I'm sure all the rules were followed even if the route was never built.

similarly to recent events, this railway is an endless cycle

Round Cake anyone ?

@@highpath4776 I couldn't possibly comment until I've read Sue Grays report

He did not realise that a gathering with drinks was a party either.

‘Whiff-Waff!’

@@AtheistOrphan You might think that. Jago couldn't possibly comment.

We must think ourselves lucky that a billion quids worth of “ commissioning consultants “ weren’t engaged. Garden Bridge anyone?

Cue incomprehensible etonian blathering punctuated by some buzzwords and intense gesturing with this thumb.

Good thought, well said.

I agree, except that Jago said FOUR days!

Time that you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

And what wallpaper it is. I can only assume she got it after Poundland rejected it as being far too tacky to ever sell.

We’re already regretting not doing the Boris Island airport. Was a great (if not particularly original) idea

And about as serious as Boris having 'lockdown' parties. Oh, that's something he did manage to make happen!

@@JudgeHill It looked to be a simple solution to a complex problem but apart from the location being three times foggier than Heathrow there were just too many other downsides to it.

@@JudgeHill Not for those of us living near the site, especially when there was already an international airport in Kent left to rot. Most galling was that Boorish was mayor of London, not Mayor of Medway Council or Leader of the KCC, so had zero authority here.

If only the guy who "came up wit it" (he didn't) wasn't so keen on reducing funding to such entities so such things could actually become a reality.

Let's not forget, TfL are part of our corrupt government, they can do what ever they want if it came to it. They got access to a endless pit of money if they really needed it. But this narrative where TfL got no money is to squeeze the BS CC, ULEZ charge, high travel costs and any other tax they introduce out of the everyday working person.

@@bf2404 TFL are only temporarily skint due to losses of revenue due to covid but if the national government doesn't step in to protect them they will have no choice to either increase prices or cut services to service the financial black hole caused by the pandemic. Still they probably won't, no Tory party donors at TFL.

@@bf2404 Back when Mr. Johnson was Mayor of London, TfL was generating a surplus, so he reasoned it could do without government subsidy. During the pandemic, TfL had to keep many services running for the benefit of Key Workers, but as hardly anyone else (commuters or tourists) were using their services, revenue collapsed while overheads didn't depreciate anywhere near as much. Central government aren't keen to bail them out, instead suggesting fare or tax rises.

Wow Dollis Hill here!! Deacon Road ex- local. Haven't been there in over 13 years.

Check the Norwegian similar project.

Better hurry and think about alternative transport; they'll have knocked it all down before rail reaches it.

Lord knows, the place needs something/anything to lift the place up a bit...

I lived in that God forsaken hell hole for 8 years of my childhood, moving away was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Don't worry, he once said that he had no ambition to be PM.

That and the suspiciously large number of times Barking was mentioned.

The 1974 London Rail Study had Orbirail - which eventually became Overground.

Whilst I understand your point i think Harrow and Finchley were bad examples lol cause they're both connected on the metropolitan line. Otherwise you would have to be a bit more specific since there are as many Harrows as there are Finchleys lol. Sorry for being pedantic xD

Manchester has the same problem with the tram system. It's great getting to and from Manchester itself, but anywhere along the edge of it? Nope, you need to go into the city first to then go out again. It really would benefit from connecting lines. Much of the route is still there from when the lines were closed in the 60's though a lot has since been redeveloped. There are plans afoot to improve such things, but it'll take a long time and a lot of money before it becomes reality I fear. Even though the political will is there in the form of Mayor Andy Burnham.

@@MrBmista Finchley Road is on the Metropolitan but that isn't in Finchley, Harrow is massive so it depends where you start from but the most direct route between the two really is about an hour's bus journey

@@neofujivideo agreed from areas like South Harrow to North Finchley is quite long by public transport 😂

That particular personage doesn’t seem to take advice.

Good idea. It reminds me of the fact that I think there should be a railway or MagLev going along the M40 from London to Birmingham instead of the current HS2 route because it would be be much easier to build.

There was a freight orbital planned in the 1950s of which only the Bletchley flyover was the only part built. It was scrapped before any other work was even started. The flyover stood virtually unused until this century after over 50 years of under utilization, it's now part if the new Varsity Line.

@@neiloflongbeck5705 The flyover has had to be completely rebuilt anyway!

