Rayners Lane-Uxbridge this weekend

There will be 6tph between Rayners and Uxbridge.

All trains will run thru to Uxbridge then!

if i am at rayners during one these weekends i'll pop into the bookies beforehand and wager i get asked to at least turn one at a ruislip if not rayners!

Yeah, I'm sure there will be some Ruislip tip outs!! The buses look like a better option this weekend!!! 114/U1 all the way!

An Uxbridge to Acton shuttle every 10-15 minutes would be much more reliable. The more trains sent to the east end of the line, the more that come back late!

Wait till T5 opens proper in March! ;D ;D ;D ;D You'll get a slight taster from January 13th!

I'm not sure what 'troubles with the Picc line' JTD is referring to. Obviously Tube Lines are responsible for reliability and availability of trains and the state of the signalling system. However, if train stock was fully available and the signalling and communications integrity was 100% for 100% of the time there is no guarantee at all that the Picc line would run to time.

There are few places to reverse trains at the east end of the Picc. Apart from the 3 platforms at Cockfosters, there is Arnos Grove and Wood Green. Problem with Wood Green is that being a central reversing siding, the time taken to detrain and then proceed (slowly) into the sidning delays the next train(s). Also, the line has only two crew depots (Acton Town and Arnos Grove), and queues of trains often form approaching these points, as one late crew change can delay the whole service.

Indeed.

In my opinion the best way to fix the Picc is to restore York Road station and turn it into a four-platform through station, with the central original platforms used for reversing services from central London. Most of the traffic on the Picc departs at KX anyway, and the presence of the NR stations and Eurostar will only increase the amount of traffic moving on and off the Picc.

That isn't such a daft idea as it sounds on first reading. Provided you've got a fairly open chequebook/sources of public funding/heads of private finance (that you can squeeze the money out of) it is an absolutely capital idea - and would go a reasonable way to sorting out most of the Picc's capacity problems. <hmmm, thinks ;D>

I never understood why the train crew depots were relocated away from the rolling stock depots. That didn't make sense really and must've added to the problems of running a service.

If the crews booked on at the rolling stock depots then surely the depots would be the best places to reverse trains and would enable faster reversing. In theory a reversing train could simply detrain its passengers and run straight into the depot with a fresh train leaving the depot almost simultaneously. Of course having two trains with the same number so close in time would be difficult for the east end computers to handle but there are ways around that.
Bringing back spare train crew would probably help coupled with more flexible normal working arrangements.

Moving Arnos depot back to Cockfosters would probably improve things A LOT!

Picc Crew Depots:
There was never a Picc depot at Uxbridge, only a Met one. We used to spend the night there sometimes, taking down the staff train in the evening and another out in the morning. Picc sleet turns used to stop there overnight too. We only got 2 hours there - hardly enough for a decent kip!

The whole question of crew depots has got into a mess. Cutting back on them was a mistake. Having them at sidings is useful but not the whole answer. And, the original ones were not always in the right place. Camden Town was not a good place to change crews.

In an ideal world, the train depots and crew depots will be at the end of the line. Uxbridge, High Barnet, Morden, Upminster and Cockfosters are ideal. There you can reform the service, stable trains, arrange changeovers and swap crews easily. Moving the Vic depot to Brixton should help reformation.

Changing crews en route is not a good idea unless you have room to stick a train in a siding or additional platform. Acton and Arnos are examples of large depots where the slightest delay is multiplied exponentially by crew relief problems. I recall that some years ago a study into delays on the Picc showed that after a delay of a half hour or so had been cleared, the service actually got worse and worse throughout the rest of the day until EoT. It was always like this - even when I worked on the line in the 60s. You would have thought that modern information systems would have made things better.

Of course, you must decide how to manage the service - who does reformations, the controller or the DMT; how is information on late running linked to crew reliefs; how does the office know when a late relief is coming? This sort of stuff needs a good information network and then skilled management to make it work.

That's all well & good, but it's actually the line controllers & duty manager trains that manage the day to day service - ie, LUL!

Whilst having more depots can increase flexibillity, it can also hinder service recovery after a shutdown as certain trains must go to certain places for relief.

We've been there before on this subject:
www.districtdave.proboards39.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=jubilee&thread=1192823612&page=1
Replies 4 & 5 are the relevant one's.