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Crossrail to Reading Announcement

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7griffinjack

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There are various sources saying that Crossrail is to be extended to Reading with maybe an official announcement to come tomorrow..

BBC London Transport Correspondent is the latest to tweet about it.
 
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motorman

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An announcement this evening on BBC South Today that Crossrail is indeed being extended to Reading.
 

swt_passenger

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It will be interesting to see if a Crossrail announcement is used as a decoy to 'bury bad news' about Northern...

Call me a cynic, but I can well imagine the national media will stick with the obvious local story...
 

455driver

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Well that is a surprise, none of us expected that did we? :lol:

Any sane person knows that Maidenhead was a stupid place to end it anyway, the only sensible thing was for it to end at Reading.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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Any sane person knows that Maidenhead was a stupid place to end it anyway, the only sensible thing was for it to end at Reading.

I suppose that means more stock for Crossrail and less for GW Thames Valley?
I'm not sure high-density metro stock is what the Twyford/Reading(/Henley?) commuters want...
Will it need parliamentary approval to dump the Maidenhead infrastructure?
How far has NR got with designing/building it? All wasted.
 

tbtc

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Oh good news then :)

Perhaps they will run semi fast or fast so that passengers will actually use them from Reading.

In rough terms there are going to be around eight non-stop Reading - Paddington services an hour once the IEPs come along - each taking slightly under half an hour.

Even if Crossrail skips a couple of stops, its never going to compete for the end-to-end journeys like that - no point in worrying about that market for Crossrail.

It will be interesting to see if a Crossrail announcement is used as a decoy to 'bury bad news' about Northern...

Call me a cynic, but I can well imagine the national media will stick with the obvious local story...

Sadly I think you are right - both in terms of the timing and the fact that this fifteen mile extension in the Thames Valley will get a lot more attention from the national press than any Northern announcement.

Still, welcome news - it may be a cynically timed announcement but its a good one
 

7griffinjack

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I suppose that means more stock for Crossrail and less for GW Thames Valley?
I'm not sure high-density metro stock is what the Twyford/Reading(/Henley?) commuters want...
Will it need parliamentary approval to dump the Maidenhead infrastructure?
How far has NR got with designing/building it? All wasted.

I can imagine Maidenhead has been designed in a way to allow future extension as Reading was already safeguarded so I don't think it would be too much of a nuisance. I can imagine Network Rail/Government had Reading planned from the outset.
 

TEW

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I suppose that means more stock for Crossrail and less for GW Thames Valley?
I'm not sure high-density metro stock is what the Twyford/Reading(/Henley?) commuters want...
Will it need parliamentary approval to dump the Maidenhead infrastructure?
How far has NR got with designing/building it? All wasted.

It's not designed for Twyford or Reading commuters. They'll still have the same options as today of fast services into London, it's just the stopping services will extend through London to other destinations. The planned service pattern with Crossrail terminating at Maidenhead made no sense. With Crossrail extended to Reading a similar service pattern to today can be maintained and the stupid idea of a 2tph FGW service from Slough-Reading can be binned.
 

anthony263

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It's not designed for Twyford or Reading commuters. They'll still have the same options as today of fast services into London, it's just the stopping services will extend through London to other destinations. The planned service pattern with Crossrail terminating at Maidenhead made no sense. With Crossrail extended to Reading a similar service pattern to today can be maintained and the stupid idea of a 2tph FGW service from Slough-Reading can be binned.

I bet FGW would be happy getting rid of a Reading - Slough Shuttle since reources can be deployed elsewhere
 

swt_passenger

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I can imagine Maidenhead has been designed in a way to allow future extension as Reading was already safeguarded so I don't think it would be too much of a nuisance. I can imagine Network Rail/Government had Reading planned from the outset.

I expect the Maidenhead turn back will still be used. There's not that much likelihood the potential full service will ALL go to Reading, it would probably be overkill at 4 tph x 10 car, compared to today's capacity.
 

Class 170101

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Has the Reading rebuild been designed with this in mind?

Yes. All the more reasion that terminating sidings at Maidenhead were a waste of money. Crossrail just didn't want to spend money at Reading leaving that to Network Rail / Central Government to fund.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
I expect the Maidenhead turn back will still be used. There's not that much likelihood the potential full service will ALL go to Reading, it would probably be overkill at 4 tph x 10 car, compared to today's capacity.

True but there will be some commuters to Reading, not as many as leaving but some nevertheless for the technology industries around there.
 

YorkshireBear

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Yes. All the more reasion that terminating sidings at Maidenhead were a waste of money. Crossrail just didn't want to spend money at Reading leaving that to Network Rail / Central Government to fund.

The cynic in me thought that. Nice to see them looking after themselves as usual. NR spending money that could have been spent elsewhere on Western.

Good about Reading though. It always seemed logical to send em that far. They then provide the local service along the line.
 

swt_passenger

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Has the Reading rebuild been designed with this in mind?

