Running trains through London

Thre's an article by David R Wright's in Rail Magazine (7-20 May) that suggests opening up new route possibilities basically by enabling through running from the H&C/Circle line at Liverpool Street out onto the National Rail lines at that station. Apparently the Underground limes are not that far from the NR ones. His reasoning is that it will be quicker and cheaper to implement a "Crossrail" scheme this way and his guiding principle are that London termini are wasteful of land and train capacity and that long distance trains should take priority over short distance ones.

This as a similar concept to what is already happening with the East London Line (tying it in to National rail lines as part of London Overground. The West London Line already carries through services.

Similarly, I think there's scope with the District Line. District trains used to run down to Southend and outside central London the line runs alongside National Rail lines here and there. Richmond is on National Rail, as is Ealing Bdy, for example.


The Met is already a suburban National Rail type service run by the Underground and there are plans to abolish Circle line services anyway - http://www.urbantransport-technology.com/projects/london/.

Not being true tube lines the "cut and cover" lines all apparently have scope for National Rail trains to run through.

David Wright mention the other problems that would need to be solved to implement his scheme and I presume the same ones would apply to blending National Rail with the other "cut and cover" lines. Tube lines are separate because of their construction in a bored tunnel, but the cut and cover lines are not so different from National Rail - its mainly who runs them that's different.