please empty your brain below
Foxton in Cambridgeshire, also managed by FCC, has a meeting point. There is no point on this small rural two platform station that you cannot see from every other part of this small rural two platform station. And yet, at the end of the down platform, just before the level crossing is an utterly pointless meeting point.
On the other hand, the vast majority of commuters in the area bus it to Morden already. So maybe it wouldn't have made much difference to the crowding. The potentially huge crowds in Sutton have a similarly long, but more comfy journey in via train anyhow.
Of course, Underground lines were becoming overcrowded in the 1930s, and had the Sutton extension overwhelmed the line, it would have been much more likely that the Northern Line express tube would have been built, instead we eventually got the stunted and under-specified Victoria Line.
Certainly there must be changes afoot for this little line.
There were whole areas that were abandoned. Not just the obvious places like Docklands.
It's so very easy to look from 2014 and not appreciate that the Victoria Line was built when there was scant money. That why it finished short of the original Walthamstow Wood Street target, and why there isn't a station at Manor House for example.
Yes, bigger platforms would have been great. More escalators at Victoria, almost essential. Extended to Chingford, lovely. Somewhere south from Brixton, also lovely.
Perhaps you could fix up a Time Machine and send some £sd back in time?
[1] Demographics of London - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thameslink_Programme#cite_note-67
Still two trains an hour even after the upgrades! Living in the land of orange and sunshine (London Overground) in NE London, I find this astonishing.
London wasn't dying, it was being systematically assassinated by lunatic politicians, who had a mad scheme to turn the inner area into urban motorways and tower blocks, and shift the population out to ghastly new towns such as Basildon, and overspill estates such as Cornard. Once the meddling stopped, London repopulated.
There was an internal battle within London Transport about Victoria Line standards. I remember reading that Paul Garbutt wanted the line built to surface line standards, but that an opposing faction wanted a standard tube line, and fiddled the figures to suggest that the surface line loading gauge option would cost too much money.
In the TfL archives you will find a very interesting discussion document that shows that an alternative option across the Lea Valley, taking over the entire Chingford branch would have been cheaper than the tunnel option to Walthamstow, but BR did not want to relinquish the branch, which in those days made money.
So, your time machine option needs to send something back in time, but it certainly isn't money.
Platform lengths prevent trains longer than eight cars being used, against the new Thameslink standard of twelve.
Yes it is marginally quicker to use Thameslink from Wimbledon to Blackfriars (29 minutes) rather than the District Line (38 minutes), but only if there is a train expected in the next ten minutes (District runs every 10 minutes, TL every 30). (and of course any advantage is lost if you want any other District Line station).
Even quicker is to get a SWT train to Waterloo (17m, every 3-4 minutes) and walk. This is why hardly anyone stays on the London-bound Thameslink trains at Wimbledon - the vast majority change to SWT or the Underground.
The line was first planned before WW1. The District Railway ran to Wimbledon over LSWR tracks and the two companies planned a joint venture to extend to Sutton. The "Brighton" company opposed this as they already ran to Sutton both via Croydon and via Mitcham Junction, and to prove a point towed one of their new electric trains down to Sutton to show they were serious about electrification. (Electric trains eventually reached Sutton in 1925 and converted from ac to dc four years later)
LSWR enthusiasm to collaborate with the Underground to reach deep into "Brighton" territory at Sutton waned when the Brighton and LSWR both became part of the Southern Railway in 1923, hence the Underground's alternative plan to extend what is now known as the Northern Line from Clapham Common. The SR ensured this extension never got beyond Morden (then an insignificant country crossroads in Surrey) and kept the Wimbledon - Sutton line for itself.
Incidentally I've seen single platform stations with meeting points...
I seem to recall one plan was to run the enhanced services in a London Bridge-Blackfriars loop which would have been far more useful.
The terminating platforms at Blackfriars may be pretty unused during the day now but that is because most peak period Thameslink trains currently go via Elephant & Castle. Once the Thameslink project is completed there will be plenty of spare capacity on the approaches and the terminating platforms will be very well used indeed. In fact it does appear that they underestimated the number of terminating platforms that could be usefully used.
The conflicting moves approaching Blackfriars don't help but that is not the full story and part of the issue in future will be how many South Eastern trains can go to Cannon Street. If it is fewer than today then those that can't will be diverted to terminate at Blackfriars preventing other potential future services from using the terminating platforms.
Roxy Music wrote a song about it.
(sorry)
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