ChiefPlanner
Established Member
Why do you believe TfL might be interested in Aylesbury? London Underground have been adamant for decades that they have no intention ever of going back to Aylesbury. TfL's territorial ambitions are exclusively for routes which generate lots of cash, so they greedily take over services to Chingford and Reading. Pre-Covid off-peak traffic to/from Aylesbury was so minimal that Chiltern found two coach toy trains were sufficient.
Quite - 4 TPH peak and 2 TPH class 341 under the guise of Crossrail 1 was way too much "service" north of Amersham (8 cars planned) , as was 8 cars all day to Chesham !
(Oh - hang on ....)
Seriously - the original XR plan was 12 Reading line and 12 "Met" (peak) , - but it became obvious that the latter was a bit overserved in planning terms , so it was reduced to 10 tph. Not that XR wold have sparked off a huge building boom in the Green Belt / AONB etc .....north of Amersham in any case.
Always thought that had XR1 come off , then pushing the Met through to Watford Junction would have given the latter route a role (been stripped bare of traffic otherwise) - and some planning was done on that basis. We even ran class 33 hauled inspection trains to both Chesham and Watford Met to explain the options to stakeholders etc. Still think the Watford extension would make a lot of sense - well pre Covid it would have,