Express Morden line

[mowat]

Here's an idea to simplefy the Northern ;D, build an express line from Kennington to Morden whith stops at Clapham Common and Tooting Broadway. This would even out the line and simplefy operation whith two branches to the north, two through the City, and two to the south.

[mrjrt]

Well, potentially they may end up building an extension south east from Kennington, providing the balancing you describe, whilst also serving new areas, rather than simply providing better service to areas already served by the tube.

[amershamsi]

this was once the plan, with south wimbledon, rather than Morden being the end of expressness, where one set of lines (guessing express) would go to Raynes Park and beyond, where as the Morden bit would be extended to Sutton. Note the curve south towards Morden.

I'm with mrjrt here, serving new areas would be better.

Simon

[Deleted]

I see what you mean about the 'out and back' curve between Sth Wimbledon and Morden - in fact the straightest route would be just to pass below the Morden Road which when built, with a slight re - alignment of Sth Wim platforms would have been done with not much of a curve. Also the Sutton idea makes sense too, as the Southern Railway's own (later built) Sutton line cuts off the Northern south of Morden depot. A tactical move maybe?

[ikar]

The all newish extensions in South London should take over Railtrack lines, otherwise everything would be expensive, and if they build new lines, the NR trains (Thameslink, Souther, SWT, SET) would got less people on it, which also isn't profitable.

[Deleted]

the plan was to extend to Sutton, as amershamsi says, but being as that the Morden extension was being constructed at the same time the Souther Railway was considering expansion, the SR got in a flap over 'invasion of its territory' and the whole idea went cold. There was also a plan put before parliament at the same time as the Morden extensions to have a line from Oval to Streatham, but nothing more became of this - the powers for cunstruction to commence were allowed to lapse.

[Deleted]

mrjrt said:

Well, potentially they may end up building an extension south east from Kennington, providing the balancing you describe, whilst also serving new areas, rather than simply providing better service to areas already served by the tube.

Serving new areas is all well and good, but the Northern Line during the morning peak is busy north of Tooting Broadway, and very busy between Clapham South and Stockwell. The proposed capacity increase of 5tph with new signalling isn't going to massively ease the situation. Thus I think creating an express tube from Kennington to at least Balham would be of great benefit to existing Northern Line users. Of course, the line could then diverge on a new route south of Balham to serve a presently unserved area if the cost could be justified.

[mrjrt]

amershamsi said:

this was once the plan, with south wimbledon, rather than Morden being the end of expressness, where one set of lines (guessing express) would go to Raynes Park and beyond, where as the Morden bit would be extended to Sutton. Note the curve south towards Morden.

I'm with mrjrt here, serving new areas would be better.

Simon

Reminds me of the original intent of the Watford & Edgware railway (and thus, later the Aldenham extension of the Northern line) where they wanted to go out as far as Watford High street and then take over the line to Rickmansworth and then potentially extend the line on from there!

Those old planners did used to have some real vision and ambition, didn't they I guess the fact the Met made it out that far was simply down to the fact it came first and thus had more time to expand than the later tubes.

[thc]

mrjrt said:

Reminds me of the original intent of the Watford & Edgware railway (and thus, later the Aldenham extension of the Northern line) where they wanted to go out as far as Watford High street and then take over the line to Rickmansworth and then potentially extend the line on from there!

Have you a source for this? I've never come across any such W&ER ambition in the printed literature and would be extremely interested to find out more...

THC

[Deleted]

mrjrt said:

I guess the fact the Met made it out that far was simply down to the fact it came first and thus had more time to expand than the later tubes.

The Met was run by a megalomaniac who wanted to use it as part of a through route from Manchester to Paris via London and a Channel Tunnel. He got as far as building the pointless Great Central Railway (using the Met tracks to approach Marylebone) but the Army stopped him from building the Tunnel. Then he died before he could totally bankrupt the railways he was associated with.

[Phil]

sydneynick said:

The Met was run by a megalomaniac who wanted to use it as part of a through route from Manchester to Paris via London and a Channel Tunnel. He got as far as building the pointless Great Central Railway

One man's megalomaniac is another man's visionary.

Sir Edward Watkin did a lot (not just railways) for the folks up north. He was a true entrepreneur and as such was bound to ruffle a few feathers. They all do, including Brunel with his atmospheric railway in Devon.

There was nothing basically wrong with the plans for the GCR (except cash), and it only became pointless once nationalisation came and BR decided to downgrade it. Precisely what was done a generation later with the Waterloo-Exeter mainline.


I suspect that without Sir Edward we would not have the Met today, because when he became involved it was on the point of going bust.

[Deleted]

Not meaning to be rude to you, Phil, but general opinion in several books is that the Great Central never served any very useful purpose. Let's face it, Marylebone was never exactly busy.

