Crossrail Canary Wharf going to Heathrow airport

Please note that Heathrow Express Trains will still terminate at Paddington and will not be using the Crossrail Line, Crossrail runs on it's own lines through London and will then replace what is now known as Heathrow Connect and run all stations to Heathrow Central, it will then run onto Heathrow Terminal 4 replacing the Heathrow Express T4 Shuttle. Train times will still be quite quick as Heathrow Connect is anyway (I think about 30 mins Paddington to Heathrow Central).

I asked that question in a thread a few years ago. Not really sure what's happening with them. Personally I think there's a chance Greater Anglia could get them considering they also operate Class 360's.

Can you see HEx remaining viable after Crossrail is launched? So it will take 15 minutes less from Paddington to Heathrow, but that 15 minutes will easily be lost in changing at Paddington - on top of the transfer time, if you're unlucky and just miss one you'll spend 15 minutes just waiting for the next to leave. Except from the Marylebone Road/Euston Road area, with its direct Underground service to Paddington, Crossrail will provide a far better connection to Heathrow from most parts of central London.

(If I'm at Piccadilly Circus, for example, I can get the Picadilly line all the way, or change at Oxford Circus for Crossrail, or stay on the Bakerloo for five more stops and get the HeX from Paddington

I would be very surprised to see 2 tph from Canary Wharf to Heathrow. TfL's minimum spec is usually 4 tph and I'd expect the emphasis for Heathrow services would be to serve the Canary Wharf branch thus ensuring direct, frequent services from Heathrow to the City and then to Canary Wharf.

The info on the Crossrail page does throw up some interesting questions as to exactly what the service pattern will be from the east to beyond Paddington. My guess is 4 tph Shenfield - Maidenhead, 8 tph Shenfield - Paddington, 4 tph Abbey Wood - Heathrow, 2 tph Abbey Wood - West Drayton and 6 tph Abbey Wood - Paddington. The detrainment process at Paddington is going to have to be extremely slick in order to turn 14 tph in the peak. How many platforms are there at Paddington Crossrail?

Good point, detraining 14tph onto already-busy platforms full of people waiting for onward trains will be interesting. How long before those terminators are extended onto the WCML slow lines?



As has been said, they may well join the Greater Anglia franchise. By that point a wider reshuffle plan should have sorted the displaced 365s from FCC, 350s from LM and 360s from Heathrow Connect and maybe even displaced 332s if HEx no longer runs.

I suppose that this will depend on how many people just take the first train and need to change at Paddington and how many will have waited for a train to their destination. The platforms will be much wider than most existing platforms, so should be able to cope. I seem to recall that the trains will run to a site at Westbourne Park for the actual reversal and I doubt that checking the trains are empty will be needed for the operation.


Why would the class 350s be leaving LM?

I hope Crossrail have got that concept cleared with the regulators and stakeholder groups including those representing disabled passengers. It is the sort of issue where you only need one instance of someone, with access to the media, being "trapped" on a train for the concept to go out of the window very quickly.

I find it very surprising that the plans assume that people can override to sidings. Surely there will be trains at the peak shoulders / end of traffic that will leave Paddington "empty" to stable rather than turn round? Are those trains going to be cleared by staff at Paddington? I know it's 6 years away but I hope Crossrail have got some operational reps working on their team so this stuff is done properly!

There will be a Crossrail exit at Oxford Circus, in Hanover Square (although it is called the eastern exit to Bond Street). Surely anyone wanting he Oxford Circus area would use that, rather than change at Liverpool Street, unless they actually want to interchange to the Vic or Bakerloo? And the western entrance of TCR will not be much further away.

We didn't understand from all these discussions why there are so many trains on the Crossrail line being stopped at Paddington which seems to make problems, and there are the Express trains to Heathrow which are all beginning from Paddington, why are they not just connected, lots of people from the airport will be going on from Paddington into the middle of London and to Canary Wharf, because I think that some trains will do this but not many, surely these will all be full up.

andypurk - From a diagram I have of the track layout for when Crossrail opens, it does look like there are platforms at the sidings.

It's simple enough - BAA run Heathrow Express as a premium express service and charge premium fares. They also don't have intermediate stops in order to keep fares high and speeds high. They are a private operator who will almost certainly want to remain completely seperate from Crossrail. They will also want to keep making profits without the distraction of linking to Crossrail or being lumbered with extra costs from running in the Crossrail tunnels. I can't see them wanting to serve Abbey Wood or Shenfield

Crossrail will be a separate franchise / concession controlled by TfL which will run to rather different objectives plus there will be lots of intermediate stops. The heathrow trains will run in the current Heathrow Connect (stopping, cheaper) service. What I am waiting to see is what fares get charged to Heathrow on Crossrail and whether Oyster will be accepted. There are some real challenges in how the fares issue gets resolved.

I see from Venice's post that the L&SE RUS postulates a rather different situation about 5 years after Crossrail opens. Interesting.

It is my understanding that it is the pattern of demand that has determined that many trains will terminate at Paddington. The existence of services into the main line station has already been factored in. The flows via Stratford and Canary Wharf are high and well established. I also think the service from Abbey Wood and Woolwich will become very popular very quickly given the good direct access into the City and West End. If you believe people's comments there is a long standing weariness with train services on South Eastern so a nice shiny frequent service on Crossrail will be far more attractive - provided it's reliable of course ;D

If Crossrail were to take over the WCML Watford/Tring/Milton Keynes services I'd expect some displacement of stock from LM unless the plan was to use existing stock.

I doubt that there would be much displacement of 350s from LM, if the expected growth in passenger numbers continues. The class 321s would probably go at last, but the class 350s would be displaced onto services further north and on lengthening the peak extras into Euston, which will still be needed.

Interestingly, the bidders for the GW franchise are being asked how they propose to integrate HEX into their service plan.

To pick up DrOne's point, the basic problem with CrossRail from BR's point of view was that it linked the "wrong" London termini. Liverpool Street handles approximately twice as many vehicles in the peaks as Paddington, and the last three decades of planning for CrossRail have been dominated by a scrabble to find enough western traffic to balance the flows. Hence schemes to (a) take over the Met outers, (b) the Euston outers, and (c) the Wycombes to supplement what is available at Paddington. Liverpool Street to Waterloo would have killed many more useful birds. However, the origin of CrossRail was to relieve loadings on the Central so Paddington it was.

Graham H