|
Install Gentoo posted:The Lexington Avenue Line itself, is carrying a bit over 1/3 the total daily passengers of the entire London Underground (LAL carries 1.3 million per day, the Underground carries 3 million), along its 4 track approximately 10 miles length. It's doing that with 10 car trains of 51 foot cars, running as often as 3 minutes apart during rush hour. When I say 3 minutes apart, note that I mean on the same track, same direction; you have a train on the express track going north every 3 minutes, and also on the local track going north a seperate one every 3 minutes. Zephro posted:Aren't all the New York lines cut-and-cover? That's a lot cheaper than building a double-wide deep line.
|
#
?
May 15, 2012 01:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 18:30 |
|
|
Venmoch posted:I don't think this has been covered yet but does anyone know why the fare structure on the rail network is an absolute clusterfuck? Is there any reason why two tickets on the same train cost less than one? (EG going Westbury to Newbury and then Newbury to London is cheaper than Westbury to London even though its the same train.) Train operating companies each seem to have their own way of determining the price of a journey. For any single ticket, one of the train companies that you travel on will "set" the price flow (which may then get distributed to multiple operating companies if you use/can use them). If I travel from Winchester to Oxford, and buy one ticket, this flow will be priced by CrossCountry as that is the only way to do that journey directly. If I split the ticket at Reading, the second ticket from Reading to Oxford would actually be priced by First Great Western, as they operate most of the services between those two stations. The two different ways of working out the fare for my two tickets may mean that I can either save (or spend more) for doing the same journey, depending on the number of tickets I use. If you search for a journey between two stations on the National Rail website, they will link to a train company's website to buy the fares they display. That company is the one that sets that particular price flow. And all of that is before you start to factor in demand management for very popular journeys (which might not be included for a longer journey that includes the popular section), different companies idea of peak/off-peak/super off-peak (and I've heard rumour of a Super-Peak) and archaic fares which have been forgotten about for years. Or advance fares. kingturnip posted:Talking about weird infrastructure, the line that's run by First Capital Connect that goes from Moorgate to Alexandra Palace (and beyond) is, I'm told, unique in that it uses both overhead power lines and a third rail I think this line (the Northern City Line) is only unique in that it used to be part of the London Underground as a deep level "tube" line, despite it being built to the mainline loading gauge. As others have said Thameslink and the Overground uses 3rd rail and overheadd depending which side of the Thames they are on. Install Gentoo posted:
I think the cost of widening any of the deep level tube lines would be just as, if not more, expensive than building a new line. There would be no point to extending any tube line at a bigger diameter "just in case" (though they did for the Jubilee line extension to put a walkway in). The Victoria line, being completely separate, was actually made slightly wider. Any brand new tube line, such as crossrail 2, would be mainline gauge I imagine.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2012 01:58
|
|
|
HTJ posted:Trains are scheduled to run about every two minutes on the tube lines with modern signalling; the Jubilee has 30tph in both directions and the Victoria will have 33tph in a few months. In practice, slight (and inevitable) delays during the rush hour lead to trains entering the platforms as the train in front is leaving. If the trains were longer, they'd have to move the signals farther apart and increase waiting times on platforms, which would be a problem at major stations where the only way to prevent dangerous overcrowding is by getting rid of passengers as quickly as possible (Victoria, for example, has to close if more than several minutes pass between trains). Entirely this, the run-in/run-out time is largely determined by how quickly a train can clear the station platform, which with modern metro stock which can accelerate very quickly, is largely determined by the length of the train. The back of the train has to be clear of the overlap of the platform starting signal before the following train can proceed. Ideally, you want it so that the train is braking for a red on the platform starter, but can leave on greens. As for tunnels, 4 track commuter routes with something like Thameslink or Crossrail aren't really required when you've got overground sized trains at a 24tph frequency.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2012 10:05
|
|
|
