The Planned But Never Built Ickenham Depot

Drawing board was reached quite an extensive layout, 2 signal boxes one being remotely controlled from the other.

When was this being proposed?

I wonder if the idea was actually to replace Ealing Common depot, with Northfields becoming mainly a District depot.

JR 15secs thanks for the details. Could you elucidate a little more on the proposed Depot layout? I presume it was accessible from the main, from both ends? Were there the usual Depot buildings such as maintenance sheds, lifting shop, cleaning shed and washing plant together with Depot offices? Would certainly like to have the plans you access to.

I always thought that all drivers on a given line were trained to do all moves . . . even if that move is not one that would crop up very often.

That must have been a pretty tight turn out of Ickenham station, that bit is already on a curve. Is U15 the bridge thats abandoned, or something? I've seen it marked as such on trackernet, and I can't think where it leads from or to on the ground.

It really doesnt seem as if theres enough between U16+18 to provide the track needed to reach all 25 parrallel lines. Would there be any site plans for this?

Thanks for the drawing though, its always good to see such things from the past.

I had forgotten I had drawn that sketch - many years ago!

Also coupled to the scheme, I believe, was a plan to "four track" Acton Town to Hanger Lane Junction.

The only other thing worthy of mention is that the west signal box was to be a slave to the east - much like Ruislip Gardens or Grange Hill.

That would have been my next question; assuming it had been built there would be possibly 40 extra beds for the trains to sleep in at night, which, in this era, would surely have been quite redundant? Makes more sense if it resulted in another depot being decommissioned. However, with the loss of all the sidings as a result of the S stocks length, the capacity would be useful

I have a theory on this, that with Ickenham West Ruislip would have become the New Acton IYSWIM....

However, this is an idle musing and has no basis in anything outside my fevered imagination!

Fascinating. One quick observation/comment - wonder why the reception road was placed out of the main depot complex? It appears you'd need to go back onto the running line to get from reception road to depot, which seems a bit odd

...the final frontier...

hmmm, I presume there is a reason why they could widen the cutting where planned and not the bit (and the bridge) between the two.

In order to find something cogent to base these thoughts on, I've had to go back to pre-WWII - when the Met still had divided train working (it wasn't started up again until the deliveries of the Amersham stock was well advanced).

Met. trains divided at Wembley Park, often with the separate portions following each other; there are several examples of trains trundling off down to Uxbridge in separate portions a/b, with the first portion only going as far as Rayners Lane.

Piccadilly trains would divide at South Harrow and after several vicissitudes the South Harrow reversers waned away to be replaced with the now familiar Rayners pattern.

Looking at the service densities on the Picc, it is relatively easy to see that with the reversing siding Ruislip would be to Uxbridge what Arnos is to Cockfosters; I suspect that the service density could well have been increased with Ickenham depot taking quite a few of the Northfields couplers - however, that would require some intense work to develop beyond a guess of Cockfosters - Uxbridge - Arnos - Uxbridge/Rayners - Cockfosters - Ruislip and cyclical permuations thereof.

Likewise, the presence of Ickenham could have changed the Met dividing point during the shoulders of the division period to Harrow, or even Uxbridge. I've only got a hunch here, but I suspect that Wembley Park was originally chosen as the division place because of the car sheds. It would extend the shoulders of the peak outwards slightly dividing the Uxbridge workings at Uxbridge; however I strongly suspect that Ickenham was going to be a primarily Piccadilly depot with only the occasional Met. interloper. I don't think Ickenham depot alone would have brought back divided working on the Met - but it is quite a nice idea to play around with!

Of course, I could be tilting at windmills here, and the main reason for Ickenham Depot was to see off the goods yard at Uxbridge and potentially the troublesome area where the bank was going to slip, coupled with the connection to Ruislip depot and the continued use of the Standard Stock. One thing that did also happen at this time ('48-ish) along the branch would have been the updating of the signalling.

From memory, the Rayners off-peak reversers came in during 1943, in contradistinction to South Harrow. (I'm away from my library for a couple of days, so don't take that date as gospel.

Even so, the extension of the South Harrow reversers to Ryners is probably more a product of the cessation of uncoupling during WWII.

I suspect that Ruislip would have been used as a peak hours reversing location, with 2/3 heading back into the city; this thought is also contingent on some of the late Neasden Met starters being transferred to Ickenham and running Ickenham - Uxbridge - City; I guess that 1/3 of the paths would hold up a Met, so paths would continue to Uxbridge.

I can only answer point 5, but Ruislip and Hainault were built at a time when 8 cars was the aspiration, and only then it was 8 cars because of the capacity of standards being the same as the 7 car 38 standard elsewhere.