised?
We hark back to Mwmbwls’ Pig in the Python discussion, that improving capacity on the orbitals may be hindered by a lack of joined-up network thinking and lack of a diversionary freight route. It’s hard to see 8-car trains being sufficient to alleviate demand on the WLL without a step-change in service frequency, and that appears not to be possible with the current infrastructure and demand for freight paths.
As London continues to expand, and the Opportunity Areas generate new demands, the WLL will come under pressure at precisely the time it is being cocooned under the Earls Court development. The growth in the Overground took even TfL by surprise, but significant growth is still likely along with potential new cross-London routes and, as service levels increase, the interchange for central London with the District and Central will become more attractive.
It’s a thorny problem and we look forward to the informed insight from our illuminati as to what might, or should, happen next.
Change might be coming to this apparently-doomed Boris-project ??
The unlauded coach does a major job in moving passengers in & out of London. From using the Bournemouth coach I reckon it carries at least 5,000 a day, theoretically non stop to Victoria. It often is non stop as far as West Ken & then a 40 min polluting creep to the terminal. The cleared Earl’s Court site would provide a wonderful chance to terminate all coaches from the west & south west there, with direct onward underground/overground connections in every direction. There is even a gap under the Cromwell Rd extension/ west London line allowing coaches into the site without crossing the west bound traffic flow. But there is nobody to fight for this. It would speed up coach passengers journeys,stop coaches from blocking roads in Chelsea & cut pollution. If the Earls Court development is at risk from the economy who has to be persuaded? At the same time conflicting district line moves west of Earl’s Court could be sorted,as wisely suggested miles back on this thread. If the developers are in trouble now is the chance to get the land.
Victoria Coach station does need to be replaced. But there is important synergy between to/from London passengers and via London passengers. My estimate for this split is about 50/50, but others may know better. Any replacement scheme which splits coaches from particular directions has the major disadvantage of wrecking the cross-London connections.
@Malcolm – 50:50? Maybe in the heydays of the famous synchronised departures but probably unlikely now – even in the days of yore (that’s before yesteryear), Cheltenham rather than VCS was the national hub. This particularly since so many of the long distance services don’t go anywhere near VCS (or each other’s termini) these days; indeed, many terminate at suburban locations relying on LU for any onward distribution..
Graham: My interchange guess is based on anecdotal reports from coach users, who seem prepared to trade time for the convenience of one short change where they only have to move their luggage a short distance on the level. And through ticketing at what is perceived as a “fair” price. Yes, this is generally National Express and Eurolines. Example: Northampton to Paris next Saturday: coach 13 hours, £46; train 5 hours (including the Euston road trek (or alternatives), price rather more.
@Jim Elson
“the Bournemouth coach I reckon it carries at least 5,000 a day”
Really?
That’s a full 52-seater coach every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day (or – slightly – more realistically, every ten minutes from 8am to midnight).
National Express’s timetable shows 23 coaches a day – a drop in the ocean compared with the trains – whose off peak service constitutes twenty 60-seat carriages (in the form of two ten-car trains) each hour.
timbeau: You are surely right that Jim Elson’s estimate of 5,000 a day is probably way too high. But there is a small hole in your proof of this, in that one “timetable departure” could theoretically consist of any number of physical coaches (duplicate or relief in old-fashioned terminology). Obviously each of the 23 departures being 4 or 5 coaches sounds rather far-fetched, though.
Quite right Timbeau. I got my simple arithmetic wrong. Average load at 40 for 22 coaches in each direction. 44x 40 is 1720 a day. They also run coaches to Heathrow & some people for west London may change there. Earl’s Court may be attractive instead. My poor arithmetic does not detract from the argument. If the economic downturn shuts down the hyped Earl’s Court city scheme the land could be partially used for a coach terminal & better Distrct line layout west of Earl’s Ct tube.
To put Jim Ellson a different way, that’s 860 coach passengers each way a day – or somewhat less than two full trains. It does therefore suggest that the coach share of the London to Bournemouth market (including cars) is essentially not significant, even though some of the coach users will value that mode.
