Shock News For London
fbb made a right mess of this short item on yesterday's blog. Some corrections were made, but here is the section again.
Transport for London is renumbering a bus route FROM YESTERDAY. The 607, which runs limited stop between White City and Uxbridge ...
... gets a new identity!
On Saturdays, for example,l it runs every ten minutes.
What lies behind this momentous news? The new number may give a clue.
SL8
More below!.
Shock News For London (Continued)
When fbb reviewed TfL's proposals for the not very super Superloop, a stitching together of various revised services to surround London with an incomplete circle of limited stop bus routes, he expressed a fear that the route numbering would cause great confusion.
As an example, the pre-Superloop 140 was cut back to Hayes and Harlington ...
... and an x140 (mall "x"!) now runs limited stop to Heathrow. So along the same roads you have a 140 calling at all stops and an x140 (small "x") ...
... missing out about half the stops; surely a recipe for unwary passengers' mistakes. fbb expressed the view that Superloop services should have a totally separate route number series to avoid this possible confusion which would have been repeated all the way round.
And in an unusual outbreak of common sense, this is what TfL is now proposing.
But the common sense is limited. SL4, SL6 and SL8 are not part of the "loop" - they are two existing limited stop services (607/SL8 and X68/SL6) plus a new and as yet not running SL4.
Of these, SL8 (DARK BLUE) and SL6 (PINK dashed) do impinge on the he loop, but SL4 (BLACK) goes nowhere near it. Would it not have been better to maintain clear brand awareness and number the segments of the real Loop SL1 to SL7 consecutively from "the gap": and find something else to designate the palpably non-loop odd three?
Now that would have been common sense.
It's probably too late now as it would take three years of planning plus a year of consultation to change the SL8 into something more sensible.
But at least someone has posted a picture of a Superloop SL8 on line.
The above was posted before yesterday's route number change. but here a bus is showing 607.
So just a passing reminder ...
It Isn't Really Part
Of The SUPERLOOP
... but it is really daft branding.
Puzzle Picture
The photographer is sitting in the front seat of a Dockland not-so-Light Railway train passing St Annes, Limehouse. The tower ...
... is a Nicholas Hawksmoor jobbie. Nick's bust (below) was sculptured just after he had eaten three lemons!
Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661 to 1736) was an English architect. He was a leading figure of the English Baroque style of architecture in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Hawksmoor worked alongside the principal architects of the time, Christopher Wren and John Vanbrugh, and contributed to the design of some of the most notable buildings of the period, including St Paul's Cathedral, Wren's City of London churches, Greenwich Hospital, Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard.
Taking Shape - Painting Next
fbb is extending Peterville Tunnel and on top of the earthworks will be the above property. A WW2 not-quite-Nissen hut has been rebuilt, refurbished and re-positioned on a brick built undercroft. The ex-hut contains three bedrooms and a bathroom, The new base includes kitchen dining and lounge facilities and is linked to the bedrooms by an internal staircase (not modelled, you couldn't see it!). The external stairs provide a quick route to and from the sundeck.
The property is available for holiday lets and is popular with the more well-heeled railway volunteers. The common herd use the bunkhouses beyond the carriage sidings.
The new base of the model is bodged together from all sorts of bits in various boxes of clutter and costing very little.
The steps were a staircase from the interior if an old Hornby terraced house kit; the white fence is from Wills (a Peco company) and the cream fence was from a collection of bits given to fbb by a Seaton charity ship as unsaleable!
fbb hates painting as you can so easily spoil everything.
Trams Through The Centre Of Town
The Angers map from 2015 is absolutely superb and might be described as in the Paris style.
The Carto track map shows a change in progress, Line A now runs via Centre de Congres a replacement stop for Carnot.
Clever tram students can guess the rest, but a 2023 map confirms our possible suspicions.
Line A is as on Carto. Line B (BLUE) joins A via Centre de Congres. Line C (GREEN) takes the old Line A route via Ralliement.
Remembering that Streetview is not always up to date, we can take a look round for real. Line A descends from its bridge ...
... and turns right into Allee Francois Mitterand which is tram only.
At the next road junction it all happens. Where tram A used to come straight on towards the camera ...
... there is now a three way junction ...
... where route A is turning left and route B is coming from behind the camera to join it at the St George Universite stop which moved round the cotner from its previous location. (Confused.com? see maps above.) After the Centre de Congres stop ...
Tram A turns right whilst B goes straight ahead.
Just a reminder!
Tram C, which uses Tram B tracks from the west and Tram A tracks to the south uses the old Tram A alignment via Ralliement.
A look at Streetmap ...
... or even the Carto track map ...
... might provide a clue as the why the double frequency of A plus B was removed from Rue De Roe (via Ralliement).
It's single track controlled by extra signals.
At the top of the hill it soon reverts, just before Ralliement station.
fbb doubts if you could physically get two eight minute frequencies in BOTH directions (a tram trundling along the single track every two minutes) through this chicane. Yes, the Monday to Saturday frequency is every eight minutes on each of the three routes, every six minutes in peak.
You also note the third rail; no overhead wires here - and the pedestrians show no fear when stepping on the central conducting strip!
So even in boulevard blessed France, getting trams through an ancient city centre involves huge challenges.
Could you get trams though Bristol, for example?
fbb will speculate in tomorrow's blog.
Relaxation?
5 minutes of Angers tramway with operation on the single track section featured. This is in the recent past when route A ran via Ralliement.Nice!
Next Variety blog : Monday 17th July
The 607 started life as an "express" version of the 207, covering the same route - my son used it to travel to College at Hayes. What you may not know though is that, through the 1990s, there was a proposal to turn it into a "supertram" route. However this rain into a huge amount of local opposition, as the Uxbridge Road isn't wide and there would have had to be some complicated routing through local centres. Eventually the scheme was killed off due to excessive cost, anyway. For a time Bendybuses operated on the route which, being basically straight, would have appeared to be ideal for it. But there was a lot of controversy about their length at bus stops. The 140 was a long-standing route, originally running between Mill Hill and Heathrow (and past my childhood home), but it was often run in two sections and cut back to Harrow many years ago.
ReplyDeleteThe Angers tram film is wonderful.
ReplyDeleteJust a thought - If this was in the UK, the shop owners in Ralliement (the single track section) would have demanded that cars be allowed to park outside their shops. And, as a result, the tramway would never get approval. A victory for the private car !
This is how they do things in Lisbon. Admittedly this is a one-way section - but some of the two-way sections, with interlaced track, are very little wider: https://tinyurl.com/yc22s89w.
ReplyDelete