mill hill east

[Tubeboy]

I recently read that the mill hill east service is going to be a shuttle from finchley central from this autumn. this will apply off peak during the week only. Also the barnet branch is going to get less trains going to it so that the service recovers more quickly in the event of disruption. What do members think? ;D

[Phil]

Barnet branch: fewer trains equals better service?? Sounds like managementspeak to me. (As in 'fares are being revised {increased} for the benefit of our customers').

[Deleted]

tubeboy said:

I recently read that the mill hill east service is going to be a shuttle from finchley central

Oh no...they'll be worse than Olympias! Imagine four hours of that (I know I'm not a driver but I can still picture the scene).

[Deleted]

sounds just as bad as doin' the W&C all day.... IIRC, its a 12 minute frequency at the mo, 5 an hour, not bad service, you've also got the 240 bus to Milly Hilly Broadway.

[robots]

Running fewer trains to provide a more reliable

service isn 't necessarily management speak. The

service on the Picc has improved greatly since

trains were taken out of the timetable. Every line

has a finite capacity. You need breathing space to

recover from any delays.

[Deleted]

I can see the point of reducing the Mill Hill East line to a shuttle, and it would help simplify operations, and thus improve the reliability of the branch. However I can't yet see the reasoning behind reducing the High Barnet service (unless someone can enlighten us).

The reduction of the Piccadilly Line service to 24tph was due to lack of reversing capacity at the Cockfosters end of the line. The High Barnet branch only runs 20tph during the peaks. I would be quite worried if LU can't manage to reverse a train every 3 minutes at High Barnet, especially if they can reverse one every 2 minutes at the other end of the line! I could see reasoning behind turning some trains short of High Barnet though, as is done on the Jubilee at Wembley and Willesden - moving air can be a waste of resources! If the reasoning behind this move is lack of recovery time, then how about implementing stepping back at High Barnet?

[Tubeboy]

The plan is to reduce the service from 16tph to 12tph off peak. I suppose it would be a good idea if the four trains that are withdrawn are run to finchley central. As for mill hill, maybe a good idea.Off peak, not many people stay on the train beyond finchley central. Not when i travel anyway.

[Deleted]

12 tph - a train every 5 minutes - seems pretty good for the off peak - same as ECT to WIM or Barking to UPM on the District, better than the Richmond and Ealing branches get.

[Deleted]

tubeboy said:

I recently read that the mill hill east service is going to be a shuttle from finchley central from this autumn. this will apply off peak during the week only. Also the barnet branch is going to get less trains going to it so that the service recovers more quickly in the event of disruption. What do members think? ;D

Yep, that MHE shuttle thing is true - to be implemented in the new WTT No: 50, which is from October onwards. I believe the frequency of the shuttle is 13.5 minutes, and is double manned (one operator at each end of the train - kind of like assisting reversing operators). The Northern Line management were very keen on this shuttle, and I believe wanted to run a shuttle throughout most of the day but there were concerns by how many complaints this would generate.

I can understand the reliability benefits of it. Late running through Central London, adversely affects MHE trains more coz of the tight layover - and they can't really be turned short at Finchley Central, coz you only have a MHE train every 15 minutes approx, which is not very often - so they need to run.

But I do feel wary about this path of axeing these direct trains - its like the common solution to improve reliability, but I feel having direct trains are important.

[Deleted]

stephenk said:

The reduction of the Piccadilly Line service to 24tph was due to lack of reversing capacity at the Cockfosters end of the line. The High Barnet branch only runs 20tph during the peaks. I would be quite worried if LU can't manage to reverse a train every 3 minutes at High Barnet, especially if they can reverse one every 2 minutes at the other end of the line! I could see reasoning behind turning some trains short of High Barnet though, as is done on the Jubilee at Wembley and Willesden - moving air can be a waste of resources! If the reasoning behind this move is lack of recovery time, then how about implementing stepping back at High Barnet?

I didn't know about the reduction of the service upto High Barnet - I'll try and find out from the office the rationale behind it.

An interesting point is made about the Picc line - the line are very happy with their 21 tph off peak standard, and anecdotally from speaking to drivers, they generally like it as well - certainly much better than 24 tph during the off peaks! Which I constantly hear never worked. I actually hear some drivers call for the reduction to 18 tph as well, as they believe they are often blocked up behind the Arnos Grove - Northfields 3 tph boosters.

