London Great Central

[BrianW]

Prompted by contributions to a thread about increasing London Marylebone capacity I am offering up this idea for discussion. Please be gentle; it's only a Speculative Idea- a 'Brianstorm' ...

Something like a cross between HS1+2, Thameslink and Castlefield Corridor and Hauptbahnhof and Takt ...? London Great Central (LGC)?

A new station under Hyde Park (in place of car park?) with tunnels under eg Edgware Road, Oxford Street, Vauxhall Bridge Road, Brompton Road, Bayswater Road, with 'Tube-like' but Express (TPE/ TGV ish) services linking eg Cardiff, Bristol and Heathrow (Old Oak?), LGC- Sheffield-Leeds- Newcastle-Edinburgh- Glasgow; Southampton/ Ptsmth- Heathrow- LGC- Birmingham- Liverpool/ Manchester; and Dover (for the Continent)- LGC- Birmingham- Holyhead for Ireland.

What do you think?

 

[JonathanH]

What do you think?

My thoughts are: Why? We have the underground to connect the major London terminals.

No one location in London is so central to justify this kind of investment. Hyde Park certainly isn't.

There is already a concentration of stations along the Euston Road. One station from St Pancras is Farringdon. You can pretty much get everywhere from there.

There are much more worthy places for spending on the railways than a central station in London. Concentrating on links to the South and South West from Old Oak Common after HS2 would be a better spend for example.

 

[EastisECML]

I think the best opportunity to ever have something along the lines of a London GC was 'Euston Cross' but in this fantasy scenario from the east four tracks from the ECML, two from HS1, two from Crossrail 2 and four from the Liverpool street lines run into the station. Along with the Victoria, Northern and circle tube lines which run into platforms alongside the mainline platforms.

And then back out the other side (west), two HS2 tracks, two Crossrail 2 tracks, two MML tracks, two Chiltern tracks, four GWML tracks (which also link onto the SWML at Heathrow) and four WCML tracks along with the tube lines. St Pancras/King's Cross and Euston basically become gigantic entrances to this new underground station which will likely require three levels to accomodate all of that.

If needed trains terminating in London will continue on to turnback platforms at Old Oak and Stratford.

An alternative option:

A big station beneath Waterloo linked by a six track tunnel from the main platforms at Euston, this tunnel splits up to link to the current Euston surface approach as well as HS2 with lower level lines continuing to tunnel and linking to the MML, ECML and Chiltern lines. Southwards the tunnel can continue and branch off on to new lines towards HS1, Brighton and Southampton.

On the current Waterloo mainline platform level a bunch of the tracks would 'bulldoze' their way through the station building and link to London Bridge station to form another through line(s). So SWML trains could continue towards the South East and via a new tunnel to Anglia via Canary Wharf.

A third option would be just to basically make Crossrail a six track alignment with parallel tunnels linking HS2, WCML, Chiltern and GWML tracks from Old Oak to Liverpool Street, Canary Wharf and then to HS1 at Dagenham, Anglia via a new line which connects to Chelmsford and Stansted following the M11 and various South Eastern lines following the Abbey Wood Crossrail branch.

But thinking all of this through, it's clear to see why this has never been seriously considered. London has a hell of a lot of lines to organise which would make any one central station a living hell for passengers.