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ExcelLink

We popped down to the Excel centre yesterday, to take a sneak preview at the new 12-car Thameslink train which should be hitting the north-south rails of London by 2015. Although possibly the most interesting discovery that we didn’t know about was not the train itself, but the fact that there’s a new tunnel that’s been constructed which means that trains from St. Pancras heading north can link up with the line out of King’s Cross to Cambridge, and other destinations.

We wandered round the mock up train, lots of signage and information telling us how all wonderful and sexy the future is going to be be, whilst actually discovering that the amount of legroom for people sitting down isn’t great for tall people and felt more cramped than trains you get running local suburban service out of London.

New Thameslink Train

New Thameslink Train

A side bonus was seeing the construction works of Crossrail close by, and a change to Royal Victoria DLR that we didn’t know about. It’s now impossible to enter/exit the north side of the station using the escalator route at the eastern end, instead a new temporary footbridge (although one that I suspect shall be there for a couple of years) had been built at the western end of the station, with a new lift, and a whole new load of stairs for us to count. Expect that data to be in the next updated version of the App.

Royal Victoria Exit

Royal Victoria Exit