And if the infraco declare extra trains available for the Picc line, you won't find the line wanting to see them used to increase the off peak service, because its been shown to be unreliable. They'll probably be hot spares.

And as for stepping back on the Northern Line, its been talked about introducing stepping back at Edgware in the future.

[Deleted]

Just to add - there are a series of weekend shutdowns on the Northern Line later on this year, between Camden Town and East Finchley - and during these shutdowns, a MHE - FC shuttle will be run.

[Tubeboy]

Thats right matey. The next closure will be friday 14th april to 17th april. This will be two sections, golders to edgware and charing cross-morden. No doubt the banks will reverse in the siding at kennington. The charing x branch is shut at weekends from 29/04/06 for several weekends. In july it is camden to east finchley and in the autumn finchley central- high barnet.

[Deleted]

WTT 50 ay? How long was WTT 47 in use for? It must have been a fair while.

[Deleted]

So I take it that the High Barnet reduction will be off-peak only, with the peak service remaining the same?

I know that the Piccadilly reduction worked very well. But I hope things don't follow the NYC subway example, where the tph was reduced to allow for more operating margin and run things more on time. But the reduction in tph made the platforms busier, which increased the station dwell times, putting things back to square one again (minus a few tph and a few 1000 passengers/hour capacity!).

[Deleted]

alexh said:

WTT 50 ay? How long was WTT 47 in use for? It must have been a fair while.

I'd guess for quite a while - WTT 47 was compiled when there was no need detrainment stands - so that must have been ages ago! I think there was Tooting Broadway reversers in the MF rush hour in there?

Plenty of Northern Line drivers and various staff at Cobourg Street (signal operators, line controllers etc), have cited WTT 47 to be a very good timetable for the Northern Line, and would love to see that return. WTT 48 I'm often told was very poor and unmanageable, and I hear plenty of negative reaction to the current one WTT 49 (while an improvement on WTT 48) - the main issue was that there were too many trains being run, and little scope for recovery from disruption.

So I'd imagine WTT 50 is meant to address those concerns to an extent.

But I don't pretend that is the consensus view from the staff on the Northern Line.

[Deleted]

tubeboy said:

Thats right matey. The next closure will be friday 14th april to 17th april. This will be two sections, golders to edgware and charing cross-morden. No doubt the banks will reverse in the siding at kennington. The charing x branch is shut at weekends from 29/04/06 for several weekends. In july it is camden to east finchley and in the autumn finchley central- high barnet.

That work during Easter (14th - 17th April), is only a shutdown between Golders Green and Edgware. At Kennington however, the points that link the Charing Cross branch to Morden, will be decommissioned (secured) during this bank holiday weekend for engineering work - which will take place in non traffic hours.

So there will still be services running, but all trains running via Charing Cross branch will reverse via Kennington loop, and all Bank branch trains will run to/from Morden. There won't be any through trains between the Charing Cross branch and Morden, and there won't be any Bank branch trains reversing via Kennington siding.

[Deleted]

soultrain said:

alexh said:

WTT 50 ay? How long was WTT 47 in use for? It must have been a fair while.

I'd guess for quite a while - WTT 47 was compiled when there was no need detrainment stands - so that must have been ages ago! I think there was Tooting Broadway reversers in the MF rush hour in there?

There are indeed Tooting reversers in WTT 47. Also a few Colindale as well. I was chatting to someone else about the Northern and he seemed to think WTT 47 was in use for around five years - and that is a fair while!

[Deleted]

tubeboy said:

The plan is to reduce the service from 16tph to 12tph off peak. I suppose it would be a good idea if the four trains that are withdrawn are run to finchley central. As for mill hill, maybe a good idea.Off peak, not many people stay on the train beyond finchley central. Not when i travel anyway.

Its actually the other way round!

At present, the off peak is 16 tph up to Finchley Central, then 12 tph to High Barnet, with the remaining 4 tph serving Mill Hill East every 15 minutes.

The new WTT introducing the MHE shuttle, means that those original 4 direct tph to MHE, will instead run to High Barnet - so the service to High Barnet increases from 12 tph to 16 tph.

