Great Western Coffee Shop

Since Line 6 at Paddington has been out of use (from Sunday 10/12/2017) train performance on the Relief side at Paddington seems to be falling apart.  It will be interesting to see how long this lasts once Line 6 in its permanently truncated form is recommissioned in January 2018.  Personally, I don't see it will have much benefit.

As I have written in other threads - if TfL wants to improve the lot of Londoners, and people living on the outskirts, it should buy its own segregated tracks. Not doing so can spoil the day for many people living far from London who have nothing directly to do with the Great Wen.

What is the DfT's/TfL's/Governments's justification for creating an unreliable service for people living in, say, Pangbourne and wanting to get to, say, Oxford?

There was a similar situation in Germany as the S-Bahn network in Munich was developed. Originally the S-Bahn service to the outlying towns and villages used existing tracks. Although the off-peak services were typically on a 40 minute interval, timekeeping on both the S-Bahn trains and on the longer distance trains caught behind an S-Bahn 'all-stations' train suffered. Bit by bit the S-Bahn got its own dedicated tracks and then the frequency was doubled to every 20 minutes.

It wasn't done the other way round as seems to be the case here - an intensive service being plonked on to an existing railway before sufficient capacity is added.

And there was me just extolling the virtues of Crossrail to my Father a few minutes ago  ::) Still, it sure will be a huge improvement on the Central line.

A short period of pain and them most of the trains that would have used line 6 into Padd will end up in either Abbey Wood or Shenfield ..................... both are very nice places  ;D

I did a trip Ealing Broadway to Paddington today in order to video the recent changes to Lines 5 and 6 between Westbourne Park and Royal Oak, in order to ascertain what the final track layout will be. Spent about 5 minutes stationery on Line 5 adjacent to the works.

In the future, I assume with the signalling changes at Christmas, the train would be able to use the new crossovers, currently out of use, and regain line 6.

Hopefully, Peter Hicks - Mr Open Train Times - is well prepared for these changes.

If you look at this post you will see the final track layout http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=818.msg225180#msg225180

The new track layout and signalling at Portabello Junction will be commissioned over Xmas 2017 but there are some further stages still to come (the last being Easter 2018).

I already have a printout of that layout.

I was just verifying whether what was being installed was to that plan, and the physical locations.

If you look at Google Earth of Old Oak Common, the entrance to the Crossrail depot is slightly different to that plan - most probably due to the decommissioning of the GWR depot. 

The connections at the OOC depot entrances are temporary and the final layout gets commissioned at Xmas 2017 (well, according to the Signalling Scheme Plan I have infront of me at present, that is).

I noticed on my latest trip in and out of Paddington that the Crossrail tunnel lines are now connected to lines 5 and 6.