A FORMER rail engineer says that extending the Crossrail service from London Liverpool Street to Southend Victoria station is by no means “a ridiculous aspiration”.

James Miller, 69, of Tottenham Road in North London, is a retired train engineer, who worked on a number of projects during the Seventies, including creating software for the design and construction of the Channel Tunnel.

Mr Miller put together a number of calculations and discovered that a Crossrail train would indeed be beneficial to commuters who use the line.

He discovered that Crossrail trains could go from Liverpool Street to Southend Victoria, stopping at all stations en route, in 76 minutes.

This uses Crossrail’s predicted time of 41 minutes from Liverpool Street to Shenfield and the 35 minutes of travel between Shenfield and Southend.

But Crossrail’s trains are modern and are reckoned a save a couple of minutes between each station.

As there are seven stops between Shenfield and Southend, this could save as much as 14 minutes.

In addition, the Shenfield to Southend Line has an 80mph speed limit, whereas the Crossrail trains are good for 90mph if the infrastructure is in place.

This means that it could be possible for a Crossrail train, stopping at all stations, to achieve a time of about or even under an hour.

Currently, the fastest London to Southend Victoria express services take that time.

Mr Miller believes there is no reason in future why the Crossrail high-speed service should not be extended to incorporate stations on the line between London Liverpool Street and Southend Victoria and says an express service could complete the journey in well under an hour.

He said: “I believe this could certainly work. Crossrail between Liverpool Street and Southend Victoria could probably take an hour stopping at all stations, but could be significantly quicker.”