Transit Geek: England
Sep. 12th, 2006 07:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmazeI told a couple of people that I needed to write a LiveJournal post on the signalling system of the London Underground. There's actually quite a bit interesting about UK public transit, though...
Buses. They're everywhere. Transit for London is a lot like the T and runs buses like the T. But the cheapest and fastest way from Heathrow to anywhere very well might be a bus; the city of Oxford runs a direct bus over the 50ish miles to Heathrow for £16, plus buses from the city centre to London, plus some local buses. But there's also other bus companies. Near my hotel I could take the Oxford City 4 bus to the city centre, or I could take the Stagecoach 3 (10p cheaper). Both ran on similar, but coordinated schedules, so both buses ran "every 20 minutes" on Sunday but one or the other would appear after 10. Round-trip ("return") tickets are prevalent and cheap; a same-day return on the Heathrow bus is £17 (£1 more than the one-way ("single") trip).
Trains. I didn't quite figure out the national rail system while I was there. I was fairly clear that there was National Rail, but there were also at least three different passenger railroad brands I saw (First Great Western, Southern, Virgin). Trains, like buses, run on the left. The UK appears to have nationalised their rail system before it started to collapse, so there's not the intercity vs. commuter rail distinction here; the area around London also seems somewhat denser or clumpier than the US, so I could have taken a local train (which would have been about like a long commuter rail trip here) but instead I got an express that stopped at Reading, Slough, and London Paddington.
The FGW main line coming west out of London looked like a four-track main line, with a pair of local tracks and a pair of express tracks. Signals seemed pretty frequent but also slightly mysterious (I still haven't deciphered their diverging signal aspects). The line north to Oxford was only two tracks, but waiting at Oxford two fast intermodal trains blew past the station. A typical passenger train was 3-5 diesel rail cars; there's no separate engine, each car has its own engine. The trains I was on were all reasonably crowded (most of the transit was reasonably busy).
Underground. Transit for London has the best transit branding I've seen anywhere. Lots of ads. I now understand the famous gap (as in, "mind the gap") as well: if you built a subway station in the 19th century and you built it on a sharp curve, then it's kind of impossible for your straight subway cars to line up well with the platform, and the gap can be multiple inches wide. Not only third rail but a fourth insulated rail between the two main tracks; only guesses what it's for (low-voltage power? return?). Most stations were actively labyrinthine.
Signalling generally had two-head color-light signals, with single-block signaling with distant repeaters. "It's not strange, it's antiquated": if instead of translating three-position upper-quadrant semaphores into electrical lights you translated two-position lower-quadrant semaphores, you'd get the same effect. Home signals show green or red and have a white number plate with an "A", repeater signals show green or yellow (yellow means the home signal is red) with a yellow number plate with an "R". In a couple of cases the home signal is at the end of a platform so the repeater will be halfway through a station. Also in some cases two signals appear together, so you can see on a four-head signal red (stop, no repeater aspect), green/yellow (next home signal is red), or green/green (next two blocks are clear).
Buses. They're everywhere. Transit for London is a lot like the T and runs buses like the T. But the cheapest and fastest way from Heathrow to anywhere very well might be a bus; the city of Oxford runs a direct bus over the 50ish miles to Heathrow for £16, plus buses from the city centre to London, plus some local buses. But there's also other bus companies. Near my hotel I could take the Oxford City 4 bus to the city centre, or I could take the Stagecoach 3 (10p cheaper). Both ran on similar, but coordinated schedules, so both buses ran "every 20 minutes" on Sunday but one or the other would appear after 10. Round-trip ("return") tickets are prevalent and cheap; a same-day return on the Heathrow bus is £17 (£1 more than the one-way ("single") trip).
Trains. I didn't quite figure out the national rail system while I was there. I was fairly clear that there was National Rail, but there were also at least three different passenger railroad brands I saw (First Great Western, Southern, Virgin). Trains, like buses, run on the left. The UK appears to have nationalised their rail system before it started to collapse, so there's not the intercity vs. commuter rail distinction here; the area around London also seems somewhat denser or clumpier than the US, so I could have taken a local train (which would have been about like a long commuter rail trip here) but instead I got an express that stopped at Reading, Slough, and London Paddington.
The FGW main line coming west out of London looked like a four-track main line, with a pair of local tracks and a pair of express tracks. Signals seemed pretty frequent but also slightly mysterious (I still haven't deciphered their diverging signal aspects). The line north to Oxford was only two tracks, but waiting at Oxford two fast intermodal trains blew past the station. A typical passenger train was 3-5 diesel rail cars; there's no separate engine, each car has its own engine. The trains I was on were all reasonably crowded (most of the transit was reasonably busy).
Underground. Transit for London has the best transit branding I've seen anywhere. Lots of ads. I now understand the famous gap (as in, "mind the gap") as well: if you built a subway station in the 19th century and you built it on a sharp curve, then it's kind of impossible for your straight subway cars to line up well with the platform, and the gap can be multiple inches wide. Not only third rail but a fourth insulated rail between the two main tracks; only guesses what it's for (low-voltage power? return?). Most stations were actively labyrinthine.
Signalling generally had two-head color-light signals, with single-block signaling with distant repeaters. "It's not strange, it's antiquated": if instead of translating three-position upper-quadrant semaphores into electrical lights you translated two-position lower-quadrant semaphores, you'd get the same effect. Home signals show green or red and have a white number plate with an "A", repeater signals show green or yellow (yellow means the home signal is red) with a yellow number plate with an "R". In a couple of cases the home signal is at the end of a platform so the repeater will be halfway through a station. Also in some cases two signals appear together, so you can see on a four-head signal red (stop, no repeater aspect), green/yellow (next home signal is red), or green/green (next two blocks are clear).
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Date: 2007-12-14 10:37 pm (UTC)