Turnham Green Piccadilly Trains

[Horizon22]

I've wondered for a while now why does Turnham Green have such an odd arrangement with Piccadilly line trains stopping at the station? Is it a historical thing and if so when & why did it start / stop calling there? Is there an planning issue with headways? I wouldn't have thought so considering it would be all trains calling and so it would just add some additional journey time before Acton Town (which often has its own delays arriving into anyway). It evidently isn't an infrastructure issue as they do call in early mornings and very late at nights. Seems odd to me that such arrangement has come about and was wondering if anyone knew why. I know some have campaigned locally in the past to have a full Piccadilly service at the station.

 

[D365]

There was a recent discussion concerning Turnham Green’s Piccadilly service on a different thread. In case that’s of any relevance.

 

[hexagon789]

I've wondered for a while now why does Turnham Green have such an odd arrangement with Piccadilly line trains stopping at the station? Is it a historical thing and if so when & why did it start / stop calling there? Is there an planning issue with headways? I wouldn't have thought so considering it would be all trains calling and so it would just add some additional journey time before Acton Town (which often has its own delays arriving into anyway). It evidently isn't an infrastructure issue as they do call in early mornings and very late at nights. Seems odd to me that such arrangement has come about and was wondering if anyone knew why. I know some have campaigned locally in the past to have a full Piccadilly service at the station.

In short - history. Originally the Piccadilly Line didn't serve Turnham Green at all, there was actually through lines allowing Picc trains to overtake District line ones that had stopped to call.

From the 1930s the present arrangement developed - that Picc trains called in the early morning and late evening but not during the middle of the day. This was to give better connections to the Richmond branch.

Campaigners have long called for more (if not all) Picc line trains to call and I understand this was in the pipeline for when the new Tube stock for the Picc is in service and the signalling/infrastructure upgraded.

Of course now Sadiq Khan has suspended this (due lack of funding in the present climate) who knows when, or indeed if, this will ever happen.

 

[Snow1964]

In short - history. Originally the Piccadilly Line didn't serve Turnham Green at all, there was actually through lines allowing Picc trains to overtake District line ones that had stopped to call.

From the 1930s the present arrangement developed - that Picc trains called in the early morning and late evening but not during the middle of the day. This was to give better connections to the Richmond branch.

Campaigners have long called for more (if not all) Picc line trains to call and I understand this was in the pipeline for when the new Tube stock for the Picc is in service and the signalling/infrastructure upgraded.

Of course now Sadiq Khan has suspended this (due lack of funding in the present climate) who knows when, or indeed if, this will ever happen.

Until December 1932 the Piccadilly line ended at Hammersmith.

The section from Richmond via Gunnersbury to Studland Road junction was opened by LSWR (London and South Western Railway) and later a short (fairly steep) connection was added from Hammersmith to Studland Road for District Railway trains.

The District trains, LSWR trains and Midland coal trains caused the section from Turnham Green junction to Studland Road to be quadrupled early 20th Century, with District using the existing Southern pair of tracks (by then electrified) and LSWR the new northern pair. The District gained a station at Stamford Brook around 1912 and the other 2 (Turnham Green and Ravenscourt Park) had gained island platforms on southern pair of tracks about same time.

Apparently the layout at Turnham Green during the widening towards Chiswick Park was built with diveunders for Piccadilly line trains to be extended to Richmond but it was never used.

Once the LSWR services stopped, the Underground wanted to extend the Piccadilly line over the new tracks, but couldn’t really afford it and nothing happened for about 20 years until 1930. During 1930 Government backed finance became available to relieve unemployment and work started.

Tracks were rearranged from Barons Court so Piccadilly used centre pair, quadrupling was extended to Northfields (where new depot was built). In December 1932 Piccadilly line trains were extended to Northfields and from March 1933 to Hounslow. Initially Piccadilly trains to Hounslow skipped South Ealing and Boston Manor as well as everything between Hammersmith and Acton.

The 1930 scheme assumed Piccadilly line trains would be extended to Richmond, so the diveunders were built to avoid conflicting moves (and explains why the westbound pair have a hump over the Piccadilly trackbed towards Gunnersbury) but this was never done. In later years late night and Sunday Piccadilly trains called at Turnham Green when District frequency was lower to make it easier to change routes.

 

[bramling]

In short - history. Originally the Piccadilly Line didn't serve Turnham Green at all, there was actually through lines allowing Picc trains to overtake District line ones that had stopped to call.

From the 1930s the present arrangement developed - that Picc trains called in the early morning and late evening but not during the middle of the day. This was to give better connections to the Richmond branch.

Campaigners have long called for more (if not all) Picc line trains to call and I understand this was in the pipeline for when the new Tube stock for the Picc is in service and the signalling/infrastructure upgraded.

Of course now Sadiq Khan has suspended this (due lack of funding in the present climate) who knows when, or indeed if, this will ever happen.