Gat posted:I think the cost of widening any of the deep level tube lines would be just as, if not more, expensive than building a new line. There would be no point to extending any tube line at a bigger diameter "just in case" (though they did for the Jubilee line extension to put a walkway in). Yeah widening existing tunnels is just completely off the table. There's pretty much no way it can be done without effectively closing the line for years on end. Now digging extra tunnels under the existing ones, as they started to do before the war (they ended up using the tunnels as deep level shelters), is a different matter - the geology is well-understood, in most cases TfL will already own the rights to dig in those areas, and most of the expensive bits of the station infrastructure will already be there. I remember reading a book when I was a kid which must have been from the sixties or seventies (it talked about the "Fleet Line" before it was renamed the Jubilee Line) which talked about express services on the Northern and Central Lines (including a whole new direct route between Liverpool Street and Holborn to avoid the tortuous twists the line had to take), as well as a new Circle Line stopping only at the mainline termini - any idea what happened to those ideas? It strikes me taht a lot of the congestion on the Underground could be alleviated by separating traffic like that.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2012 12:25
|
|
|
Here's another oddity with fare increases that you don't hear about very much. When they happen, you hear on the news about how there's an "average" increase of X%. Obviously, this means some fares will go up more and some will go up less, but ultimately the TOC has no incentive to totally gouge some routes and no others, cos the average increase cap will mean they make no extra money, right? Nope - the averages are calculated using old passenger data (and that's not just because they've not done a survey since, I think it's from a few years ago) so the TOCs are incentivise to absolutely gouge lines which have seen massively increased risership as they can make much more money this way. loving stupid, isn't it?
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2012 12:28
|
|
|
The percentages are also bollocks because I'm fairly sure you can offset a 5% rise (for example) in a Reading->London season ticket by dropping the price of a Reading->Bourne End (a lovely little station outside of Maidenhead) by 5%. One of the many tools in the scam bank.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2012 13:06
|
|
|
Also you get fun with fares from playing around with what's allowed in the National Routeing Guide which I will c&p some of the wikipedia entry about here, as it is almost too complex to be understood by humans.National Routeing Guide, Wikipedia posted:The rail network is complex, and the routeing guide an inherited document, not one designed from scratch. As a nodal network, the rail system lends itself to logical computer analysis. Accordingly, under such detailed analysis by enthusiasts, the routeing system has been found to contain many idiosyncrasies. An infamous example is the following query and response sent to customer services: "What are the permitted routes where a ticket is routed 'not London'; in particular, what if the only route given in the Guide is [via] 'London'? A: In this case, you can use the ticket via London. The routes 'London' and 'not London' are not necessarily mutually exclusive." The latter sentence clearly defies logical explanation. It is insane and nobody seems to know how it works, especially when you add in the franchise owners having to cooperate with each other.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2012 15:34
|
|
|
^ Routing guide fun. My last season ticket was to "Kensington Olympia, not via London". Still not sure quite how that was meant to work, perhaps I could teleport to the destination from somewhere between Watford Junction and Harrow & Wealdstone. EDIT : Clarity for non-UK goons, Kensington Olympia is pretty much slap bang in the middle of London.... biglads fucked around with this message at 16:08 on May 15, 2012 |
|
#
?
May 15, 2012 15:42
|
|
|
Since it's now a program there must be a gibbering programmer somewhere who had to code all that logic. I'm sure ATOC does have a clue how it works and that even the people who built it now get lost in the spagetti logic.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2012 16:07
|
|
|
biglads posted:^ Routing guide fun. For routing purposes, London is defined as one of the London Terminals. the list is defined here: https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/crossing_london.html#terminals. You will notice that some are not actually terminals. Olympia doesn't count so that you can use not London tickets via the overground, bypassing Zone 1. It might be easier to think of it as via or not via Zone 1. The reason it isn't actually called that is because of Thameslink, as you are not allowed to travel to the far side of Zone 1 when travelling through the Thameslink tunnel (unless you specifically ask for it and pay the higher fare). For your season ticket I imagine that you were not allowed to travel into Zone 1 then back out. nozz fucked around with this message at 16:58 on May 15, 2012 |
|
#
?
