A question about the Wimbledon branch signal WG150

30mph restriction applies, I’m sure the approach control was removed

FCFS??

The District Line has always been eastbound/westbound. It certainly was in 1970 when I worked on there.

West of Putney it was the Down Road, Earl’s Court to Putney was always the Westbound District. Having been in the Earl’s Court ‘s control room as a signalman from 1982 until 2001 it’ was up road from Wimbledon to Putney and Eastbound from Putney to Earls Court.

The Signal department may have used North / South in the 1990’s but the diagram in the control room did not use this designation.

Bear in mind, that before 1994, it was British Rail, so would have used their terminology from an operational point of view of Up and Down. It is still signalled by Network Rail now, so presumably still does?

Yes stations on the east end of the Piccadilly line used have signs Northbound and Southbound. But the terms used by control room staff was Eastbound and Westbound.

From a public-facing point of view, there’s certainly signage on the east end of the Picc which refers to Northbound and Southbound.

To be honest with Wimbledon being its own branch, I’m surprised the official designations for the LU part aren’t NB and SB. In the same way that the Central has IR and OR on the Hainault loop.

I think the Jubilee line is unique in having a northbound/southbound section (Green Park-Stanmore) and am eastbound/westbound section (Green Park to Stratford). I'm guessing that this is because the original Metropolitan/Bakerloo and Fleet line sections were signed as a north-south railway, carrying this convention through the extension would result in southbound trains heading almost due north between North Greenwich and Stratford. As the Green Park to Stanmore section of the line runs roughly north west-south east, changing the whole line to east-west wouldn't have had this issue (eastbound trains departing Kingsbury heading south west being the only real anomaly), so presumably switch costs were the deciding factor here?

I suspect you’re right that it was largely a cost and familiarity issue - it would have meant redesignating stuff on the earlier section of line.

There’s also the slight issue of how Charing Cross would have been handled, though that could easily have been made EB and WB too.

All quite a bit of cost as well as change for staff. It would have been neater though.

As I said elsewhere, there’s loads of places on LU where a train changes from one line designation to another. The sub surface lines in particular.