Not to any major extent, because the majority of the Reading capacity improvement is on the mains, with 5 through platforms where there were previously 2.

On the relief side, the main improvement is that rather than having two London facing short bays there are two central through platforms, between the up and down reliefs, mainly used for terminating trains from either direction. Stick a ten car terminating Crossrail train in each and the 'extra capacity' is full.

I've said before now that even though Reading can clearly now cope with a few 10 car terminating trains per hour using the reliefs to/from the London direction, that is not quite the same as there being loads of Crossrail specific infrastructure, as is sometimes assumed.
 
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TEW

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Yes. All the more reasion that terminating sidings at Maidenhead were a waste of money. Crossrail just didn't want to spend money at Reading leaving that to Network Rail / Central Government to fund.
Terminating at Reading did mean that the Reading rebuild was kept out of the Crossrail budget as well as electrification Maidenhead-Reading. With Reading being rebuilt and the line electrified anyway the costs of extending to Reading are now far, far less.
 

bicbasher

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Great news, it should see the extension of Oyster all the way out to Reading. Obviously early days yet, but I hope it'll be accepted on FGW fasts to Paddington as well.
 

TEW

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Not to any major extent, because the majority of the Reading capacity improvement is on the mains, with 5 through platforms where there were previously 2.

On the relief side, the main improvement is that rather than having two London facing short bays there are two central through platforms, between the up and down reliefs, mainly used for terminating trains from either direction. Stick a ten car terminating Crossrail train in each and the 'extra capacity' is full.

I've said before now that even though Reading can clearly now cope with a few 10 car terminating trains per hour using the reliefs to/from the London direction, that is not quite the same as there being loads of Crossrail specific infrastructure, as is sometimes assumed.
Although extending Crossrail to Reading will eat up the extra capacity of the relief lines, the old Reading layout would have been unable to accommodate Crossrail at all as neither of the east facing bays would have been long enough for Crossrail trains. It's only 1tp2h that terminates from the West at the moment anyway and I believe that that service could potentially use Platform 3 anyway.
 

Nym

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I beleive the reading plans also include sidings to the north west of the station...

However, 4tph could quite nicely work out of a single platform (The London bound slow loop) and the other used for semi fasts to overtake fasts, or terminate from the other direction (as these will be less regular, and run in the same direction as the other platform on the island).
 

RichmondCommu

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Assuming that the Crossrail units will have a mixture of seating with possibly 50% being longitudinal, Reading into Central London on a stopper is quite a distance. If I was a Reading based commuter I would be inclined to take fast train to Paddington and change.
 

route:oxford

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It's not designed for Twyford or Reading commuters. They'll still have the same options as today of fast services into London, it's just the stopping services will extend through London to other destinations. The planned service pattern with Crossrail terminating at Maidenhead made no sense. With Crossrail extended to Reading a similar service pattern to today can be maintained and the stupid idea of a 2tph FGW service from Slough-Reading can be binned.

We don't know the pricing structure yet...

Or if off-peak tickets will be valid (as they tend to be with the turbos) for services leaving Paddington of an evening.
 

YorkshireBear

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Assuming that the Crossrail units will have a mixture of seating with possibly 50% being longitudinal, Reading into Central London on a stopper is quite a distance. If I was a Reading based commuter I would be inclined to take fast train to Paddington and change.

I think that will be what they expect. But a local service needs providing too so extending the Crossrail to Reading makes that all simply to operate.
 

Class 170101

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Assuming that the Crossrail units will have a mixture of seating with possibly 50% being longitudinal, Reading into Central London on a stopper is quite a distance. If I was a Reading based commuter I would be inclined to take fast train to Paddington and change.

Its not meant for that its the intermediate journeys in between and also Reading is a more worthy traffic objective than Maidenhead - well unless you wish to see Thresea May.
 

TEW

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We don't know the pricing structure yet...

Or if off-peak tickets will be valid (as they tend to be with the turbos) for services leaving Paddington of an evening.

I think you'll have to offer a pretty substantially cheaper fare to tempt Reading commuters on to Crossrail. The journey time to Paddington will be around double that via a fast service so even accounting for the time needed to change at Paddington it's going to be much slower, even to destinations served directly by Crossrail.
 

TEW

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Reading has a good local service now from the Slough/Paddington direction but if Crossrail were to terminate at Maidenhead it would get worse. The plan was for 2tph stoppers Slough-Reading and 2tph semi-fast Reading-London. Extending Crossrail to Reading should allow a similar service to today to be maintained giving direct links to all stations along the line.
 

RichmondCommu

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I think you'll have to offer a pretty substantially cheaper fare to tempt Reading commuters on to Crossrail. The journey time to Paddington will be around double that via a fast service so even accounting for the time needed to change at Paddington it's going to be much slower, even to destinations served directly by Crossrail.

Exactly! And that's before we get on to the class 378 style seating! I'm a big fan of the class 378's but I think Reading is a journey too far.
 
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