May 15, 2012 16:52
|
|
|
Gat posted:For routing purposes, London is defined as one of the London Terminals. the list is defined here: https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/crossing_london.html#terminals. You will notice that some are not actually terminals. Clear as mud 
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2012 18:32
|
|
|
Speaking of train tickets, just went to book a return from Manchester to London for the Olympics. According to National Rail, the only possible route is direct via Virgin Trains. One of my colleagues suggested changing at Stoke-on-Trent - tried that, same price. Then I tried booking the two legs separately, as suggested above. Manchester - London direct: £74.50 return. Manchester - Stoke-on-Trent: £8 return. Stoke-on-Trent - London: £24.50 return. 
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2012 15:55
|
|
|
PkerUNO posted:Speaking of train tickets, just went to book a return from Manchester to London for the Olympics.  is the only answer.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2012 16:31
|
|
|
PkerUNO posted:Speaking of train tickets, just went to book a return from Manchester to London for the Olympics. Popular routes are more expensive. To use an airplane analogy my mate was obsessed with collecting air miles so when we did a big trip to Africa the price for flights went like this Nairobi to London: First class to Zurich then business class to Copenhagen then normal to London -cheapest by a long way First to Zurich then normal to London Economy to London direct - most expensive The people who don't have time to go the long way on popular routes will always get fleeced.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2012 17:15
|
|
|
Loving Africa Chaps posted:First class to Zurich then business class to Copenhagen then normal to London -cheapest by a long way That sounds insane... My beef is that I went on the National Rail website, specified I wanted to change trains at Stoke, and it STILL claimed there was no cheaper ticket. It really is true - cheaper tickets are available, they just make it hard as nails to actually find them. :/
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2012 17:20
|
|
|
Loving Africa Chaps posted:Popular routes are more expensive. To use an airplane analogy my mate was obsessed with collecting air miles so when we did a big trip to Africa the price for flights went like this Nairobi to London: It's the exact same journey as the first route, just ticketed differently. It's indefensible.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2012 17:23
|
|
|
The national rail website is not smart enough to split tickets like you have done, though it is smart enough to offer two singles if its cheaper than a return ticket. Moneysavingexpert have recently offered the first engine (that works) which will calculate split tickets for you (standard singles only, but you can still use it for ideas for returns or advances) https://splitticket.moneysavingexpert.com nozz fucked around with this message at 17:32 on May 23, 2012 |
|
#
?
May 23, 2012 17:28
|
|
|
Chocolate Teapot posted:It's the exact same journey as the first route, just ticketed differently. It's indefensible. I never said it wasn't but i didn't realise it was the same trains.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2012 17:30
|
|
|
Gat posted:The national rail website is not smart enough to split tickets like you have done, though it is smart enough to offer two singles if its cheaper than a return ticket. From playing with it for a few minutes, it seems that it only splits the ticket once as well. For a long journey you *might* be better off splitting it twice, I don't know.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2012 17:41
|
|
|
PkerUNO posted:Speaking of train tickets, just went to book a return from Manchester to London for the Olympics. Actually, are you sure the £24.50 ticket is valid on virgin trains, from what I can work out that is a London Midland only Super-Off Peak return, which will take one hour longer.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2012 18:28
|
|
|
Gat posted:Actually, are you sure the £24.50 ticket is valid on virgin trains, from what I can work out that is a London Midland only Super-Off Peak return, which will take one hour longer. No, I neglected to mention this - apologies. The London Midland route does take an hour longer but honestly, I don't mind. Just that if I have to spend £70 to go somewhere by train, I'd rather the destination be France. :P The point I was trying to make was solely that no route planner apart from the one linked above will actually suggest cheaper routes/tickets without massive coercion.
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2012 19:17
|
|
|
Bozza posted:The percentages are also bollocks because I'm fairly sure you can offset a 5% rise (for example) in a Reading->London season ticket by dropping the price of a Reading->Bourne End (a lovely little station outside of Maidenhead) by 5%.  It's also a prime example of Dr Beeching's idiocy: "A branch line that links the Great Western Main Line with the old Great Central/Chiltern line slap bang in the middle of the commuter belt? Nah, nobody would use that. Let's tear it up past Bourne End and build offices and houses on the route".
