Amersham Fast

Couldnt have been the hot weather plan at Harrow? ;D ;D

Strange as it may seem, the early autumn sunshine has been powerful (and concentrated) enough on the area surrounding Harrow North Junction, to necessitate the Hot Weather Plan on several occasions over the past couple of weeks - though this may not have been the reason for your train to be on the local lines. There are in fact many reasons why it would end up there, and the signalling problems at Chorleywood are not really one of them.

The "trigger" to implement the plan is a temperature sensor close to the track in the Harrow area. Once the temperature reaches a certain level, we implement the altered working. I know of people that attended BBQs at the weekend, so it's not that strange (well it is sort of) that this very late burst of warm weather should cause us to implement such plans.

According to the driver of my Chesham train it went fast via the local because of the signal failure at Chorleywood!

It may have been that the train was running slightly tight for time (there had been a delay in the city area) and got diverted that way to stay out of the way of a fast Chiltern. The failures at Chorleywood didn't occur until the evening, and if you were on a northbound train, the train probably hadn't even been delayed by the failures unless it was a very late evening service, so interesting reason the driver chose for being diverted.

Just to pick up on one of your points, after re-reading your post. The difference between it being a fast or slow depends on which stations it called at. Fast is generally Finchley Road> Harrow> Moor Park then all stations. Slow would be calling at all stations. It is therefore irrelevant which lines it uses if it doesn't stop at any of the stations

Both fast and local lines are signalled for more or less the same speeds, and running time (with a clear run) is basically the same between Moor Park and Harrow North Junction.

Yes, a train may catch up with a stopping service, and yes this will increase running times. But there are occasions where we cannot delay the Chiltern services - in particular the handful of "very fast" Chilterns which do not stop anywhere on our patch. So we sometimes have to keep our services out of the way - even if that can mean a delay for us. The judgment is made by the signallers based on the information they have. It's one of those decisions which has hindsight breathing down its neck the whole time.

Come December, this will be even less of an issue.

I think it would be better if fast lines transferred to NR, and upgraded to 75mph running throughout. Clearly the Chiltern fast and semi fast service impeded by poor quality of LU track/signalling etc and the low linespeeds.

To be honest, I feel it's the old greater good argument. Handing over the fast lines to NR would enable faster line speeds on the fast lines that would reasonably benefit hundreds of passengers from beyond Rickmansworth every day, but severely dis-benefit hundreds of Met passengers a few times a year at most.

What's more important, five-nine's reliability or overall efficiency

...incidentally, cut the Met back to Ricky & Watford (or quad to Amersham but we all know which is more likely) and hand over the fast lines and they can conceivably be segregated, easing the design requirements for Chiltern OHLE...

Does anyone know if ATP is in operation on the Chiltern lines via Harrow? 165 acceleration seems far better than S Stock which I'm assuming will be severely restricted until the new signalling is brought in. They must bea bit underwhelming to drive at the moment.

If we gave NR the fasts, do you seriously think they will crack on, resignal the whole lot and then look at OHLE. Is it in NR's interests to take on this extra asset. It might be in Chiltern's interests up to a point - but what will they do that will encourage NR to invest?

Chiltern are more than happy having trains timed at slower speeds on the Amersham branch, and having those trains hit the termini targets - which is the main part of the game. If they were constantly delayed on our section due to poor infrastructure, or slow running when they are timed for faster speeds, then questions would be asked.

Whilst everything works, Chiltern are "happy."




It is more than possible that the speed will be raised under re-signalling. But you have to be realistic and remember that the line will always be shared, and even if you could have 100mph Chilterns, they won't mix well with 60mph S-stocks.

We're both operating commuter services with frequent station stops. We do it as reliably as we can. This needs to be kept in perspective when considering what break-neck speeds we'd all like to see. High Speed lines don't come cheap either, and who will foot the bill?

Yes, it's a common sense solution to me.

If Chiltern would stop at Moor Park there would be no need to run to Rickmansworth at all.

But the question is, does the service south of Harrow need to be greater than 12tph? I don't think so.

I figured with the bay it wouldn't be so bad. could always make the infrastructure changes required to remove the conflict...extend the fast lines to Ricky and alter the layout to reflect the Met terminating there and you're golden.

I was throwing it out there that if you cut services that run through the core you can extend a service that previously terminated at Baker St to preserve the service through the core. Otherwise you'd have to increase the Circle (or District) service to retain the core service levels.

A case of segregation. If Chiltern extend the line from AVP to the EWR route then they are likely to operate more services. Besides...I hear otherwise about how busy Chiltern services are! IIRC, there are issues about extending the platforms as Amersham to Ricky are TfL-owned. Let alone stock availability! I hear a fair few passengers travel across to Berkhampsted and Tring rather than use Chiltern as the service is so much quicker. It might help reduce overcrowding there to improve the service on this section...