Swings and roundabouts

Absolutely brilliant Q8!

The only problem, unfortunately enough, is that your plan at South Kensington would involve the demolition of the escalators to the Piccadilly Line. If you could find somewhere else to put the first stage of escalators from the ticket hall to the first landing, you'd be able to easily restore the original four-tracking to South Ken and the conversion of the old e/b roads into bays.

The idea at Aldgate is a good one, but I wonder if it could be done without wholesale destruction of the entire station at platform level, as well as the Minories curve.

South Ken SSL needs escalators anyway; those stairs are absolute madness, all day!



Which "present station"? I still think that you'd end up having to completely remove the platforms at track level in order to straighten them out. As it is you'd probably also have to knock down the wall next to the Inner Rail platform and also change the alignment of the north curve to get a better station throat.



True. I would imagine that DD, adw, trainopd78 and their District driving buddies would all fall to the floor praising $DEITY that the "bloody Circles" would be removed from the District for good

Whereas the Met drivers like Pete UXB would all be muttering and grumbling and bribing citysig with Yorkshire tea to mess up the Wimbleware service

No TOK you have the wrong vision. The diagram I drew is only an illustration. There is no need to 'straighten' Aldgate platforms they would stay as they are and as the 'City' service and Hammersmiths would only be 6 cars they'd be long enough. There would however be a need to put a subway or overbridge in to the new westbound district platform

Right ;D

After all the suggestions and dreams, we begin to get down to the real aim of all this. The District basically wants to be segregated from all other lines, run it's own service on just its own tracks and leave everyone else to get on with it ;D

I want to see the plans for keeping NR out of Richmond and Wimbledon and I would imagine there's a plan already to cut those links with the Picc (though that I can understand )

Seriously though, congestion issues for the Sub-Surface Business Unit (which includes the District) would not be lessened. In fact, from a customer flow point of view, they would be increased with the additional interchanges between City and District services.

The "City" service would still be required to run with at least 8-minute frequency. The H&C the same. You haven't mentioned the Met (apart from Barking-Uxbridge) but that will still have to go to Aldgate during the peaks or again you increase customer flow at Baker Street.

So, although most of the northern side of the service would reverse at Aldgate, the frequency and thus the congestion would be the same (but, I know it wouldn't get in the way of the District Pullman Service ;D)

To satisfy the current headways in the central area of the District, where are the extra trains going to go to or from? The Circles may get in the way but they all count as part of the service on that side. You cannot suddenly chop them and not fill in the gaps.

If this plan did ever come into being, I would hope they had the sense to also rid us of controlling that half-mile section ;D

Well, there will still be the H&C to Barking ;D



Heheheh



Why? Hasn't it been said that the 'round-the-corner' nature of the Circle is rarely used for that particular purpose?



Ah, but you see, if this is done after the S stock is built and comes on stream, then we can fill the gaps with the Uxbridge to Mansion House/Whitechapel service ;D



Well, it would all be plain line except for Aldgate East Junction...

And there isn't any easy way to change it into something that terminates somewhere easily either

It stinks that Moorgate is not laid out like Aldgate. That would certainly provide a convenient terminus to try to hash out the timetabling over the northern half of the Circle.



No one disputes that the services themselves are not sensible, it's just the disrupted services that aren't sensible



I suppose that's true. Still though, on the surface Q8's idea looks like a good one, but once you consider the big picture as you have done, you can see that the results (i.e. throngs of interchanging at South Ken and Aldgate) would probably be bad.



Yet

Well, as I've been invited to comment... ;D

Throwing all "foreign" trains off the District would be welcome! However, we do have to consider the long suffering traveller who is used to being able to get a train from point A to B without changing, and bear in mind that if there are no Circles then that puts extra pressure on places like Earls Court which are quite busy enough.

Never say never, but there would have to be a demonstrable benefit before we could axe the Circles.

One major problem with your suggestion is that it would be impossible to build a Circle line lower than the current line!
The main problem being the existing tube lines which already run below the District. To avoid these would mean extremely deep tunnels, and therefore extremely deep interchanges.
Nice thought, but it would never happen in a million years! ;D

This from 'inside underground railways' (1964)- Alan Jackson

Now an entirely new tube is being built right across the centre of London from Victoria station to Walthamstow. Crossing all the other tubes and the Circle line, this new Victoria line will give much improved connections in central London and at the same time bring tube service to the thickly-populated districts of Tottenham and Walthamstow. It should be finished by 1968. Future construction will probably include the extension of the Aldwych branch of the Piccadilly line to Waterloo, an extension of the Bakerloo beyond Elephant & Castle, and of the Victoria line southwards from Victoria, and a new line from Baker Street to the City of London and Whitechapel.