[Deleted]

Sorry, but a potentially completely stupid question here. I assume that the Mill Hill East shuttle will use a usual 6-car 95TS? (...And thus be mainly transporting air throughout the day). Or is there a plan to create a shorter unit(s) for this shuttle.

[Phil]

They could always revive the 4-car 38ts from the museum. After all it would not have to do many miles...


Runs away and hides

[Deleted]

stephenk said:

Sorry, but a potentially completely stupid question here. I assume that the Mill Hill East shuttle will use a usual 6-car 95TS? (...And thus be mainly transporting air throughout the day). Or is there a plan to create a shorter unit(s) for this shuttle.

No I don't think it's a potentially stupid question, to save wear and tear on rolling stock seems a good idea to me, and for many years, LU. Look at the Aldwych shuttle (ok I know platforms may have had something to do with it), the South Acton shuttle and the Epping - Ongar three car units. Also a few years ago the same Cravens sets used on Woodford - Hainault. They didn't need full length trains, so there we are

[towerman]

In the service reductions on the mid 80's the MHE service was a MHE-F/Cent shuttle after the evening peak,same for Rayners-Acton Town on the Picc.

[mowat]

rbruce1314 said:

They could always revive the 4-car 38ts from the museum. After all it would not have to do many miles...


Runs away and hides

I think a better idea would be for LUL/LTM to buy all six class 483 units from the Island Line (or who ever the hell owns the trains on NR these days) when they are whithdrawn around next two years and use them on the Mill Hill East branch. The LT museum could have one as well if they wanted it (and pinch the 38ts trailer from CHTL and make a 7 car 38ts train)

[Phil]

mowat said:

rbruce1314 said:

They could always revive the 4-car 38ts from the museum. After all it would not have to do many miles...


Runs away and hides

I think a better idea would be for LUL/LTM to buy all six class 483 units from the Island Line (or who ever the hell owns the trains on NR these days) when they are whithdrawn around next two years and use them on the Mill Hill East branch. The LT museum could have one as well if they wanted it (and pinch the 38ts trailer from CHTL and make a 7 car 38ts train)

Ah, but your option means they have to be converted back to 4-rail.
And that means somebody has to pay for it..............

[mowat]

Yes but what is better? wering out the LTM's 38ts unit in daly service and then [glow=red,2,300]stuffing and mounting [/glow] it when thay run out of spares, or converting the class 483's back to 4-rail. At least if this happend the 483's would not be srapped when the Island line have finished whith them and I could change my signture...........

[Deleted]

stephenk said:

Sorry, but a potentially completely stupid question here. I assume that the Mill Hill East shuttle will use a usual 6-car 95TS? (...And thus be mainly transporting air throughout the day). Or is there a plan to create a shorter unit(s) for this shuttle.

Much as I'm sure people on this board would love to see a historic train stock do the MHE shuttle, I'm afraid its normal Northern Line 95 Tube stock! - I'm guessing that when the shuttle service finishes, the train is then utilized for the evening peak - and vice versa, when the morning peak finishes, one train is then brought in the peak timetable for the shuttle

[Ben]

Its a pity they never orderd any double ended units in the 95 series; one of them would have been ideal

[Deleted]

soultrain said:

Much as I'm sure people on this board would love to see a historic train stock do the MHE shuttle, I'm afraid its normal Northern Line 95 Tube stock! - I'm guessing that when the shuttle service finishes, the train is then utilized for the evening peak - and vice versa, when the morning peak finishes, one train is then brought in the peak timetable for the shuttle

Yes, I agree with that guess, any alternative would be sheer folly, after a trial period if things don't work out then its back to how it was!

[Deleted]

Another question. Would the shuttle reverse in platform 1 at Finchley Central? If not, the shuttle would have to tip out in platform 3, reverse in the South siding (35 road), and then depart from platform 1 (or 2). This would require a fast tip out, and on-time arrival at the flat junction so as not to delay an ex-High Barnet train through platform 3.

[Tubeboy]

platform 1. that way it would be self contained. shame it couldnt reverse at east finchley, be easier for customers,no walk over footbridge at fin cen. however it would restrict access quite a bit into highgate depot.