I seem to remember it was abandoned during the 1990s but then reinstated, presumably due to local outcry. Before this I think it was all day Sundays too, they managed to get the early mornings and late evenings back but not the Sundays.

There is a fair amount of local pressure for it, which in part seems to stem from nothing more than irritation that they see Picc trains running through. For LU’s part it has always been convenient to say that the signalling is optimised for through running and modifying this wouldn’t represent good value for money.

I’ve always found the local pressure for this to be a little silly. They get a decent enough District Line service, and the time saving to places further out for Picc Line users is worthwhile, this will only increase in time as eventually the section should be 60mph running once new trains and signalling happen (if ever!).

 

[Horizon22]

In short - history. Originally the Piccadilly Line didn't serve Turnham Green at all, there was actually through lines allowing Picc trains to overtake District line ones that had stopped to call.

From the 1930s the present arrangement developed - that Picc trains called in the early morning and late evening but not during the middle of the day. This was to give better connections to the Richmond branch.

Campaigners have long called for more (if not all) Picc line trains to call and I understand this was in the pipeline for when the new Tube stock for the Picc is in service and the signalling/infrastructure upgraded.

Of course now Sadiq Khan has suspended this (due lack of funding in the present climate) who knows when, or indeed if, this will ever happen.

So it does require a signalling / infrastructure upgrade then? Is that local do you know because it doesn't seem obvious why? Because it can't be too dramatic if trains can physically call there, albeit in the fringe hours. Presumably its because there's less intensive service at that time of day however there are Piccadilly facing platforms with no District conflicts so that doesn't seem to stack up for me.

 

[A60stock]

The main reason for trains to stop would be for interchange with the Richmond branch of the district line. At the moment, if you are coming from Uxbridge or Heathrow, you must change twice just to get to this branch. Ofcourse you could just stay all the way to Heathrow but this doesn't make sense when there's a much closer alternative for a change.

I havent understood the signalling changes which are required? If a decision was made to stop all trains there, why would this be any more difficult than stopping at any other station?

 

[AlbertBeale]

I seem to remember it was abandoned during the 1990s but then reinstated, presumably due to local outcry. Before this I think it was all day Sundays too, they managed to get the early mornings and late evenings back but not the Sundays.

There is a fair amount of local pressure for it, which in part seems to stem from nothing more than irritation that they see Picc trains running through. For LU’s part it has always been convenient to say that the signalling is optimised for through running and modifying this wouldn’t represent good value for money.

I’ve always found the local pressure for this to be a little silly. They get a decent enough District Line service, and the time saving to places further out for Picc Line users is worthwhile, this will only increase in time as eventually the section should be 60mph running once new trains and signalling happen (if ever!).

I'm pretty sure that there was a period of post-WW2 years ('60s) when the Piccadilly didn't have the early/late extra stop - the Piccadilly was a fairly frequent route for me for many years. And I'm sure I remember noticing (some years later) that the Turnham Green stop had been instituted and noticing it precisely because it was new and hadn't been the case when I was a regular user. (Though I can't remember when that introduction of the extra stop was.) I was given to understand it was because it was the last stop before the District branched, and at the extremes of the day, with less frequent trains, this extra interchange option made a lot of difference to some journey times to and from the Richmond branch of the District. Of course, the pattern of having the extra station call might have stopped and restarted again in subsequent years.

I'd noticed, travelling through there in my youth, that there seemed to be the possibility - albeit without track in place! - for the Piccadilly trains to also access the Richmond branch, but had never got to the bottom of all the history, as set out helpfully above.

 

[bramling]

So it does require a signalling / infrastructure upgrade then? Is that local do you know because it doesn't seem obvious why? Because it can't be too dramatic if trains can physically call there, albeit in the fringe hours. Presumably its because there's less intensive service at that time of day however there are Piccadilly facing platforms with no District conflicts so that doesn't seem to stack up for me.

The signalling is currently setup to optimise throughput for non-stopping trains. As you say, this isn’t a problem at the fringes of the day.

If trains stopped during more frequent times the home signals would be slow to clear, causing a bottleneck. Redesigning this isn’t beyond the realms of possibility, however it would require a redesign of the track circuits, and likely some element of resiting signals. You’d also introduce a likely problem that being a new installation this would represent a change in use, so would all have to be done to current standards, quite possibly requiring the home signals to be moved further back, and in turn requiring some quite significant works to match line capacity.

It isn’t beyond the realms of possibility, however evidently someone judges the cost to be disproportionate to the benefit. This also allows LU to conveniently put this in the “too difficult / too expensive” box rather than get drawn into a debate as to whether trains should call there or not.

Personally I think the journey time increase caused by stopping on an otherwise fast section of line is enough of a reason in itself, but this is purely a value judgement from someone who has no vested interest either way.