Note what was never built, and thoughts of a new NORTH circle duplication, but no south: shades of a future crossrail?

So, as already touched upon, to summarise.

The Circle Line service itself is required by the public and certainly relieves congestion at places like Earl's Court. No problem there.

The Circle Line service also holds valid paths within the working timetable. When running to time, everything fits with roughly 1.5-2 minutes between all combined services on both north and south side. No problem there.

But what we have really touched on is the fact that it's the Train Operators of said Circles that appear to cause most problems. Crawling round trip after trip.

Of course the same operators work the H&C. Quite often I dare say you get stuck behind one, crawling round, trip after trip.

So maybe what we need is to keep all existing services but close a certain train crew depot and employ some chaps who don't consider working such trains to be a punishment.

In money terms, sacking the handful of work-shys and replacing them with willing people costs very very little indeed.

As a little aside to this, and to prevent the finger being pointed at us control staff as well (as if it doesn't already) I attended a meeting yesterday which may pave the way for improvements to how Aldgate works. We'll see.

For what it's worth, I've never understood why some drivers do seem to crawl around the Circle all the time. For a start, it must be mind-numbingly boring!

Though I only worked on the Circle/H&C for 2 years I didn't have a problem with it. You just get into the cab and do what you're paid to do, and I'm sure there must still be SOME drivers who try to get round without losing time.

On this subject, I must mention that the 'Road-Trainer' (now called an 'Instructor/Operator') who guided me on my first trip round the Outer Rail, told me "series only" on the District side.... so perhaps this attitude does get passed on!!
However, my reply was along the lines of "F*** off, I know to drag the road (already been on the job 12 years) but I'm never going to learn this road properly unless I drive it at normal speed." I was soon put with a better Road-Trainer and learned how to fly round the Circle when necessary!

In almost all my time on the trains, whichever line I've worked on, I'll generally drive slowly enough to avoid running early - even though it can be a bit boring. But give me a gap after I've been delayed and I'll really enjoy hammering into stations - pushing the braking to it's limit - and making up time.

OK, that's made me sound like a real 'goody two-shoes', so I'll admit to doing some SERIOUS crawling when the following has been done to me....
(1) When I've got a train with dud motors on one or more cars and I'm told it's 'serviceable'. [Oh no it isn't!]
(2) When 'customers' keep holding doors open at station after station. [Well OK, if you're not in a rush!]
(3) When a particular signalman in a certain box keeps delaying my train unnecessarily. [Citysig and I have talked about this on another board BTW!]

I fully agree with Mr Citysig about possible withdrawal of Circle Line service. The loadings via Aldgate, and at High St Ken/Gloucester Rd, are too heavy to divert via Aldgate East or Earls Court during the peaks.

As a driver, what I'm looking for is the best possible arrangements at junctions (particularly where there is potential conflict between trains going in opposite directions on different services) to minimise delays... and to get me to the next terminus with enough time for a mug of tea!!

There are three solutions to this problem. Firstly any driver on the circle who crawls around with no other ascertainable cause (don't forget 'them upstairs' can see platforms on monitors) should be taken off put on the carpet and fined.

Secondly if some signals that were mistakenly removed were put back and the headway reduced to 90 seconds like we had in the past throughput could be increased.

Thidly I have sad it before and I will repeat it till the day I die. Circles get TOO MUCH time to go round hence they don't fret about time keeping. 48 minutes is ample time to go a round once.

The District sometimes don't even know what's happening on their own line! For example, after a horrendous evening because of a failure at Whitechapel, I was held at Earl's Court until my booking off time (at Acton) was due because the controller had told him my train was due through any minute. Another ten minutes pass and I rang the signaller. "xx isn't on our books, driver! Last recorded xx we had was hours ago."
So I was hanging around at ECT for a train which had actually been stabled hours earlier at Upminster, but which the controller insisted was approaching ECTW!

Certainly makes you wonder! Still, it got me some unexpected overtime!

That is true of the signallers - they are in the JNP business unit. However the District Line Controller belongs in the SSR business unit.

Sometimes the District Controller can be heard hollering at the signallers. What a way to run a railway!!