@Malcolm
Yes, of course, there will always be some passengers who want to change between coach routes and who trade time for cash ( a not dissimilar market to the VCX market, in fact), but Ann Eckdoat’s evidence apart, I do question whether there are many of these people. Back in the day, Freddie Wood had this Greyhound vision of a national network of white coaches reaching every town of importance, but there is little semblance of a national system now. There are certainly carefully cherry picked flows (Oxford being one such, but not by NX) but the route structure is fairly self contained.
My “own” NX route, from London to Portsmouth, illustrates the point. After many years of fiddling around with stopping patterns, it has settled down to to an hourly non-stop Portsmouth service with a two hourly diversion (just) off the A3 into a stop on a roundabout on the outskirts of Guildford+ and a once a day stopper to every other settlement* along the old A3. Even with this pared down service it takes longer than the train, including an alleged 25 minutes spent between Wandsworth and VCS – unlikely in the peaks…
Some conclusions from this – yes, somewhere other than VCS with its associated access crawl is highly desirable, but Earls Court is hardly any better – and its difficult to think of any suburban location # in fact that would happily serve passengers from all directions of the compass; the problems of interchange are almost insuperable given London traffic conditions (not helped by NX seeming not to make any allowance for peak delays!); there is only a limited range of destinations available.
+ at a Godforsaken spot devoid of any facilities whatsoever (although there’s a quite good A&E within 200m)
* Including the sad stop in Dragon Street, Petersfield – sad because it’s equipped with a smart well lit shelter, which must have cost several thousand to buy, and quite a bit to light, paint and keep the info uptodate, and yet is served by one coach a day.
# I realise that this will prompt a rush to pick up the Faber-Castell’s but ….
Back to Earls Court! Big developments tend to stutter a lot on their way to completion. Think of Canary Wharf and Battersea Power Station. That suggests that the Earls Court development will be completed one day, but there may be an opportunity for the Mayor to insist on more social housing, and there may be an opportunity to rethink the restrictions on future West London line capacity that the current plans create. Perhaps Lemmo could insert some wisdom here.
@Graham H. That spot in Guildford may be Godforsaken, but devoid of facilities it is not: there is a 24h Tescos right across the road. And it is also just around the corner (as it was before roundabout intervention) from a secondary school where certain LR readers learned to craft concise comments that are unsnippab [SNIP]
@Fandroid….If it does end up in Development Hell like Battersea PS, that hardly bodes well given that it was *30 years* before anything of substance happened at Battersea!!! The idea of the former exhibition centre (much missed by myself and others) site remaining barren for that amount of time whilst there is a housing crisis in London right now borders on the downright scandalous ?.
@SFD – aha, Tescos … (as near as a walk across their extensive carpark).. [This is no place to discuss whether Tescos make a place more or less God forsak… agghh!]
TfL have been unable to come up with any viable replacement for Victoria Coach Station and they have been looking given the complex land ownership at the site. In fact they are just about to fork out money on emergency roof repairs in the departures part of the Coach Station. Crossrail 2 is also planned to use some of the land there but no talk about wholesale replacement of VCS.
I’ve no figures about connecting passengers at VCS but what is true is the volume of departures and passengers has been increasing for years. There are very few suburban terminal points in London. A few routes stop at Golders Green, a few more at Stratford and some at Heathrow but they all continue to VCS. I can only think of one National Express coach service that starts at Stratford and that’s a Stansted Aiport service. Given our change in political circumstances then the volume of foreign coaches reaching VCS may decline but there are other developments (coach liberalisation in europe) that may *increase* services in the short term. I can’t see dumping a replacement VCS in the suburbs or adopting satellite coach stations being attractive or viable. It’s all about the “pull” of Central London.
I can’t see H&F Council agreeing to a land use change for coaches at Earls Court given the imperative for more housing. I also can’t see the Mayor agreeing either. Furthermore TfL have recently forked out £376m on loan notes for the Earls Court joint venture [1]. The intention certainly appears to be to continue with the scheme no matter how the market is playing at the moment.
