London to Reading, London to Heathrow, service patterns under Crossrail

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From London Reconnections ...

https://www.londonreconnections.com/2018/crossrail-timetable-for-success/

Sufficient information is now available, unofficially, so that we can be fairly sure of the exact service pattern now proposed for Crossrail in December 2019. Furthermore, we can have a good guess at how it may develop in the coming years. ...

Very long, very interesting article ...

[stuving]

From London Reconnections ...

https://www.londonreconnections.com/2018/crossrail-timetable-for-success/

Sufficient information is now available, unofficially, so that we can be fairly sure of the exact service pattern now proposed for Crossrail in December 2019. Furthermore, we can have a good guess at how it may develop in the coming years. ...

Very long, very interesting article ...

Posted two days ago on the ... err ... Crossrail thread. Which maybe doesn't belong on the Across the West board, bit still.

[grahame]

From London Reconnections ...

https://www.londonreconnections.com/2018/crossrail-timetable-for-success/

Sufficient information is now available, unofficially, so that we can be fairly sure of the exact service pattern now proposed for Crossrail in December 2019. Furthermore, we can have a good guess at how it may develop in the coming years. ...

Very long, very interesting article ...

Posted two days ago on the ... err ... Crossrail thread. Which maybe doesn't belong on the Across the West board, bit still.

OK - thanks.  Will have a chance to sort out duplication a bit later today ...

[stuving]

In the context of what you put into the other, locked, thread about Reading services:

Long article published this morning setting out what London (Paddington) to Heathrow and to Reading services may look like as we move into the Crossrail (open) era.

This concerns both Reading and Heathrow services - so I have flipped a coin and posted ((here)) on the London to Reading board to keep any follow ups / converations in one place, and I will lock this topic.   

I'd add a warning that this shares TfL^» (Transport for London - about)'s London-centric view of the world, and it barely mentions GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) services even when they interact with TfL ones, so is both confused and confusing. So while a discussion of the overall service from west of Slough is perhaps needed, I don't think this is a good starting point.

[CJB666]

Its not Crossrail - its the Elizabeth Line - or going along with the concept of the fantasy of a modern customer friendly fairy-line where the doors drop off the stock, no toilets, rough running on bumpy track, and hard seating - the Tin Lizzie Line. 

[CJB666]

And then there is still

https://www.londonreconnections.com/2018/crossrail-western-progress/

[Surrey 455]

Its not Crossrail - its the Elizabeth Line - or going along with the concept of the fantasy of a modern customer friendly fairy-line where the doors drop off the stock, no toilets, rough running on bumpy track, and hard seating - the Tin Lizzie Line. 

No disrespect to her majesty but I'll still be referring to it as Crossrail or in the future perhaps Crossrail 1.

[Sixty3Closure]

There's still a fair amount of speculation and unknowns in the article but reading that and the comments gave at least a start on what the service west of Slough might look like. From a purely selfish point of view I care about Twyford and it sounds like it will be fairly similar to now. Couple of all stops and a few semi-fasts. The view of posters seems to be that there will still be fast trains from Maidenhead and Twyford peak times if only as a way of covering off stations to Didcot.

One issue that only gets a brief mention is the infrastructure. The plans seem very ambitious to me as a layman/commuter when we have what seems like almost daily signal faults out of Paddington. There also seems to be a view that people would use GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) into London and Crossrail out of London which how I imagine I'd end up using it.

[IndustryInsider]

I have my doubts, too!  I’ve expressed doubts before over getting terminating trains from the east emptied and sent to Royal Oak turnback sidings efficiently enough to maintain the timetable frequency, so I guess the more that head west of Paddington in service the better. 

But, the flakiness of the infrastructure over the past year or two, doesn’t install me with much confidence, and the reliability of the trains is also a concern when this December comes and, presumably, trains start running through the core.

[stuving]

What I found most confusing was the use of the term semi-fast. This has always had a lot of meanings, different on different lines and to different people. But for NR^» (Network Rail - home page)'s futurologists and timetable planners, on this line, the semi-fasts run and make station calls on the Reliefs, but also run part of the way on the Main Lines. At times, I think, NR also include fast trains that make one call on the Main Lines, but only in the context of the service pattern out to Reading.

If you travel from Twyford or Maidenhead, you're more likely to call your train "fast" if it switches onto the Main Line straight away, and use semi-fast for something between that and the slowest stopper in speed. SWT^▸ (South West Trains)/R have called the Reading-Waterloo trains semi-fast at times, as they skip stops and use the Fast Lines from Richmond. However, since there are no fast or slow trains as an alternative, the term has never had any real use.

TfL^» (Transport for London - about) (are they doing the planning or are MTR/Crossrail?) evidently started using this term for the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) residual services some time ago, though GWR are still due to run what we used to call the peak semi-fasts. That led to a lot of puzzlement when we were trying to understand last year's TfL announcement of the increased service levels. And both that and the London Reconnections article assume the GWR service without ever defining it. Of course I may have missed this information appearing elsewhere.