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2012 20:23
|
|
|
Itzena posted:Bourne End is not a lovely little station. As someone heavily involved in dealing with that station post-electrification I can assure you it is, though this may be because it's getting on my tits. Though not as much as the Slough-Windsor branch where we've been told that we can't modify it lest if interfers with the future aspirations of the Royal Family. My suggest to install a set of points on the Windsor viaduct that dumps the Royal train in the Thames was not accepted as a solution though 
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2012 21:22
|
|
|
What used to be the second trackbed has a sewage pipe on it, iirc. Maybe some sort of controlled venting of that?
|
|
#
?
May 23, 2012 23:04
|
|
|
Bozza posted:...post-electrification... Are you, in fact, the Fat Controller? I live in China and am very impressed with their train system given the context and challenges. I also worked in a transport University where everyone was keen on studying Western signal technology and suchlike but I would like to ask if there is any interest from the UK in other, particularly non-European, train systems.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 12:40
|
|
|
Nah, but Maidenhead Station is my baby, been working on the layout on and off since I started in design (so about 4 years) from concept to approval in principle/ready for detailed design phase. wrt non-European systems, bluntly, no. There is an EU agency called the European Railway Agency which sets down the standards for interopability on the Trans-European Networks, with the theory to make a common rail market in Europe. Stuff like use of Standard Gauge (seemingly obvious, but Spain/Portugal uses Iberian gauge and Russian Gauge stopped the Nazis!), 25kV 50Hz overhead wire electrification etc are mandated, along with the use of ERTMS, the European Rai Traffic Management System and it's component parts GSM-R (mobile phone technology, applied to railways) and ETCS, the European Train Control System, which is the common signalling system for all of Europe. I think China are going to move towards ETCS in the future by all accounts, though it will likely be the China version, not directly compatible with the EU version, but close as dammit.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 14:58
|
|
|
Bozza posted:Stuff like use of Standard Gauge (seemingly obvious, but Spain/Portugal uses Iberian gauge and Russian Gauge stopped the Nazis!) We should be using Brunel's broadgauge
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 15:38
|
|
|
What advantages to broader gauges actually have? Was Brunel's thing about a smoother ride actually a thing? Also how big a thing are the tilting trains? Is it something that the UK rail network really needed? There seemed to be a lot of fanfare at the time but now you don't hear anything about it.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 16:13
|
|
|
Bozza posted:Nah, but Maidenhead Station is my baby, been working on the layout on and off since I started in design (so about 4 years) from concept to approval in principle/ready for detailed design phase. I would love to take a bullet train from London to Beijing via India. How long would that take using modern trains? A week? Shame it'll never happen.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 16:34
|
|
|
Tilting trains were a technology developed by British Rail in the 80s(?) for the Advanced Passenger Train to allow for higher speeds on the West Coast Mainline which suffers from the fact that it has a lot of turns and the built in angle of the corners has a shallow cant. This means trains which cannot tilt have to slow down for the corners to about 75mph where as the tilt trains can go at 125mph. The technology was sold off when BR was demolished and had to be bought back for Virgin's shiny new Super Voyagers...20 years late. I suppose there isn't much talk about them now because they're a fact of life for most commuters now and all the talk of HS2 has probably distracted from them too. Also, the tilting trains are focused on the WCML because the East Coast line is generally straighter with a better cant.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 17:08
|
|
|
APT is an interesting beast. My old man went on it in the 70s (?) I think when it was still in it's trial period and said it was a bit odd. The real problem was two fold: Firstly, the gyroscope was far too good, and the thing literally compensated for curves perfectly, so despite the fact you could see you were going round a bend, you couldn't feel the acceleration associated, and that made people feel a bit sick. Secondly, in addition to the above, on the first APT service BR made the classic error of getting all the hacks drunk as gently caress, so when they felt a bit sick they chundered and bad press was kinda inevitable. We sold the APT stuff to Italy, and now buy it back via the tilting Super Voyagers and Pendolinos. edit: We don't really need them other than on the WCML and the Midland as most of the proper mainlines are fairly straight. Western has been rocking 125 since the 70s and ECML (with the exception of the mess at Morpeth) is 125 most of the way up.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 19:34
