Circles to Go

White City will probably open until at least midnight, haven't looked at floor plans for a while but will possibly use the cinema as an anchor for the food and drink retail areas so people would be coming out of there when films/bars finish up. You're right, might not be an amazing time to open but we get some new tube infrastructure to look at! I always have to wait longer for an H&C train than on any other line, and service is always busy.

Would Edgware Road get a total rebuild if the t-cup happens? Find it a bit confusing as an occasional traveller there let alone if you had to change for a through service on the Circle.

thank you Mr Banananananananana etc ....

They could do a bit more with the schedules too, by giving each Circle driver a one or two train step back on each Circle (which still fits duty parameters) at Edgware Road, it would knock out any percieved advantage for slow running as well as keeping a regular interval on the circle, as a late driver would just step back one instead of two or remain on the same train they arrive with and make it theirs. Issolated late trains can still be turned at Moorgate ...and Inner rails should make a bit more use of Mansion House to reverse. There seems to be a tabboo of reversing a Circle on the District metals for late running !! Longer delays dealt with as now.

By running an end to end service you are forced to curtail trains leaving a poorer service at the line ends (in the same way Dagenham East to Upminster gets abandoned at 2200hrs when the service goes up the wall !! gripe gripe ) And the proposed end to end services don't have much in the way of suitable curtailment points for a 20 / 30 min late train ...so your back to the same reforms, but made more difficult !

That could put too many extra trains through Earl's Ct. It could reduce trains to Barking (depending on what you did with Mets), and would either eliminate trains from Gloucester Rd to High St Ken or complicate operations at High St Ken. Also how would you reverse at Hammersmith?

how feasble would it be to rebuild Edgware Road on two levels so that trains to/from HSK used platforms underneath those used by trains from Hammersmith H&C?

This would remove the need for a junction at Praed Street, might be ablr tol provide an interchange with the Bakerloo Line (I don't know what the underground geography is). If the t-cup were kept then you wouldn't need to join the new tunnels to the existing railway east of the station.

Why cant the Circle line trains run Hammersmith, Kings Cross, Tower Hill, Victoria, Edgware Road, Kings Cross and terimate at Moorgate using the soon to be abandoned platforms there? Flat junction could back fire but least it would provide an end to end place for the Circle to turn around without fouling current services.

I've suggested this previously on this forum - even producing this (poor) digram to show what I meant -

The only current journeys that would be inconvenienced would be Bayswater-Aldgate, this is nominally 26-27 minutes direct via Edgware Road, 28-29 minutes changing at Edgware Road and Liverpool Street and 31-32 minutes via Victoria; and Bayswater-Liverpool Street, as Queensway station is only about 1-2 minutes walk away customers would just be advised to use the Central Line.

From what I remember it was rejected for two reasons - lack of capacity between Baker Street and Moorgate, and that the flat junction at Moorgate would cripple the service. As has been suggested elsewhere, reconstructing Moorgate so the westbound/inner rail track was moved from the present platform 2 to one of platforms 4-6 (5 & 6 are the current Thameslink platforms) would alleviate this - but where would the money come from?

You've answered your own question there!

I think regularly reversing at Moorgate would cause operational problems as it would be adding another flat junction to the system. The current single track layout would also mean that you cannot timetable trains in and out at the same time.

If a new terminus was used/old terminus re-used, then as Dr One mentioned, the track layout should be reconfigured so that the centre road would be used for reversing. This would be at considerable expense!

What about Wimbledon - Edgware Road - Kings Cross - Aldgate - Victoria - Edgware Road, and Hammersmith - Barking? You don't have two services terminating at Edgware Road and there would be direct services between Bayswater and Baker Stree.

You can't increase the H&C service, and have no problems at Edgware Road without rebuilding the line, and using a lot of money.
Why not just put points in at Paddington and run Paddington - Hammersmith shuttles in between the Barking trains.
7-car S stock would give extra capacity without changing the services anyway.

If we can hang on a few years hopefully Crossrail will solve some of the problems!!

There was a map in this evening's thelondonpaper.
It said that the new service would run via Earl's Court and Hammersmith!

The Hammersmith idea, upfast, was one I raised earlier - it would basically mean the Circle will have a bigger area!

Though, it would be very hard to modify Hammersmith I guess, in order to this, but it is an idea I definately favour over the Tea cup.

After reading the London Travelwatch link, I have two questions:

1) How can a "Tea Cup" service connect Earls Court and Hammersmith to the existing Circle layout?
2) When I was reading links about an enhanced Amersham service needing to be extended to the City off-peak to serve main-line termini, does that mean that most of the City off-peak service on the Met will be from the Amersham line instead of the Uxbridge line--as is the case at present?

As far as I know there are no plans to extend Amersham trains to Aldgate off peak, the Uxbridge service provides a decent service.