When is a service a shuttle service?

The shuttle of a weaving loom moves back and forth along the same path. This implies to me that a shuttle service cannot be operated by more than one train, so in the strictest sense the only shuttle services on the Underground were the self-contained single-track Holborn-Aldwych, Chalfont-Chesham, Finchley-Mill Hill, Epping-Ongar and Acton Town-South Acton branches. (In the very strictest sense even the Ongar branch would be disqualified by its intermediate stops)

The "Navette" on the Paris Metro would have been another example. On National Rail the Slough - Windsor, and Stourbridge branches are examples, with the definition poissibly extendeing to the Castlebar, Emerson, Henley and Marlow lines.

The "Transits" that connect the north and south terminals at Gatwick are (two separate) shuttles, as each operates on its own self contained track).

If anything, I would describe the Epping- Leytonstone service as a shuttle, feeding in to the Hainault - Marble Arch main line.

The term then came to mean any service running between two points, such as the Drain, or "Le Shuttle" - the car-carrying trains through the Channel Tunnel, which operate on a continuous loop. Even more recently it has come to mean any short service with no branches, such as the Olympia "shuttle" or the NCL, or Woodford/Hainault, even though they use more than one train, use separate tracks, and have intermediate stops. Virgin even tried to market its Euston Birmingham service as a "shuttle" at one time. On that basis you could describe the Jubilee Line, or even the Circle, as a shuttle!

Also, thinking about what you said about the Jubilee - I actually think it'd perfectly sensible to describe individual trains as shuttling up and down between Stanmore and Stratford and I think trains probably are sometimes described like that. But it would make less sense to describe the whole line like that, because trains are regularly short-tripped at Willesden Green, Wembley Park and North Greenwich.

Even the Circle, where trains do shuttle between Hammersmith and Edgware Road most of the time, trains can still be short tripped, or sent off to some of the pink destinations

A shuttle implies a short distance, frequent, quick service.

South Acton would have beaten Chesham, not sure about Aldwych or Mill Hill East-Finchley Central.

Don't forget Southgate. ;-)

Can you or anyone else explain why Southgate is missed out?

Even more predantically, you can run one shuttle per road. You'd have difficulty running as many as that on he Aldwych shuttle, but on other lines e.g Northfields to Hammersmith, you could run as many as four!

I'm guessing Southgate is shut, as being underground (well the platforms) the station needs a minimum level of staffing, which isn't available on a strike day.

This.

During strikes, Southgate will be missed out as it requires more trained staff to keep it open - it's in a tunnel section and has escalators.

However, during service disruption (not during a strike) a Cockfosters - Arnos Grove shuttle service may be introduced for a short period of time, stopping normally at Southgate.

It all depends on the circumstances.

I was at Woodford this evening waiting for a train to Hainault during the fun and games on the Central (was on one which was short-turned at Liverpool Street, makes a nice change, not a lot of fun for the poor lady who had to tip it out but I appreciated the novelty ) and I happened to overhear a radio call come through the radio of a member of station staff standing on the opposite platform. I don't know who made the call, obviously, presumably it was someone in Wood Lane. I also didn't catch all the details after all I wasn't the intended audience but he was talking about a Leytonstone - Epping shuttle. In fact the term shuttle was thrown around a fair bit.

I bring this up, obviously, as an illustration that it really does seem that 'shuttle' is used in these contexts by the professionals too.

I've also just noticed that aslefshrugged starts his 30 April entry with "I spent yesterday shuttling between LES and EPP"....

Living down here in sunny Plymouth, we recently had both the Waterloo-Exeter & Paddington-Plymouth lines knocked out of action.

One of the company's websites referred to buses replacing trains between somewhere a lot of water was and shouldn't be and the next city down the line, and t'other referred to an emergency bus SHUTTLE(my caps.) between some other newly-submerged Lyonesse and another next city down the line.

I only mention this because I can distinctly remember Network SE, British Rail & LT on past occasions all using both descriptions- emergency bus services and emergency bus shuttle- to describe what we had to look forward to when engineering works etc were in progress, usually on a Sunday, of course, or weekday late evening.  Usually refreshment-free buses, funnily enough, too.

I personally associate shuttle services as something unusual or unscheduled, as it were.  I would always have thought of Aldwych as a branch-line, and part of the Hainault loop in the same way.  Sorry, but South Acton ceased when I was only 7, so never used it!

The Epping-Ongar bit would only have struck me as a possible shuttle if they had purposely omitted either North Weald or Blake Hall(pre-1981 closure) from most trains.  Nobody would have noticed if they had, anyway.

I think the use of shuttle has evolved over time, but what the correct useage is or should be now remains a very moot point.



Steve