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The comparison with Island Line is fairly instructive. Despite being part of the National Rail network, Island Line suffers from many of the issues that normally affect heritage lines, but don't affect other NR rural branches as much. It is small scale and isolated, requiring its own set of...

The 117s and 121s probably seemed a reasonable proposition when bought in the early 2000s from service in ex-traffic condition. After all similar units with some modernisation did continue in service with Chiltern and Arriva Trains Wales in passenger units and with TOCs, NR and even SWT as route...

Err - yes exactly. However, the National Rail network is not the only railway network in the UK that receives local and central government funding to fulfill those social functions. Indeed, as explained up thread, Dorset Council and its predecessors have provided funding to Swanage with the...

Yes, you would need positioning workings to the nearest fuel and light maintenance point at the required intervals - but this is also true of many branch operations across the National Rail network, such as the Great Western Branches in Cornwall, where the units that work the branches presumably...

166 366 566, the later two were kept back for many years, but have now been scrapped.

Yes, I meant to say formally 'withdrawn' and extant. Clearly many vehicles have been stopped for the last time and then sent for scrap either from one off damage or during fleet replacement. Having said that, I am not sure whether the three ex-Northern line 1972 Mk1 vehicles that are / were...

Government or Local Authority subsidy for public transport provided by private operators is normal and unremarkable across Great Britain. It has to be justified by 'buying' social benefits that cannot be captured as revenue on the service. In the case of Dorset Council's previous subsidy of...

At present, no fleet has any vehicles that are formally ‘withdrawn’ in a British Rail manner. LU doesn’t really have this as a concept. Several have vehicles that are long term stopped, but in all cases these will be intended to be reused at some point, even if not until the next overhaul cycle...

Many thanks for that one. 2C32 made use of the down slow to down fast crossover north of Potters Bar, only the second time for me in 18 years of commuting to / from WGC. Not that it made up any time…

Afternoon all. Is anyone able to assist with the 700/0s that worked the following trains today: 2C17 08:26 Cambridge to London Kings Cross 2C32 13:27 London Kings Cross to Cambridge As always, I am grateful for the assistance given on this forum!

In the case of petrol engines Euro 4, 5 or 6 are really the same from the perspective of the particulates that the ULEZ is aiming to reduce, hence Euro 4 petrol being accepted, but diesels didn't reach the same reduced level until Euro 6, hence the chosen levels, but disparity in the age of...

I sometimes wonder whether the best bet for Swanage in terms of through services would be a Waterloo - Swanage - Waterloo return each Saturday through school summer holidays, in the manner of a 'Merry-maker' charter with the 33 and TC, but with a 'stay a week' ticketing option. In this way, with...

Looking at the TfL open data shows that there are 1,975,000 annual Piccadilly line journeys to / from Piccadilly line stations south of Rayners Lane to / from the remaining stations between Eastcote and Uxbridge. Removal of through trains would mean all of these journeys would include an...

Doh! I have now replaced Piccadilly with District in that sentence... :-) Yes - that was what the study found.

OK to address @Central 's specific point, no this is not correct, there is no plan for the District (I typed Piccadilly here originally - doh!) line to take over services to Rayners Lane and Uxbridge. If memory serves, there was a comprehensive study of all the options to change services...

It is however the plan for the Piccadilly line to take the Ealing Broadway branch in addition to the continuing to serve Uxbridge, Rayners Lane (with the roughly the same peak frequency as now) and Heathrow (an increased frequency) once the signalling is upgraded. In consequence, it is also...

The first statement is general not specific (hence no mention of the Piccadilly line and no suggestion that this enabled an increase in frequency on the Piccadilly without extra trains). However, if one were to use the line as an example, I would have thought it obvious that you would need more...

Service Planning is not about simply fulfilling needs though, the objective is to maximise passenger benefit within available resources (although I suspect anyone living in Ickenham and commuting to Hammersmith would consider their journey to be a need). Piccadilly services to Uxbridge exist...

Yes, this is also true, but the ability to fund the additional trains and additional facilities might also be a limiting factor. The trade off is between additional District line services to Richmond and Wimbledon (the present and proposed additional District line Ealing Broadway services being...

A shorter branch requires fewer trains to serve than a longer one for any given frequency, thus a higher core service can be offered for a smaller overall fleet size (and thus capital cost of fleet / maintenance facilities) and a lower operating cost (fewer Train Operators, less maintenance and...