To Reading, or Not to Reading?

The imbalance between the eastern branches and the western branches would suggest Crossrail should absorb as many services in the west as possible. It wouldn't make much sense, and would be very wasteful to build such an expensive tunnel, and still have so many Crossrail trains and FGW locals terminating at Paddington. The whole point of the scheme is to link those services up! What a strange scenario it is that they are having to provide extra services from Liverpool St-Gidea Pk to absorb demand at the eastern end, while there is an excess of services in the west!

I've never understood why there is opposition to having a Crossrail stopping service out to Reading. It would be useful in the same way that the Reading-Waterloo or Cambridge-London or indeed the current Paddington-Reading stoppers are highly used in the face of express services on the same routes. It has value far beyond the end-to-end travel. The journey times would be comparable, and any issues would be outweighed by the huge benefits to ease of onward travel from Paddington (which is an issue currently).

I though that one of the reasons for extending it to reading was to allow a direct Reading-Heathrow service?

from what i have been told they are planning to electrify the great western mainline all the way to bristol/cardiff when they are building crossrail

Let Crossrail take over and cut off all the slow services to Reading. Anything going further out should just become a fast service between Reading and Paddington. That's my first thought anyway, and you'd obviously have to make sure there are good connections at Reading for people travelling from Oxford to Slough for example. Can the fast lines take the extra trains, though?

Sweek the headways on the Fasts are 3 minutes according to the Rules of the Plan documentation, although the resultant 20tph seems a bit of an ambitious service level. I'd say 12-16tph is a reasonable geusstimate, Currently the off peak service level between Airport Junction and Paddington is 11-12tph. That's all very well if all trains on the Fast lines are HSTs, but if the services running local beyond reading were formed as Turbos then the capacity will go down as the Turbos can only Run at 90mph.

DrOne - Crossrail to Reading makes perfect sense if FGW are killing off their local services, I mentioned this in the first post. But I can't see FGW simply rolling over and letting TfL take all it's traffic away.

I always thought of Crossrail supplementing a reduced version of the current local service. FGW would still operate a local service, either at the current 4tph (with 2tph continuing on to Oxford/Banbury/Worcester) or 2tph to Oxford with units working in pairs. Crossrail would then operate over the busier Slough - Paddington Stretch, extended out to Maidenhead where they have the Land available for Stabling Sidings.

There is no way that HeX would be pushed aside for FGW local services. The DfT would lose out on the extra £££s they get from HeX over FGW in Track Access Fees. (HeX pay a premium to have priority over the faster FGW services in order to keep their 15 minute journey time)

Remember that there will be an inevitable reorganisation of the FGW services as the franchise runs out in 2015 - before Crossrail is completed.

Basically with the fast lines as busy as they are (and even more so in future) you can't stop anything without slowing down the trains behind. I suppose if you had a 125 mph train leave just behind a 100 mph HEx you might get away with it.

Hurrah! You've just spent a billion quid wiring Reading-Maidenhead for at best four electric trains an hour that will be empty between Reading and Twyford.

0659 Off Slough on the Up (Towards Padd) is Ex Bristol, and the Exeter Semi-Fasts (the ones which call at the Suburban Stations on the B&H) All stop there. There's an early morning Cheltenham Spa train aswell. Other than that it's the 2tph Oxford Fasts (Calling Reading only or Non Stop to Padd), the Local Services to Reading and Oxford (4tph in total) and the Branch service to Windsor (2tph) - Don't know of any scheduled Cardiff or Swansea Trains, even on Sundays. Considering it's well within the Top 100 (if not 50) busiest stations in the UK that's a pretty poor service.

They should have spent £16bn on new school buses for South Yorkshire ;D

Perhaps some cascaded stock from the Paddington lines may reach t'north

Get rid of all non-crossrail services east of Maidenhead on the local lines. Install a crossover west of Twyford and send the Henley service to Reading, maybe adding another tph. Then ensure all remaining FGW services stop at Reading and then Slough to set down/pick up only for Crossrail and a railair bus to Heathrow. Don't see how Crossrail benefits Reading when you can get in to London quicker now anyway and with one change you can be in the City via both the GW and SW lines.

All they've said is that they're seriously thinking about it. There's meant to be an announcement in the next few weeks where they'll say exactly how serious.

Would it then be possible for every non-Crossrail service out of Paddington to make its first stop at Reading? That would please the long-distance passengers, and those who lose the semi-fasts from their station would get a more frequent service further in to town anyway.

I think that money would have been better if it went into the tube upgrade project-improving what we have already or expanding it

Building Crossrail and electrifying the GWR would bring a lot more towns in to the commuter belt, reducing the pressure on existing London transport networks, which means less need for extensions and upgrades.