Great Western Coffee Shop

I left Finn in the car whilst I did some spotting and photting.

(http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt68/bignosemac/rps20190302_140639_zpstoc2dhzn.jpg)

Axe level crossing between Axminster and Chard Junction

Spot on.

Out spotting GWR diverts today. Two here and two later at Chard Junction. I'll post the vids later.

I set out to photograph an IET at Crewkerne on Thursday. Just before setting out I looked at RTT and saw it was running very early but that it had to wait at Honiton.
Was just arriving at my chosen location when it sprinted past, still early. Will have to try again next week!

But that wasn’t the only crossing you saw today....

Indeed it wasn't. After an early morning drive to Bigbury-on-Sea and Burgh Island I returned via Dartmouth and Kingswear. A wetter sort of crossing.

(http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt68/bignosemac/rps20190302_205615_zps3zhkvyyg.jpg)

GWR diverts at Axe Crossing and Chard Junction on the West of England mainline, Saturday 2nd March 2019.

1. 1C76 0903 London Paddington - Plymouth


2. 1A81 0916 Plymouth - London Paddington


3. 1C79 1103 London Paddington - Plymouth


4. 1A83 1118 Plymouth - London Paddington

But also a level crossing, by the look of it.

Out again this morning to bag a couple more diverted GWR services. I chose Crewkerne station this time as it afforded some shelter from the more seasonal weather.

Managed to film the IET at Crewkerne today; 1122 Plymouth Paddington
Link on iCloud.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0PEHduCY9HJvcY0jH7oOGdl1Q#Misterton,_England

Don't remember a spanish solution platform at Crewkerne, the platform must have moved since the last time I caught a train from there. Then again the last train I got on there was pulled by a 50!

Two seperate platforms. One disused and inaccessible to the public, and the line lifted. The existing platform face may have been extended outward at some point but this isn't a Spanish solution. There's no seperate entry and exiting of trains.

I think the only routine use of the Spanish solution on the UK heavy rail network is at Ascot during race meetings.

The higher-numbered platform 1 at Ascot has now been fenced off - so unless that fencing can safely be temporarily removed, using P1+ is no longer an option. Oddly, Guildford platform 7 is still unfenced, though never used.

What is the Spanish solution (and what does it solve)?

One track, platforms both sides, one for people getting on and one for people getting off.  Tower Gateway is a current example?

I think the term refers primarily to the fact that passenger flows are also fully segregated within the station, so a simple case of doors opening both sides for interchange wouldn’t count.

AIUI most modern units will not allow the doors to be released both sides at once by design, so that’s basically why places such as Guildford and Ascot fell out of normal use.

Paul

Thanks. So that would imply a one-way movement of passengers within the station, eg they enter on the west and exit on the east? I've encountered track with platforms both sides in Poland (I think in the area that would have been Germany when the stations were built in the 19th century) but they didn't have the one-way flow.

The platform at Crewkerne was raised and widened for the introduction of the Cl 159s. It was also lengthened to accommodate 6 car trains at the same time. The downside to this was the prevention of reusing the down platform if a loop was needed here as one or two studies have suggested. Any loop would need to be east or west of the station, ending up with a Tisbury/Templecombe situation.

Within recent years, I've seen the double sided platforms on the S-Bahn in the centre or Munich - joining passengers enter the station and go onto a platform between the tracks, and there are outside platforms too.   Doors open on both sides, passenger leave on the outside and join on the inside.   Would do wonders and places like King's Cross on the Circle / Met / Hammersmith and City platforms ... if you have ever joined an evening peak train there toward Paddington - a crowded platform when the train arrives, and though that crowd pushes another crowd of City types from Liverpool Street / Moorgate / Aldersgate / Farringdon making for their trains up north.

Don't I recall both side opening at Arnos Grove for Piccadilly line trains turning back there?    I recall in my schooldays there were double sided platforms at Sevenoaks too, with commuters arriving back from London on platform 4 passing through the train standing in platforms 5 / 6 to reach the station exit on platform 6.  Just make sure the standing train wasn't about to leave - a slammer with no interlocking of doors to train movement in those days!

Very common, of course, on intra airport light rail systems.

In those, often the doors don't open on both sides at once, as a security "air-lock" - which is a bit different.

And of course in lifts in all sorts of places.

I'm sure I've seen it at one or two underground stations too. Possibly on the eastern part of the Jubilee line.

It has been - I've boarded at least once from 7 at Guildford during my 18 years' commuting there. The occasion I recall was quite some time ago, and I think it was during disruption when a "fast" ex-Gatwick caught up with a slow ex-Shalford or Redhill which was held at Guildford, the latter arriving at 6, the former held on 8. The sensible decision was made to allow the Gatwick to leave first, and passengers for its stops (North Camp, Blackwater, Wokingham & Reading) invited to cross to the Gatwick, whose train crew obligingly opened the platform 7 side doors to avoid having to go up and down the stairs or subway. I cannot recall if the doors on the other side of the train were open at the same time. 

Of course the big old lifts on London's deep tubes were like that, but I think the sequence of closing their exit gates before opening the entry ones had more to do with the kind of gates and the way they were manually operated.

Now, what about horizontal lifts, and I mean really horizontal ones? Wikipedia only seems to have that phrase to describe ones that go up and down and sideways too, which is another matter (quadrature lifts?). I mean ones that just go sideways, letting you in one door and necessarily out of one on the other side. I have never heard of one being built, but you never know - it's a funny old world, after all.

That might be called a conveyor belt?

Not on the Jubilee line. However, there are double faced roads at Canary Wharf on the DLR. Both sides available for entry and exit.

Before Sevenoaks (Tubs Hill) was rebuilt (in the 90's??) passengers arriving from London and exiting the station could avoid the footbridge by crossing through any train waiting between platforms one and two. And most did.

Stratford - Central Line.

Only in the way that a lift might be called an escalator - i.e. it's another way of providing a function that's similar but clearly different.

Yes. I can envisage the sort of thing you mean (I think): a metal box that you get into and it moves horizontally, a sort of travelling room basically (German has a word for lift translates literally as "rising room" though I can't remember what the word is... ). I don't think I've ever seen it though, unless you count a cable car.

Transporter bridges are an example of what you are describing. You get in at one end, it moves across the gap, and you exit from the other end. They were built to cross rivers where a bridge couldn't be built due to height restrictions for shipping that they would create. We have two here, in Newport and Middlesbrough.

Yes, I thought the concept simple enough - the problem is finding an application where there isn't an obviously better solution. One that I think might stand up is a pedestrian level crossing between platforms on a high-intensity metro service. For example, imagine that the southern end of Thameslink was reached by turning right instead of left at Blackfriars Junction, and rebuilding the link line from Waterloo East to Waterloo rather than one above Borough Market. Ignoring any other plans for reworking Waterloo's concourse, you'd want to retain pedestrian access across your new pair of lines, and might not want to make everyone go down and up to cross.

Being at a station should remove any safety issues - it would be no more at risk of being hit by a train not stopping than another train. Assuming one of those new computer-choreogrphed CBTC metros (like Thamelink???), synchronising the "lift" with train movements shouldn't be hard either. One question I can see that would need to be confirmed is whether the limit of horizontal acceleration, so as not to have people falling over, would permit a short enough slide time.

And Warrington (non-functioning).

I believe Morden has/had a track with platforms both sides, and  at one time you could walk through. Mind you, I last went to that station over 50 years ago!

Finding myself at Ascot, I had a look at this fence. Pretty solid, I'd say ... and not designed to be removed in a hurry.