And on the subject of Watkin, I seem to recall reading that one of his obituaries said that it was doubtful whether any of the railways he had served had actually benefitted from the association.

And when he left the Met, it was STILL on the point of going bust, which seems to be the natural situation of underground railways in London.



[Now THAT should get the possums stirred.....]

[Phil]

sydneynick said:

Not meaning to be rude to you, Phil, but general opinion in several books is that the Great Central never served any very useful purpose.

No offence taken at all - and I am definitely NOT a Watkin supporter: he was (to all accounts) an arrogant bully and impossible to deal with!

However, I have two books which take a more objective view than some of your sources, and one critical visionary aspect of GCR has been left out: the loading gauge. If we had kept GCR (yes, with all its losses) we would not be in the pickle we are now with international ISO containers being too large to be carried on standard wagons....GCR could (and should) have become the major N-S freight route.

[mowat]

Talk about going of topic. Anyway i do think that an express line should be built from Kennington to Morden whith stops at Clapham Common and Tooting Broadway to ease the Morden branch. However i think that the platforms at Morden should be built underground as this would help further extensions.

[Deleted]

The only reason why Marylebone was quiet was because the major population centres it served were already served by more established railways (Nottingham, Leicester, Rugby, and so on). If the GC main line had been kept, it would undoubtedly be THE prime HST route to the Midlands and the North, leaving the WCML, MML and ECML with the paths to handle freight trains.

Nowadays, the only way to restore the GC main line between Calvert and Leicester would be to construct it to HSL standards.

[CSLR]

mowat said:

Anyway i do think that an express line should be built from Kennington to Morden whith stops at Clapham Common and Tooting Broadway.

But surely Balham is the gateway to the South?

[mowat]

cslr said:

mowat said:

Anyway i do think that an express line should be built from Kennington to Morden whith stops at Clapham Common and Tooting Broadway.

But surely Balham is the gateway to the South?

Well have a stop at Balham then, it isn't going to be much of a express line whith three stops is it.

[Deleted]

cslr said:

But surely Balham is the gateway to the South?

Have you seen that booklet as well? For those not aware there is a booklet, priced £2.00 published by CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) entitled: Gateway to the South. It's a pub guide for stations south of Balham.

[orienteer]

"Bal-Ham: Gateway to the South", in an american drawl, was originally a Peter Sellers spoof tourist guide to the Northern line!

[Deleted]

Ah right...that makes sense. There's a reference to a comedy in the introduction to the booklet, that must be it.

[mrjrt]

Have you a source for this? I've never come across any such W&ER ambition in the printed literature and would be extremely interested to find out more...

THC

In the book "Tube beyond Edgware", the entire detailed history of the W&E railway's history is laid out, and suffice to say, it was going to act as a independent branch of the LNER Edgware line with it's separate platforms/station on the site of the current Edgware tube station, so in a way, at least one bit of the W&E got built after all

It was to follow the route to Aldenham, down to Bushey, through to Watford Market (roughly where Tesco is now), then continue on to Watford Junction. A spur was present in the original parliamentary submission diverging to meet the Watford & Rickmansworth railway just east of Watford High street station. The line was shown as a dashed proposed railway on a map illustration, with the dashed line continuing again after Ricky. I stress, this was the initial proposal, thus it is most likely to be the most encompassing of the lot, being as it was, pre-whittling down.

However, without even hearing the LNWR's obvious objections the line from Watford market to Watford junction was removed from the proposal, leaving only the route to Watford High Street. This was then castrated back down to Watford Market (later referred to as "Watford Station") before they eventually got their approval.

Before offering to provide scans of a couple of the illustrations I made (before taking the book back to the library), I decided to re-check them, and I don't seem to have the one I saw with the line beyond Ricky. Maybe I am wrong, or maybe it was in the text or another illustration, I can't honestly remember. I suspect it was the double page map on the first few pages that I couldn't scan due to size that had it though.

Thus, the only relevant scan I have is of the Watford Market junction layout, just PM me if you want a copy.

[thc]

Thanks very much for your detailed reply. I too own a copy of Tony Beard's book and thought - only after my initial post in this thread - to go and re-read what he had to say about the W&ER. Truth told it was the bit in your post about extending to Rickmansworth that grabbed my eye, which indeed would have been possible had the original 1906 W&ER plans, with the triangular junction at Watford, come to fruition. Anyway, that'll teach me to read my books properly before making enquiries of other posters!

As an aside, it was also interesting to re-read in that same book the overtures made to the GNR by the town of High Wycombe for an extension of the Edgware branch. Morden-High Wycombe via Bank and Edgware - now that would definitely need an express tube to Morden. How's that for bringing this diversion back round to the thread topic!

THC