aktchi

I need to travel from E Croydon station to LHR on Sunday morning (need to arrive at LHR ~ noon). Would like to avoid a cab if possible. Other morning schedule is such that X26 bus which runs only once an hour is also inconvenient.

So, I can take a train from E Croydon to either Victoria or London Bridge and connect to Piccadilly line from there. Looks simple on a map. Question for experts: which connection strategy would be best for dragging a heavy suitcase?! In other words, fewest stairs. Obviously, lifts and escalators etc would be ok, so would be moderately long corridors as the luggage does have wheels.

One footnote: Victoria line will be shut down that morning, which takes out one potential routing.

Aviatrix

The best and most reliable way to find out is to go to www.tfl.gov.uk and use the "advanced search" function - one of the options (you have to scroll a fair way down for it) is "I cannot use stairs".

stut

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413 es61i)

One slightly convoluted approach:

First Capital Connect service to London Bridge.

SouthEastern service to Waterloo East (same platform, no steps).

SWT service to Feltham (up ramp, down lift/escalator, no steps).

285 RailAir bus to LHR (up lift, over bridge, down lift, outside, kneeling bus).

aktchi

Thanks. For Sun 9/30, from London Bridge there is enough red text in the warnings to scare me!

From Victoria, it recommends District Line, change to Piccadilly Line at Hamersmith. If I say "no stairs", there is no route choice left. Assuming there are no stairs at the Hammersmith change, this probably means a few unavoidable stairs at Victoria?

Swanhunter

2 flights at Victoria, one to take you down to the ticket office then after a short corridor and the gate line there is another rather tight staircase to take you down to the westbound platform. Change at Baron's Court onto the Piccadilly Line for the least grief.

It's still probably the best option, leaving aside stut's innovative overland route.

aktchi

The TFL website mentioned above keeps wanting me to change at Hammersmith. Are you familiar with both it and Baron's ct?

Re stut's solution, I believe the first capital line at London Bridge has some problem just this Sunday. But there is always next time.

Swanhunter

Very familiar! Baron's Court is the station before Hammersmith and is much quieter, making it a less hassle change. All you have to do is walk across the platform.

alanR

You just walk across the platform at Hammersmith as well

Scillybear

I think this is academic now that the OP has already travelled....


But...

I find the advantage of changing from the District to Piccadilly at Barons Court (outbound only) is that you get on the Piccadilly Line one stop ahead of the rest of the herd of people who have been directed by the website to change at Hammersmith - thus you have first pick of the seats that become empty just before Hammersmith.....



One other thing to note - Only the District line trains bound for Ealing Broadway and Richmond go to Barons Court or Hammersmith - those heading for Wimbledon turn off at Earls Court.

aktchi

Great point, although we were lucky enough to find the seats at Hammersmith.

Another strategy which has served me well, in cities like London or Tokyo with frequent service and when I am not too pressed for time, is simply to skip one train if a big crowd is waiting. Usually there is a much less crowded one in a few minutes.

Yes, not only District line, but Piccadilly too needs to be watched. Some of them are right for going to LHR and some not. I met a Japanese guy who had the unusual misfortune of making both mistakes the same morning: got on the wrong District line and came back to a station to take the right one, then got on the wrong Piccadilly line and had to travel bak to correct that mistake.

This set up must be a part of London Metro's strategy to promote the expensive HEX service by scaring people off the alternatives!

aktchi

Just to summarize my experience which mistakenly got posted to the wrong thread (apologies to FT):

Leaving out the expensive HEX option...the best train+tube route from the East Croydon station to LHR was a regular (non-tube!) train to Victoria station, then District line, then change to Piccadilly line.

The Victoria station had a set of unavoidable stairs, surprising for a busy commuter station. Change between District and Piccadilly lines was smooth, just across the platform, at both Baron Ct and Hammersmith stations (maybe there are others as well, but these two for sure).

However, lesson for the future: While we enjoyed our research and our journey, all considered I feel that the bus X26 would have been our best option.

Somehow, to our hosts as well as myself "bus" had sounded automatically slow and "train" automatically fast, but the fact that we had to take three trains, go from one platform to another and then wait for the next one, negated the train's speed advantage. X26 would have taken us from E Croydon station to LHR directly and any time difference would have been insignificant.

YVR Cockroach

Try ths one: train to Olympia. I think the north bound rail line uses the same platform as the (4 times hourly) service back to Earls Court so no stairs there. There's an elevator here to go down to change to the westbound District line platforms, and there are elevators to the Piccadilly line too.

Not sure if there is direct service early enough to Olympia though.

Jimmie76

You are correct the north national rail trains do indeed use the same platform as the District Line and the first train to leave (on a weekday) is 07:18. Do beware some hours there are only 2 or 3 trains and this service is usually the first to get cut if there are problems on the line.

Another option is:

You can use the District/Circle lines from Kensington High Street (the Olympia shuttle other terminus) and get to Paddington from there without needing to use any stairs. There are lifts at Paddington from the tube to the main concourse and you can get the Heathrow Connect from there to LHR.

ramraideruk

Can I make another different suggestion.
Get the x26 bus. It will take about 76 mins and runs directly from East Croydon Train station to Heathrow bus station.
http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/use...__00000789.pdf
You can use your oyster card (90p for prepay now!) or your bus pass or travelcard.

aktchi

Just wanted to mention that the above link is nor working for me. However, I came to the same conclusion myself, as mentioned in post #11 above, and certainly second the recommendation.

In case somebody is planning to use this route in near future, I recall reading that you should allow extra time due to planned road construction. No big deal; in anything involving LHR I have learned always to allow a lot of extra time anyway.