Even without difficult market conditions the Mayor was always facing major difficulties in squaring the conflicting demands for developers to build, for there to be more social / affordable housing and also for more publicly funded social housing. With a shortage of public money and developers in no great rush to spend and buyers becoming scarcer there’s no easy way out. There may be fine aspirations around changing the Earls Court scheme but I’m sceptical H&F Council / City Hall can secure a fundamental change.
[1] source – TfL Q4 15/16 Operational and Financial Performance Report.
I did not suggest Earl’s Court to replace Victoria coach station. I advocated it as a terminus,with great & close onward rail travel opportunities,for coaches only from the South West & West. Viz coaches currently passing it on Cromwell Road,from The M4 & M3. It allows them to use the best of the road & miss the horrendous last lap to & from Victoria. I don’t suppose the Mayor thinks about coaches,despite the bus blood in his veins. But if anyone can do it it is him. Hardly anybody would want Victoria as their final destination. They all trek into the underground. So being dropped two minutes from Earl’s Court & West Brompton platforms would be a boon for passengers to & from the West.
Any overall replacement for VIC-coach station must be:
1: Relatively close to a usually fast & infrequently-blocked dual carriageway approach from the “outer reaches”.
2: Really close to the tube &/or lots of rail services that can acts as an “onward distributor”
3: Do we really need only one of these – would it make sense to have two coach stations?
Because, if (3) is acceptable you build one @ Earl’s Court & the other at Stratford (!)
This article was about a vision for the West London Line, in a context of London’s growth and the need to deal with freight. There is an important sub-text about safeguarding.
Please can we draw a line under any discussions about Tesco and bus terminals now? The main story is still highly relevant and I look forward to hearing what the LR illuminati believe may still be possible, or essential.
Lemmo
Possible is the re-visiting of the desireability of widening the solum …
Unlikely, because everyone is concentrating on the “development” & the £ signs, with no long-term vision for any future at all, I’m afraid
Posting this here as it’s a WLL article. Is there a plan to add more capacity during peaks now that Southern have withdrawn their services? There were 3 tph from Southern to supplement the 4 tph from LO between Clapham Junction and Shepherd’s Bush and they were still all rammed.
Re Capitalstar,
And how would that be done given LO don’t have any useful amount of spare stock and there will also be a huge capacity loss for LO to cope with on the ELL via Peckham route too?
@ Ngh – I take your basic point but could LOROL not couple two spare cl172s together and at least run extra Willesden – Clapham shuttles on the WLL? I am, of course, assuming that 2 class 172s are spare and not in bits in the depot having their refresh. I am also assuming a cl172 is cleared for the WLL. I know the 172s are not the best option against a 5 car 378 or 8 car Southern train but beggars can’t be choosers.
The comparison between Earls Court site and Battersea is even more stark when you remember how Battersea is getting a 2 station extension to the Northern Line with both stations built fit for the 21st century and like at Canary Wharf combined with the new development.
As was often said Boris never did detail and yet the first stage of Earls Court Development especially given how TFL owned much of the land should have been a master plan for existing lines and stations in the area and if need be replacement of some stations with newly resisted stations to match the new development.
The WLL has often suffered from overcrowding and this will only grow worse if the line and all its stations are not upgraded and we must remember freight trains still use this line while just up the line from Earls Court will be the new Crossrail/ HS2 interchange adding further demand to WLL .
As for the depot then perhaps it could be relocated beneath a development ?
In Crayonista mode one could replace / supplement the bridge crossing of The Thames with a new tunnelled section of WLL with new Crossrail type stations located to fit the new development here and at OOC a possibility that delay in the project might allow .
One point not made above re coaches is recent announcement re ULEZ and whether coaches meet emission standards for ULEZ ?