Reading between the lines, the plan that eventually emerged following the Crossrail extension to Reading has both the peak semi-fasts (using the Main Lines) and the residual services (which at one stage looked likely to disappear) but only off-peak and only stop at major stations (Twyford/Madenhead/Slough/Hayes/Ealing). The current service has no trains like that, and I'm sure a lot of people would say "why not". As a stopping pattern, semi-fast would fit that quite well - if the speed corresponds too.

Currently the service at Paddington on the Reliefs is pretty irregular, with some big gaps for a non-stop train to run into. Crossrail will have a regular 3 minute interval in the core, and would like to turn alternate trains at Paddington. As a special concession, they have put two turning trains together, to leave a 9-minute interval  over Paddinton-Stockley. Crossrail don't want "outsiders'" trains that don't run metronomically to time interfering with theirs, so that faster service can only be timed to catch up 3 minutes. Incidentally, I think those pretty diagrams are meant to be read as representing time vertically, but are not convincing at the western end if so.

The last step change was for TfL to decide that two of their now 4 tph to Reading in the peaks would also have this limited-stop pattern, which does look odd if you don't know why GWR didn't want to run them (and that will relate to what other trains they are running at the time). When they do run then, off-peak, the question arises (bot for the first time) "will they run west of Reading too, and if so as what?". Again, TfL aren't going to tel you that.

[SandTEngineer]

Watching the current regulating regeime (yes, that ARS^▸ (Automatic Route Setting) thing again) I think there is absolutley no hope of ever achieving a 3 minute headway day in day out.  Even the most simple of delays will simply escalate out of control with trains and train crew very quickly becoming out of place.  Trouble with a cross London service is that it will quickly also affect the opposite end of the network (aka Thameslink).  The only way you can succesfully achieve such a service is to have a dedicated line end to end (such as the majority of LU lines).

And I note that solving the Heathrow tunnels legacy signalling problem seems to be a long way off (its all gone very quite, anyway).

[CJB666]

Its not Crossrail - its the Elizabeth Line - or going along with the concept of the fantasy of a modern customer friendly fairy-line where the doors drop off the stock, no toilets, rough running on bumpy track, and hard seating - the Tin Lizzie Line. 

No disrespect to her majesty but I'll still be referring to it as Crossrail or in the future perhaps Crossrail 1.

How about Crassrail?

But frankly my main concern is the loss of steam specials out of Paddington and the rumoured closure of Southall steam depot.

[lordgoata]

From a purely selfish point of view I care about Twyford

Ditto for me, but Goring. I still don't understand what is happening with the trains, whether I will need to change or not at Reading (I will be fuming if that is the case).

GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) have their faults, but at least they know where their boundaries are. How TfL^» (Transport for London - about) ever managed to define Maidenhead, let alone Reading, as London, I will never know.

[Noggin]

From a purely selfish point of view I care about Twyford

Ditto for me, but Goring. I still don't understand what is happening with the trains, whether I will need to change or not at Reading (I will be fuming if that is the case).

GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) have their faults, but at least they know where their boundaries are. How TfL^» (Transport for London - about) ever managed to define Maidenhead, let alone Reading, as London, I will never know.

Because TfL run Crossrail, Crossrail needed the additional traffic from the west to support the business case and Maidenhead was a convenient place to terminate, build turnback and stabling facilities etc. In terms of geography, I don't think that it's any further out of London than Shenfield is.

Reading is of course much further out, but operationally it makes sense to give Crossrail the Thames Valley stopping services east of Reading to make the most of the limited paths. I'm pretty sure that London Reconnections went through it in fairly extensive detail and reckoned that once Reading was electrified, the marginal cost of continuing from Maidenhead to Reading was fairly low.

Theoretically of course there is a 'democratic deficit', as TfL are not directly accountable to the voters of Berkshire, but of course there's a counter argument that if they have a good working relationship with the councils along the route and deliver a decent service, then will anyone really be bothered?

[lordgoata]

Because TfL^» (Transport for London - about) run Crossrail, Crossrail needed the additional traffic from the west to support the business case and Maidenhead was a convenient place to terminate, build turnback and stabling facilities etc. In terms of geography, I don't think that it's any further out of London than Shenfield is.

Again, I am being completely selfish and just venting about it, but I don't care how far out of London it is, nor what it costs, nor that their business case didn't stack up! Fact is, Reading and Maidenhead are not London, so TfL should not be allowed to claim it as their own. By all means install new lines if that's what they want, but bumping GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) services off and forcing longer commutes to non-London destinations, is not right.

I'm 99% sure I will not be able to leave home and arrive at work at the same times as I do now, so its a negative effect on me. No longer will I be able to do anything on the train, as by the time I get on, I will be getting off at Reading. I will be hanging around in the rain because for some reason only those getting off at the middle of the station are deemed worthy enough of a platform canopy. My commute will have gone from a relatively nice and simple one for the past 12 years (excluding times of disruption), to a complete pain with a completely unnecessary stop/change.

Its already a total ball ache on Saturdays now the first train (0542) no longer goes to Paddington and instead terminates at Reading, meaning a stop and change. That's 1 day I do every couple of months, and pisses me right off as it is.

As I said, I am being selfish, I know that, but I just do not see any of this as an "improvement" to my services. Because I don't work in, or the other side of London, I don't count.