Chiltern Railways Sudbury stations

The idea was to have a Chiltern metro running at 4tph all stations to West Ruislip from Maylebone. This was one reason why the extra platforms were built at Marylebone. I don't know whats happening with the idea now.

Given how busy the Neasden South to Northolt line is these days, you would need to reinstate the original station layouts in order to allow trains to stop there (i.e. platform loops). Likewise, you would need to reinstate most of the connections and tracks between Northolt Junction and West Ruislip in order to provide a place for the service to terminate properly without blocking other Chiltern and WSMR services.

It's doable, but what's the point?

If I lived in Sudbury I'd be very upset if they shut the Chiltern stations. There is a tube line, but the Piccadilly takes ages to get anywhere! At least it's 15mins to Marylebone.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Hill_Harrow_railway_station

Certainly, pax numbers seem to be on the increase, unless this figure reflects the way in which the changes made to how they collate the figures...

I would keep this station, close the other one and rebuild this one with platform loops and a crossover between the main lines.

Any desire to rebuild this station will probably not come from within Chiltern or TfL - I would suspect that a local developer or pressure group would probably have to provide the majority of the funding, given the lack of interest shown so far.

What really drew my attention to how odd the present stopping arrangements are at London area stations was when I was at West Ruislip recently, a young lady had arrived by Central Line and enquired about her connection to High Wycombe and looked somewhat bemused when she was told she had just missed one and would either have to wait 50 minutes for the next one or get back onto the tube to South Ruislip and get one from there. A more regular service from West Ruislip would surely be useful for people going from NW London towards The Midlands etc?

What they could do is move the current Down platform over towards the through road. There was at one time two through tracks, now only one; either make this platform an island with the outer face reversible, or rebuild the platform, a la Gerrards Cross; moved inwards so that the tracks use the former through roads. However, this might not be feasible is Chiltern ever plan to increase services; with Alyesbury - Claydon - Milton Keynes being on the cards???

The easiest way to accommodate a "Metro" service at West Ruislip would be to do the following:

- Demolish the signal box and the widened portion of the down platform.
- Restore four tracks through the station, narrowing to three tracks (two down, one up) between West and South Ruislip
- Restore the missing connections at South Ruislip (i.e. the direct down GC to down main and direct up main to up GC)
- Modify the layout north of West Ruislip to provide the following:
= a down side goods/stock loop, connected to the down main by a trailing connection at the north end and the down platform road by an end-on connection, with the existing trailing connection to the Ruislip back road retained;
= a ladder junction between the down side goods/stock loop and the up platform road, allowing direct access to the up platform road from the down side goods/stock loop;
= provision for driver and stock facilities in the up side engineers' sidings, allowing stock to shunt back from the up platform road and layover, either for inter-peak stabling or for storing duds until an ECS path opens to Wembley.

This is the sort of layout you would need for maximum flexibility at West Ruislip; it allows the freight movements and WSMR services to pass the station at speed; it offers a location for the Metro services to reverse and additionally improves accessibility to Ruislip Depot; and it offers a location near Wembley that can be used to store a failed train.