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New rail service from Heathrow Airport for West London
[This article is cross-posted with followups directed, somewhat
arbitrarily, to misc.transport.urban-transit; amend as appropriate.] According to an article in Modern Railways magazine, a new rail service called Heathrow Connect is scheduled to begin operations on Sunday, June 12. Remember that Heathrow has two existing rail services, Heathrow Express and the London Underground's Piccadilly Line. Heathrow Express has trains that run nonstop from Paddington to their Terminals 1,2,3 station, then continue to Terminal 4. The Underground has its own Terminals 1,2,3 station (and its own to Terminal 4 station, but this is closed until mid-2006 for reasons related to the construction of Terminal 5). The new Heathrow Connect service will also run from Paddington along the Great Western mainline, but its trains will stop at Ealing Broadway, West Ealing, Hanwell, Southall, and Hayes & Harlington before terminating at the same Terminals 1,2,3 station used by the Heathrow Express. (Passengers for Terminal 4 will have to change and use the Express between the two airport stations.) This means that passengers traveling between Heathrow and other points on the Great Western will now have the option of changing at Hayes & Harlington instead of going into Paddington and doubling back, or taking the bus to Reading. Heathrow Connect will run every 30 minutes and will take 25 minutes end-to-end, or 10 minutes longer than the Heathrow Express. The short section from Heathrow to Hayes & Harlington will cost 6 pounds, but fares from there to Paddington will be at the usual rates on that line, so the end-to-end trip will be about 9 pounds, or about halfway between the Express and the Underground. However, apparently passengers are not supposed to be concerned with price: the train is also intended to carry local traffic between the intermediate stations (it partially replaces some services on the main line), and the operating company doesn't want all the seats filled with through passengers when the Heathrow Express is available for them. To this end, the article says, Heathrow Connect trains will "likely" not be shown on departure signs at their endpoints as going all the way to the other endpoint: instead they will be shown as terminating at the second-last station! (The plan is that when Terminal 5 opens in 2008, Heathrow Connect will be extended to Terminal 4 and take over the present Heathrow Express station there; Heathrow Express itself will then run to Terminal 5. On the Underground, most trains will serve Terminal 5 and the rest will serve Terminal 4. All of these trains will still run to Terminals 1,2,3.) One limiting factor for Heathrow Connect, by the way, is Airport Junction, where the 2-track Heathrow branch leaves the 4-track Great Western main line. Heathrow Express trains use the "main" (fast) lines on the GW, and the junction is aligned that way, but Heathrow Connect will have to use the "relief" lines, forcing an awkward route through the junction. There is a plain to improve the junction to avoid this, but it won't happen until it's known whether Crossrail will be built and also have trains running to Heathrow, so the rebuilding can be done to the correct requirements. -- Mark Brader | this take Toronto | "If is shall really to | flying I never it." | -- Piglet ("Winnie-the-Pooh", A. A. Milne) My text in this article is in the public domain. |
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Mark Brader wrote: The new Heathrow Connect service will also run from Paddington along the Great Western mainline, but its trains will stop at Ealing Broadway, West Ealing, Hanwell, Southall, and Hayes & Harlington before terminating at the same Terminals 1,2,3 station used by the Heathrow Express. That at least will provide some relief for the change (stupid and disasterous change, in my view) of the cancellation of the Airbus service which made many stops from Heathrow into Central London. (The only remaining bus service leaves, as does the Heathrow Express, from the center of old Heathrow, not from each individual terminal formerly used by Airbus. It stops only at Victoria Coach Station.) |
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Read on rec.travel.europe, and response aimed mainly at that NG:
"Mark Brader" wrote in message ... [This article is cross-posted with followups directed, somewhat arbitrarily, to misc.transport.urban-transit; amend as appropriate.] According to an article in Modern Railways magazine, a new rail service called Heathrow Connect is scheduled to begin operations on Sunday, June 12. SNIP The new Heathrow Connect service will also run from Paddington along the Great Western mainline, but its trains will stop at Ealing Broadway, West Ealing, Hanwell, Southall, and Hayes & Harlington before terminating at the same Terminals 1,2,3 station used by the Heathrow Express. (Passengers for Terminal 4 will have to change and use the Express between the two airport stations.) This means that passengers traveling between Heathrow and other points on the Great Western will now have the option of changing at Hayes & Harlington instead of going into Paddington and doubling back, or taking the bus to Reading. Note, however, that Hayes & Harlington is used only by slow and semi-fast trains. If transferring to destinations west of Reading served by fast trains (e.g. Bristol, Cardiff, Penzance) a further change at Reading would be necessary. Heathrow Connect will run every 30 minutes and will take 25 minutes end-to-end, or 10 minutes longer than the Heathrow Express. The short section from Heathrow to Hayes & Harlington will cost 6 pounds, but fares from there to Paddington will be at the usual rates on that line, so the end-to-end trip will be about 9 pounds, or about halfway between the Express and the Underground. Implication is that Travelcards will be valid Paddington to Hayes. However, apparently passengers are not supposed to be concerned with price: the train is also intended to carry local traffic between the intermediate stations (it partially replaces some services on the main line), and the operating company doesn't want all the seats filled with through passengers when the Heathrow Express is available for them. To this end, the article says, Heathrow Connect trains will "likely" not be shown on departure signs at their endpoints as going all the way to the other endpoint: instead they will be shown as terminating at the second-last station! Quite a common practice on the Great Western lines. For example, a train to Slough may be shown as going to Langley at Paddington, with its true destination revealed only at Ealing Broadway. The aim is to assist travellers in finding the fastest train, since a stopping service to Slough will almost always be overtaken by a faster tarin continuing beyond that station. Alan Harrison |
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Earlier I (Mark Brader) wrote:
Heathrow Connect will run every 30 minutes and will take 25 minutes end-to-end, or 10 minutes longer than the Heathrow Express. The short section from Heathrow to Hayes & Harlington will cost 6 pounds, but fares from there to Paddington will be at the usual rates on that line, so the end-to-end trip will be about 9 pounds, or about halfway between the Express and the Underground. However, apparently passengers are not supposed to be concerned with price: the train is also intended to carry local traffic between the intermediate stations (it partially replaces some services on the main line), and the operating company doesn't want all the seats filled with through passengers when the Heathrow Express is available for them. To this end, the article says, Heathrow Connect trains will "likely" not be shown on departure signs at their endpoints as going all the way to the other endpoint... Further, according to a followup in misc.transport.urban-transit, it is not intended that end-to-end tickets will even be sold. You would have to buy one ticket from Heathrow to an intermediate point, and another from there to Paddington, and it isn't even clear that they'll sell you both tickets at once. However, the ticket for the Paddington end of the trip *could* be a Travelcard covering suitable zones. -- Mark Brader "I like to think of [this] as self-explanatory." Toronto "I hope *I* think of [it] that way." -- Donald Westlake: "Trust Me On This" My text in this article is in the public domain. |
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