@ Melvyn – it’s not just detail but also strategy. There was no demonstrable strategy for the Underground beyond endless efficiencies (staff cuts) and a programme of line upgrades. There is still no strategy for the Tube and I will be genuinely shocked if the new Mayor manages to create anything coherent given the “all the eggs in one basket” approach of endorsing Crossrail 2 in terms of new build. It is a bit much to expect any Mayor to have a view on the track layout detail at Earls Court or anywhere else. However one wonders quite what is going through the “TfL corporate brain” in not seeking to preserve future capacity capability.
I believe it is the case that Lillie Bridge depot will cease to exist. The engineering fleet will be moved to Ruislip and I think the mild panic about sub surface lines stabling capacity has been resolved somehow. The plan was to stable some trains at Lillie Bridge but that had to be changed although I may now be very out of date on this. The notion of new or resited stations was never ever on the agenda as far as I know. I assume the nature of the “joint venture” between TfL and the developers rather inhibited TfL in having a long shopping list of transport improvements in the area for developer funding. The assumption must be that the development, if ever fully occupied at expected price levels, generates a positive future income stream for TfL.
WW…….as far as I am aware, stabling for S7 at Lillie Bridge is still very much on the agenda. Indeed one of my associates was requested to look at the resignalling timeline for this location only a month or two ago. With all the financial challenges facing TfL, who knows what might happen next, but 10 to 12 S stocks have to go somewhere. They are not flush with space.
@ 100&30 – interesting. I know finding stabling space for the full sub surface fleet was always a challenge. Slightly surprised Lillie Bridge is still being looked at but, as you say, they do have to go somewhere.
I was reading Our response to issues raised Autumn 2015 Crossrail 2 Consultation 7 July 2016 [pdf] yesterday and it says, under Concern over the disruption to the displacement and/or operations of the coach station
“Our preferred site is the yard of the Victoria Coach Station and some of its buildings …
…TfL owns a large part of Victoria Coach Station…
Proposals for the future of the Victoria Coach Station are being considered separately by TfL. These proposals will be subject to further engagement and consultation by TfL… proposals about the future of the Victoria Coach Station as a whole are being considered by the wider TfL. Therefore at this stage we are not looking to provide a link to the coach station. “
@ ngh
I don’t have a plan but this situation is going to cause meltdown on the WLL, there will be 8 x 172s from 24 Sept but no idea what could be done before then.
It is obviously a bad move not to safeguard possible line expansion in the future, considering the future proofing going on very well elsewhere within the TfL group. Although this seems to be more within London Underground than Overground. One way to make a rapid potential improvement of extra services over the WLL would be to connect the District at Ken O onto the WLL, allowing District trains to run to Willesden Jcn where they could then use the turn out siding to reverse. Does this then leave a shortage of paths to the east? Probably not since historically Ken O to Earls Court and onto at least High St Ken can seemingly be run throughout the day, so this must be a possibility.
@asl – why bother?
“historically Ken O to Earls Court and onto at least High St Ken can seemingly be run throughout the day, so this must be a possibility.”
Not any more – the shuttle was withdrawn in order to make room for more services to Wimbledon.
Neither Shepherds Bush nor Willeseden Junction have platforms long enough for S7 stock trains, and you would also need to re-electrify the line on the 4-rail system. I would also be surprised if the WLL has capacity to take any more trains.
Is it worth it just to avoid having to change at West Brompton.
re timbeau,
I thought Bush was 8 car now?
I’m with Graham H on this!!
Has there been any progress on this? The box under construction looks very large for just 2 tracks?
Things are changing with regard to the control of this site: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/council-make-200m-bid-to-seize-earl-s-court-land-for-affordable-housing-development-a4144606.html Does this open up the implementation of once in a hundred years opportunity to improve transport bottle-necks in Earl’s Court?
Richard
Nah
They will screw up completely, as the previous example in Bradford, a few years’ back showed all too well.
[ There was a golden opportunity to link Forster Square with Excahnge, because the whole block between the two stations was up for redevelopment & it only wanted the width of approx 700 metres of double-track line. ]
And they threw it away with both hands.