S Stock Line Branding

It was probably a good job that the train you boarded, sounds like a C Stock, hadn't been diverted along the 'main' line to say Mansion House- as you admit you didn't bother looking at the information provided (front destination blind & platform indicator). The D Stock may well have been going to High Street to compensate!

What would have been your reaction at Gloucester Road if this had happened?? Just accept it as your mistake, or 'take it out' on the nearest member of staff that many passengers do?

S Stock will have outside indicators and large internal displays.

How often does that happen? There was a gap in the service but it wasn't completely screwed up.

What sort of person do you take me for. I am an adult, and fully able to take responsibility for my own actions.

Which, with all due respect, seems to set you apart from the majority of the travelling public, and I speak as one of that community rather than as an LUL staff member.

THC

It certainly did your cartographic skills no harm!

THC

Very good idea. Presumably you could apply the same principle to the LED lettering on the side DMIs?

Presumably you're thinking of stock here. On the Wimblewares, over half the stations are exclusively District, all the crewing and route knowledge (including NR sections don't forget) is District and all the destinations (apart from ERD) are exclusively District. IMO the fact that the line is run by C stocks from Hammersmith, and (hence) the route diagrams in the cars are combined with the Disrict is merely an operational economy. Huge changes would be needed to integrate it with the C&H&C.

and a management sense - as Phil says

The problem is the confusion between the concept of line as a management unit (which the travelling public by and large don't and shouldn't care about) and service group - which is part of how they understand the system. The District has essentially two of these - worked by C (i.e. Wimbleware) and D stock - in which IIRC the line diagrams only show their 'bit' of the line.

The Met had the same issue - resolved when the H&C and ELL lines became separately coloured/described.

The District is dark green, because light green is for Chelsea - Hackney (though I don't think this colour will be needed any time soon).

Maybe the Edgware Road - Wimbledon service should be light green, in the same way that the H&C adopted a lighter version of its old 'parent line' colour when it separated.

Will there be any difference internally from the trains in use in the District to the trainns in use on the Circle/Hammersmith & City? I know the seating layout will be the same but are there any plans to give the handrails different colours and so on like is done now?

So for the district there could be quite noticeable changes to the internal services run?

Surely the wimblewares though are of good provenance? The putney locals have been going on decades, afterall, as an almost self contained service?

Rather, what I mean is, pre C69, was there much crossover between services? Did many trains from Ealing run to Edgware Road as a habbit? Did fewer trains run Putney - Wimbledon?

Fair play, but what I mean is did a fair proportion of stock that went to Edgware Road not do Putney - Edgware Road runs?

Its all very well making the point that a universal stock will allow greater possible opperation, but if a service is well established and mostly distinct, then why assume the service will become more integrated if, in a similar situation in the past, it hasnt?

Can anyone into timetables comment if the T-cup timetable significantly alters the pattern of the vast majority of ex-Edgware Road trains booked going to wimbledon?

If say the Hammersmith branch could have taken 8 car trains, would today the Hammersmith and City exist as a seperate line, or would it still be metropolitan? If they could have taken the same stock of same length, then they could have been integrated; Both Met - Barking and Hammersmith - Aldgate services have been known. However, the fact it took 6 cars only ment the H&C and Circle could be managed together (once the circle became 6 cars), with the flexibility of turning a circle into an H&C and vice versa instead.

If youre progressing to a situation whereby every SSL line but the met takes 7 cars then I see no reason why the other lines can't be merged with the district in line colour if largely seperate service patterns are ignored. Afterall, if District men are to be trained on more of the SSL then why not? Allows a huge amount of flexibility; a train reformed could start at Upminster, become an H&C, turn into a wimbleware, and end up back as a district.

The current set up does not seem as though its been thought of primarily from a pax perspective. Instead its a collection of outdated historical precident and convienience for staff. The Circle is seperate because it was a joint service and took only 5 cars, the H&C because it took 6 cars (ultiumate reasoning, largely making it a seperate service, which in turn gave a precident to run it as a seperate service for 3 generations, which then allowed a seemless transition to seperate line status), the met took all the other northern services (despite the fact that most Ammersham trains dont run to the city apart from peaks), and the District took everything else. The putneywares survived integrated with the District because, I would postulate, the district until 1971 ran 6 car trains anyway, and from then on in there was no impetus to identify it as a seperate service on maps for the public. However since then, the H&C went pink and the ELL orange. Surely this is a precident for seperate identification? H&C trains are still reformed as circles despite their colour differences, so why could the same principal not be applied to wimblewares and districts? If such a majority of ex-Edgware Road 'Districts' are to remain destined for the wimbledon branch then why not? It shows the public that most likely they will have to change at Earls Court, which they might not be expecting otherwise. People say if something ain't broke, don't fix it. But my point is, if something is slightly broken for long enough and you grow up around it everyday, eventually you become immune to it. You stop seeing any faults with it, which is a bad situation.

[/rant]

At the risk of going slightly off-topic:

Affects in what way? If you mean the interstices (service gaps) then there is quite a radical change.

Using Saturday (0558 - 1511)[1] as an example, after the early morning positioning moves (where the interstices are 11, 12, 10 minutes until 0643 off ERd) the WTT pattern settles down into a regular pattern of 12, 10, 9, 9 minutes off ERd and repeat. The originating pattern is platform 3, 2, 2, 2 and repeat.

The equivalent period in the T-Cup service the Wimblewares are clock face off ERd; essentially booked to be xxx8 off platform 3 - the first Wimbledon does not have any booked stand time, so only takes 28½ min to arrive at Wimbledon; however the stand time pattern for the Wimblewares settles down immediately to [c] (1½ min) at High Street Kensington - the only one that doesn't follow this pattern in the same period of time is the 0638 which has an (½ min) at HSK and a [d] at Earls Court - I suspect this change is there to allow a connection between the Wimbledon service sat in platform 4 and a train off Upminster to West Kensington [2] booked in ½min beforehand into platform 3 before they both depart at the same time. As the service settles down on paper, the Earls Court stand time is added to the ex-Upminster to Wimbledon services and the Edgware Road to Wimbledon are only given stand time at HSK.

Does that answer your question? I know I've only looked at a limited portion of the day and only one day at that......

_{WRT Putney and Wimbledon services (and admittedly only of tangential relevance to this thread), according to the notes I have to hand with WTT 90 (11/10/65) the Edgware Road - Putney Bridge/Wimbledon services became self-contained and with WTT 95 (30/11/70) the Putney Bridge reversers stopped - as the revisions section in the preamble to the WTT reads: 'Edgware Road - Wimbledon line peak services widened from 7½ minutes to 8 minutes but with all trains runing through to Wimbledon'.}

[1] Just what conveniently fits on a sheet of graph paper, rather than anything more arcane!

[2] Remember, with the T-Cup trial services the District on all three weekends is suspended beyond West Kensington to Richmond/Ealing Broadway.

So you meant how many trains out of the total departures from Edgware Road go to Wimbledon?

In which case it is every third one on the Inner Rail (looking at the TTN); as opposed to well, every third one (looking at the WTT). ;D