|
|
|
notaspy posted:I would love to take a bullet train from London to Beijing via India. How long would that take using modern trains? A week? Shame it'll never happen. You could do London to Beijing via Moscow in around 10 days or so, if you'd like. Not eyewateringly expensive either, especially when compared to UK prices.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 20:01
|
|
|
Vando posted:You could do London to Beijing via Moscow in around 10 days or so, if you'd like. Not eyewateringly expensive either, especially when compared to UK prices. You could also do it by steam train for £18,000 per person... No I am not joking.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 21:14
|
|
|
Vando posted:You could do London to Beijing via Moscow in around 10 days or so, if you'd like. Not eyewateringly expensive either, especially when compared to UK prices. Oh my god that looks amazing. Something to consider when I have money at last, maybe.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 21:17
|
|
|
Here's the blog of an Austrian rail worker that took a trip from Vienna to Pyongyang, through Russia: http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/ It looks like the trans-Siberian trip takes a similar route, so this might be useful as a point of reference.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 21:58
|
|
|
Anyone here have London Midland as their local rail company? They're demanning a bunch of stations and doing various other poo poo that is a bad thing (I'll let the train guys explain it). Does anyone fancy getting involved in campaigning against it?
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 22:09
|
|
|
surrender posted:Here's the blog of an Austrian rail worker that took a trip from Vienna to Pyongyang, through Russia: On this blog, the author describes her trip around the world, which includes traveling from Shanghai to Croatia by train, as well as Rome to London by train after an interval of travel by watercraft. http://www.verysmallarray.com/?p=145 That's the first post covering that (the Shanghai to Beijing leg specifically), you can follow the next post things or go to their travel tag for the rest: http://www.verysmallarray.com/?cat=14
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 22:35
|
|
|
Thundercloud posted:Anyone here have London Midland as their local rail company? I use London Midland. I hate the company with a passion. I have not caught a train that has been on time this week. 99% of the trains I catch every morning are not on time. The people who write timetables do not seem to understand that rush hour may make trains late. Reliably late. I do not know how many problems are caused by other trains being awful in moving through Birmingham New Street. They always blame signalling problems. It may be NR causing these problems, or it may be an excuse for congestion. I just wish they would tell me the truth instead of lying.
|
|
#
?
May 24, 2012 23:30
|
|
|
Raphus C posted:I use London Midland. I hate the company with a passion. I have not caught a train that has been on time this week. 99% of the trains I catch every morning are not on time. The people who write timetables do not seem to understand that rush hour may make trains late. Reliably late. It's actually a lot of problems, there's a lot of congestion in New Street (and none of this will be fixed by the rebuilding of it, all that is happening is they're putting a bigger shopping centre on top), I think some of the signalling gear is pretty old, but you'd have to get answers from a rail union guy working in the Midlands. I know London Midland are currently 30 drivers understaffed and are running huge amounts of overtime at the moment to cover the gap, I don't know if that is causing issues beyond drivers doing 12 hours on, 12 hours off, 12 hours on, etc. That immediately doesn't seem safe to me. London Midland are loving terrible though, and they've cancelled trains that were late in my experience so that they avoid the penalties for making other trains behind them late. I only think they're ok in comparison to the bearded wonders lot because Virgin trains are so rammed in standard class and so prone to being late. I'll be leafleting Acocks Green station on behalf of the RMT and rail unions tomorrow about demanning and all the other poo poo they're pulling.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2012 00:19
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 13, 2024 18:30 |
|
|
Does anyone know about the signallers' dispute in Stirling? It sounds a lot like NR are just dragging their feet but all I know is that RMT says they want to move to 12 hour shifts, but I've no idea what the current situation is nor what the reasoning for this is.
|
|
#
?
May 25, 2012 02:49
|
|