please empty your brain below

Having visited the depot I was surprised by how smoothly and without any human-interference everything worked although admittedly that was with a good service. At the time the upgrade was just winding down but they were very happy with how it had gone but were just ironing out a few bits and pieces with the attitude of "If we don't ask for it now before everyone gets reassigned we'll be waiting another forty years." The sheds, on the other hand, obviously hadn't been upgraded at all and looked (and smelled) like something straight out of the 60s.

It was a lack of foresight (or money?) by the original designers which means that trains can't reverse at Seven Sisters like you've implied, there's a big wall in the way even if they wanted to put a crossover in at the southbound end and northbound points can be set only to join platform three and run up to Walthamstow (currently only about three trains a day do, apparently), or run empty to the depot. There's no way to physically reverse at Seven Sisters to head straight back south - how I bet the controllers and bigwigs wish were possible.

Interestingly the 33tph seems to have gone remarkably smoother - if journey times don't seem any quicker trains are certainly less crowded and therefore cooler in rush hour. I wonder if one day, as Mike Horne said in his blog, they might be able to squeeze in 34?
I'll just add to the smug level by pointing out that I have taken a "passenger train" from Seven Sisters into the depot and back out again -- on the day they ran a special farewell tour for the 1967 tube stock.
it appears that trains coming in and out of the depot are 'right hand running' between the depot and Seven Sisters. Hence the need for the double-X crossover just north of the station. Wonder why they don't run them on the left hand side?
No doubt you are aware that you were very close to the armed robbery and subsequent police chase in 1909 known as the Tottenham Outrage.
Not linked to today's blogpost - for which many thanks, DG, very interesting - but the Secretary of State gave final approval for the Croxley Rail Link yesterday. Woohoo!
@londonstuff,

A crossover where you mention would be extremely useful now and does seem like an oversight but I can also understand the pressures on the designers to cut costs plus the desire to have all southbound trains leaving from the same platform.

An ex-LU driver when seeing the arrangement there, without prompting, made the same remark to me about how useful a crossover there would have been.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

@geofftech,

They are not right hand running or left hand running. They are both reversible. Potentially very useful for a multitude of various reasons but especially for getting a lot of trains out quickly to go from 0 to 39 trains (33 tph) or more in the short time available before the morning peak. Even more useful if they ever get up to 36 tph which is the ultimate aim.
Just to say, today's Flickr photo of two Victoria line trains side by side in the open air is my most-favourited-photo of the year.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dgeezer/9359913463

But only, I suspect, if you're a person who likes trains.
Thank you, DG, for a very full and interesting description of the depot and its connection to the marshes.

I've often crossed the northern of the two footbridges (usually quickly!) and wondered how and why the most easterly tracks leading into the depot are much higher than the others. They seem to be built on a great ridge of some material, as seen in the photo of the train going in. I wonder if it was spoil from the tunnel excavation. Alternatively was it some of the various stuff that was dumped on the marshes in the 1960s (on which a great variety of wild flowers now bloom)?
Having visited the depot twice, once on the farewell to the 67 stock tour, and once when I went with a group of friends to visit the depot proper (the amount of information they can get out of the system is amazing - for example: they can see how well loaded each train is as a % figure in real time!) I agree the depot is amazing, but in a quite... shall we say... run down area!
Daniel: The area is being done up these days. http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/projectsandschemes/13315.aspx .










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