@@PlanetoftheDeaf reinforced concrete structures don't last forever...

@@neiloflongbeck5705 racist...

All I got was a envisagement of ringway 1 for trains.

I experienced those feelings too living next to a railway, the only time the earth ever moved for me.

I live very close to the same line, on the Church End estate. For years they carried nuclear waste through there every morning! Although this practice has stopped (so they say) I still feel those rumbles in the morning, gives me chills!

@@darganx I was going to mention the nuclear waste but was sure if I was correct

My Mum and my Auntie used to take my to Gladstone Park to watch the trains when I was still in my pram; perhaps that's where I got my interest in railways!

Have you tried buying track from Triang? The mean time to failure wouldn’t be impressive either.

Alas Rovex moved out of Mitcham, and the Dolls Pram section was only connected to the lost Merton Abbey Branch.

@@highpath4776 Now, now, be fair, gentlemen, please. Triang - and I emphasise Triang, as opposed to their present day successors, - worked incredibly reliably, and still do! Indeed, their tilting high-speed train worked considerably better than the real thing could!

It’s almost like someone is benefiting greatly by investigating these mega-projects that are laughably unfeasible so they can pocket public money without actually having to show anything at the end

to get from Barking Riverside to Abbey Wood would indeed require an extravagant bridge, because anything less would stop cruise ships from coming to Tower Bridge and mooring at HMS Belfast.

Yes Will, this is TfL's well advanced West London Orbital scheme, currently on hold due to funding issues. The southwestern terminus will be Hounslow, not Gunnersbury. If KZfaq allowed attachments I'd show you official maps. There's a useful Wikipedia entry.

@@jackmartinleith thank you one lives and learns

At various places along the A75 it's still possible to make out the remains of the Port Road - the secondary main line from Dumfries to Stranraer closed by Beeching. Of course, the promised improvements to the A75 were never carried out, and so the unhappy motorist has plenty of time to think about the idiocies of UK transport policy while stuck behind a tractor or dodging enormous artics. The A76 runs from Dumfries to Kilmarnock; but Beeching didn't get his evil way with the old and very scenic Glasgow and South Western line which still carries passengers and freight.

The road to stranraer is much better than it used to be and the "port road" was mostly single track. Whilst it would be a good idea to have a rail connection, the old line was very far from being adequate and the traffic of the day was very sparse indeed.

It's not wasted money when you consider he's paying those fees to his friends in consultancy firms. From his perspective it's money well spent. It's also crazy when you think what the NI Bridge would cost, write it off for that reason, then see that we basically just threw about that much away on the Track And Trace debacle. Makes me so angry.

At least the Irish Sea never gets gales, so the prospect won’t ever arise of high-siders getting blown overboard half way across having set out in calm sunshine.

Absolutely correct.

It’s a mystery he wasn’t found out decades ago. It must be something to do with the friends he cultivates, or those that cultivate him. Good cultivation needs a lot of manure.

A station at Tufnell Park would be good anyway - at present the only transfer point between the Overground and the Northern Line (north of central London) is Camden Town/Camden Road - a lengthy walk, or (on the Hampstead branch) Hampstead/Hampstead Heath (ditto)

The major problem we have in London, is that demand has risen to the point that a very frequent service is run on most lines in and out of London. In theory, you can divert trains from one line to another, to get out of a jam. In reality, if the trains get to close together, they start catching each other up and start hitting red signals. Then other trains hit the end of the queue and you kind of get a wave of red signals that travels back down the line that has all the trains sitting around for the first train to get out of the way. A few years back, there was a fatality in South London and pretty much all of South London locked up, because there were so many shared paths and they could not route trains around the area where traction power had to be shut down. The best solution is actually to separate the services, so that a serious problem on one line does not effect the rest of the network. Where that is not possible, you need to plan for failure modes that do not cripple the system. Jago spoke of the Circle Line having delays that would go on for hours. That would cause conflicts with the times that District Line trains, Metropolitan Line Trains and Hammersmith and City Line trains were scheduled to go onto parts of the Circle Line. Breaking the Circle Line (and sending it to Hammersmith) allows for the Circle Line trains to be temporarily suspended at Hammersmith (for just a few minutes) so that they can wait for the next slot in the Circle Line timetable. (So when conflict starts to happen, the controllers can fix it. They can also suspend the Circle Line if there is a problem the trains can't get around.) One of our most effective railway lines in London, is the Victoria Line. It has no connections to anything else and they can run trains less than two minutes apart. If we ever visit the "Outer London Loop" idea, we would be better off finding existing lines that can be totally transferred over to the new line and building lots of new track. We need something, like Crossrail, that can create a lot of new passenger capacity, rather than something that leeches away existing capacity.

