Left handed platforms

[Chris M]

I suspect Piccadilly Circus (Bakerloo) is left handed because of the proximity to the crossover immediately north of the station.

Forum Staff Edit
The forum staff decided that it was better to move the Bakerloo related parts of this thread from the Central Line board thread on left handed stations

[abe]

Most Bakerloo stations are left handed - the original line was designed with the platforms on the 'outside', which made the cross-platform interchange with the Victoria line at Oxford Circus easy to implement. This kept the 'footprint' of the line narrower in general, as the running tunnels were always close together, unlike the Piccadilly or Hampstead where the focus seemed to be on minimizing the number of passageways and staircases by having the platforms on the 'inside'. Work on the Bakerloo started a couple of years before Yerkes acquired the line, and quite a bit of tunnelling had been completed. It would not have been worthwhile changing the location of the platforms and access passageways, and so the UERL kept it as planned. The crossover at Piccadilly Circus does not (I think) have anything to do with the platform layout; the only change since opening has been the extension of the NB platform northwards towards the crossover.

[Deleted]

With reference to the Bakerloo, it is a line very much influenced by the wish not to make payments to any owner of a building that the line burrowed under. This is straightforwardly the case on the Pic-Oxo stretch but also a little more subtly so on the Oxo-Regents Park section where the curvature of the line is to avoid going under the Beeb. One major operational effect of having the tracks running close together though is that because there is no provision for sidings, a la Archway or Tooting Broadway, the service really does go up the wall when there is an incident and a suspension is in place! 'Limit of Shunts' are not quite as effective as having a siding!!!

[Deleted]

Feb 22, 2013 16:19:49 GMT binsey said:

The Oxo-Regents Park section where the curvature of the line is to avoid going under the Beeb.

Amazing how the Bakerloo Line builders anticipated developments 30 years in the future while Marconi was conducting his early experiments ...

[Deleted]

.....Ha ha......Alright, the buildings that were there BEFORE the Beeb was built on the site!

[stevo]

The Victoria Line runs under Broadcasting House. The land on which Broadcasting House now stands was originally owned by Lord Waring. There were other issues - The ground itself was blue clay on chalk, but the clay was fairly well water-logged throughout the area. In addition, there was a major London sewer running across the site. Built around 1830, this brick-lined sewer could not possibly have stood the weight of the intended building, and the difficult process of encasing the sewer in reinforced concrete had to be completed before the building could be started.