Closure Euston-Watford Junction 17-23/12/2022. 11-19/02/2023

so close to Christmas, when road travel will be heavy and slow, not even resignalling to allow more frequent services to be restored over the section that is jointly operated

The planet these people live on is one where the work that needs to be done has been put off and deferred and postponed and put off until you get to a point where it HAS to be done.

If you read general NR non job specific plans, this is a recurrent theme: pressure for ever longer hours of timetables (earlier starts, later finishes) means less time for work in daily possessions, while at the same time ever more frequent timetables accelerate the need for maintenance and renewals, especially with modern rolling stock that is heavier than older generations.

Yes disrupts xmas shopping, but, it is also a period when many people take annual leave, and the schools and uni.s etc are off, so you are not disrupting essential commuting as much; that's why the 2nd dates in Feb. are half term.

Rather than be critical, how would YOU do this ?

Close very weekend for xxx weeks where xxx is large ?

There is total work here of 16 days in 7day + 9day possession. That does not mean you can get away with 8 x 2 days weekends because it is much much less efficient in terms of placing resource to and from work site .. and significantly more expensive in terms of human man hours ££££ ..... don't forget you have to remove materials trains and then reinstate rails, ballast, bridges, signalling, traction power, comms, cabling, other infrastructure towards the end of every possession ... so you get much less on site working time. I'd guess something like 14-16 weekends of total closure would be needed to cover the same work. If you started that in mid-January they'd still be at it Mid-May. Meanwhile, you have then taken all the resource towards those weekends so other sites get less attention, they in turn deteriorate, so you start a vicious circle.

Or an alternative is half term in Feb then wait for the next half term in May - by which time you have deferred some of this essential work - that has almost certainly already been deferred over past years - by another 6 months. Then wonder why the service collapses through infrastructure failures.

These decisions are not taken lightly, you can be sure the train operators, LU and LO and impacted main line TOC, will have objected and whined about xmas shopping and sought every alternative to get to this point. Believe it or not, no-one actually wants to inflict this sort of travel disturbance. The only people who do believe that sit in their armchairs at home entirely clueless about how such work ever gets carried out, all offering negativity, and nothing positive.

It is very simple.

You have to break eggs to make an omlette.

From Friday 16 December night until Saturday 24 December morning, two trains will be outstabled from Stonebridge Park depot to Elephant & Castle sidings to be used as service spares as required. Defective trains will changed over as required, during engineering hours under controller's timings.
Service frequency and trains available in the first post.

d7666 makes an excellent point about why posessions like this are needed. As a regular transport user, I would much prefer regular later running and more intensive services that suffer well planned 1 or 2 week a year closures during school holidays than either endless weekend closures or otherwise not being able to travel when it is useful and convenient for me the rest of the time. You can plan around them much better, and the maintenance does need to happen.

...and Southern services from Milton Keynes to Clapham Junction according to real time trains:
www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/simple/gb-nr:HRW/2022-12-18/1659

Do we know what they are doing where? And why two goes at it?

My main comment was more about this being done at a time when the alternative (road travel) will be negatively impacted because of Christmas shopping.

The summer would have afforded longer hours of daylight and better flowing road traffic.

I do approve of single but longer closure 'hits' rather than endless weekend closures, however (from the way I understand what is being said) the fact that the works were so frequently deferred until we reached what sounds like 'emergency closures before something bad happens' does not fill me with confidence in how our railways are managed.

Something similar also recently occurred on the Boston Mass. USA Orange line, I am shocked to now find what sounds like a similar-ish scenario taking place here in London.

As an aside, I do recognise that whilst this closure affects a London Underground service (as well as a 'mainline railway' service) it involves infrastructure owned and managed by Network Rail.

re: the alternative services, erm I saw somewhere else that this will be the last time that AC electric trains call at Wembley Central? Not even football specials will stop here in the future?

The last time I can recall was the October 2004 half term week.

Where I have used those terms in my posts yes - AC lines being the 25 kV WCML from Euston, DC being the 750 V Euston Watford (LO) lines (often colloquially called "the DC lines").

Saying closing the DC lines includes closing the Bakerloo north of Queens Park, and saying AC encompasses the Clapham Watford main line service as well as Euston main line services.

www.railadvent.co.uk/2022/11/major-bakerloo-and-london-overground-closures-in-run-up-to-christmas.html

The extended closure saves years of weekend closures according to this article

It's only easy if the signalling and power supply arrangements, access to the depot (for trains and people), etc are uninterrupted and there is no work taking place on this stretch of the line. Given that no service along these lines is being run it seems most likely that the planners who are in possession of all the relevant information have concluded that it is not only not "easy" but also not practical.

I wonder whether the works will also include platform end barriers - not at the platform end but ones that block access beyond the part of the platform where trains actually usually stop? 

My concern is that this would prevent me from ever again taking a photo like my profile picture, eg: if a slow moving Avanti liveried Pendolini that had just switched tracks (as here) was passing a stationary Bakerloo line train.





On the topic of platform / stations works, some years ago I was filming from a location very close to station that was outside the fares paid area whilst a work crew were busy 'doing something' and I noticed what may have been some sort of supervisor constantly looking at me (from where he was standing he had to look in a different direction from the actual place of work to see me).

The next time I went there (barely a week later) a new barrier had been erected exactly where I had been standing. 

Nope sorry as I mentioned I took all that info from Network Rail as we drivers no nothing...

Would that be the one with half the walls missing?