West Ealing to Greenford should certainly be electrified and taken over by TfL as part of the Overground.

@@johnm2012 Indeed. But I don’t think it would not happen. If only London Overground could of kept the Class 172/0s which would of been useful for the West Ealing-Greenford shuttle. Instead they were cascaded to West Midlands Railway to operate on various services including Leamington Spa-Nuneaton via Coventry.

@@johnm2012 There have been a few stories about GWR’s plan to use battery powered stock between W Ealing and Greenford. Worth looking up elsewhere.

@@johnkeepin7527 I'll look into that, thanks. One promise that was made that doesn't seem to have been kept was an increase in service frequency "in exchange" for cutting back the service from Paddington to West Ealing due to capacity problems caused by the Elizabeth line.

Sounds good to have battery powered trains running on the Greenford branch line. Not a bad idea at all.

I think the link between Norwood Jct and the Birkbeck line has been built over. A real use for it (pre the trams) would have been a decent through-route between Bromley and Croydon, probably competitive with car (20 minutes on a good day). As things are today, Train+Tram - 35 minutes, Bus 40 minutes. Shame Sadiq Khan has set his mind against express bus, which could probably compete reasonably with the car (and give a useful link with West Wickham on the way).

It was used for coal trains from Kent mines up to a spur at Waddon marsh for the power stations,up until the early 1970s.

@@andysheen6594 Thank you for that information. I don't remember seeing coal trains there.

Yes! One key difference is that the three Grand Paris lines will be a metro system in dedicated tunnels mostly (some viaducts in the south), with automated trains every couple of minutes like lines 1 & 14. Not trundling old overground trains trying to sneak in between other mainline traffic on shared lines!

The complications of operating a circular route are magnified considerably when it shares its track with other routes. I think multiple partial routes with high frequency and good interchanges are the way to go.

Plus it could be yet, another circular loop to add to all the other existing loop lines that seem to inhabit south of the Thames

Yes, it does look tempting. I've thought that myself and have walked it. The basic question with any scheme like that is, would people actually want to travel that way and use it. The answer, unfortunately, is probably not. Whereas the Overground loop has met a real need, and some parts of the R25 might do the same.

More prosaically; North London's overhead or South London's third rail power?

@@calmeilles Overhead on unelectrified bits or new build, existing power systems elsewhere.

@@ttrjw Southern Region have those Dual Voltage Sets - and dont they have some Diesel locos that also take 3rd rail power ? ( otherwise it would have been thumpers all round)

@@calmeillesWhy not both third rail DC and overhead AC, like North London Line it would partially run on did at the time (and stil does for a small remaining section past Acton Central)?

@@wolf2965 Could use bi-mode EMU's as @highpath4776 says above, Thameslink does. But you wouldn't provide both forms of traction power, just have change over point. Re-suing existing tracs that might be most efficient. But if building new definitely stick with one or the other, prevents a whole load of headaches.

The old 725/726 Green Line Coach.

@@highpath4776 there are plenty of options, including trams, busses and trains but it's so slow across by comparison with in and out.

@herbivore I don't know what you mean. A few days ago I had to travel from Bromley to Carshalton. To get the best time I merely had to change at Beckenham Junction, West Norwood and Balham. In fairness it worked.

Years ago I lived in Brockley and I had to go to Streatham on a course. The train ran from Brockley to Crystal Palace, so it was going in the right direction but in those days there was no service from Crystal Palace to Streatham. I had to go in the wrong direction first to London Bridge, to come back out again. I’ve found that I still often have to do that when I’m trying to get somewhere from where I live now in Greenwich. People in some parts of the country mistakenly believe that public transport in London is much better than where they live, but it’s still pretty crap in a lot of areas.

@@alanwilton6806 take the bus ?

Would the line to the airport have been in tunnel, on a garden bridge, or floating on pontoons?