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TfL Rail

We’ve discovered there is now a TfL Rail section on the TfL website for the Liverpool Street to Romford and Shenfield services.  Including the new timetable.

TfL Rail starts on Sunday May 31st, and will appear on the new Tube map (still yet to be published) as a ‘cased’ blue colour line.  Keep your eyes peeled for the new map!

TfL Rail

TfL Rail

19 May 15

Unofficial Crossrail Map

Ian over at RandomlyLondon has found a Reddit user that’s created an unofficial tube map of London, including what it will look like once Crossrail is in place.

Click on the map for a link to the full sized version.

Central London Crossrail

Central London Crossrail

19 Aug 14

New Pudding Mill Lane Station Open

The new Docklands Light Railway Pudding Mill Lane station, which is now the largest on the DLR network, was open today to the public for the first time; so, of course, we went along there to have a look for ourselves.

New Pudding Mill Lane

New Pudding Mill Lane

The new concrete and glass station is in a slightly different location, as the previous station is being demolished to make way for the Crossrail tunnel portal at Pudding Mill Lane where it will join existing railway lines through North East London to Essex. DLR passengers will be able to interchange with Crossrail at Stratford station. The new station is also double-tracked and trains arrive there together regularly as clockwork, Crossrail say this will boost capacity and enable the railway to carry an extra 1,100 passengers per hour on the route between Stratford and Canary Wharf / Lewisham.

The New Platforms

The New Platforms

There were many other people there, taking photographs and generally having a look at the pristine new station on its opening day and a surprising number of staff (we counted at least 7 or 8), for what until 10 days ago was a tiny station, we’re not sure why or if they were suddenly expecting an influx of passengers now the station is bigger! However we noticed that the lifts aren’t presently working so it may have been they were there to assist with accessibility needs until the snagging work going on by the builders is completed.

Pudding Mill Lane - Old Station

Pudding Mill Lane – Old Station

It was also very noisy, as the work has already begun to demolish the old station.

Of the people there, we were lucky enough to be able to meet the architect of the new station, Dan Moore, who was taking photographs of his work and was justifiably proud of what had been achieved with a DLR station, compared to the old “Tin shed in the sky” as he put it.

He very kindly pointed out some interesting features of the station to us, that aren’t immediately obvious to the casual observer.

e.g. Presently, there are three staircases side-by-side up to each of the platforms. But, underneath the outside two staircases, they have already built escalator pits and space for machine-gear, so once the stations gets busier they can simply lift the staircases out and install escalators. Clever eh?!

Pudding Mill Lane Exterior

Pudding Mill Lane Exterior

Also, as you enter the station (currently behind hoardings) there is a large brick façade. This façade currently conceals 1000 square metres of retail space, so when it’s needed, it can be demolished and shops fitted out in its place. There’s even a yard area behind the station for deliveries and refuse etc, again all planned for future expansion as the surrounding area becomes more developed, and the station busier.

Pudding Mill Lane - Exit

Pudding Mill Lane – Exit

Outside the station there is still some Crossrail work and access required, so there is a hoarded off walkway to get you to Stratford High Street, and also a separate access route to take you onto the Greenway (which is well worth a walk on if you’ve never been there), the View Tube and on to the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park (but it wasn’t signposted as such).

Diamond Geezer was down there at 7am when it opened has now put a complete Flickr gallery of photos online.

And lastly, of course, no Station Master visit to a station would be complete without the obligatory noting of the best exits, counting the steps and facilities and a sketch map of the station so we can update that information for the next release of the App!

28 Apr 14

Non-stop Bond Street

So the Central Line is not stopping at Bond Street for a couple of months due to Crossrail works, but on our first pass through last night, we noticed that although the ‘Station Closed’ sign was of course up, it was just the usual ‘back of the tube map’ variant swung out, and wasn’t as nice the ‘Station Closed‘ signs where the WHOLE station had been decorated as such when Edgware Road on the Bakerloo was closed recently – although that was for a much longer period of time.

Which means this is the ‘pass thru’ photo that we snapped as we travelled slowly through …

Non-stop at Bond Street

Non-stop at Bond Street

 

27 Apr 14

Farewell, Pudding Mill Lane

The original Pudding Mill Lane – a windswept island platform with single staircase and lift – is closing on Thursday 17th April.

Pudding Mill Lane

Pudding Mill Lane

That’s because a new Pudding Mill Lane station is opening 200 metres to the east, as the original station is slap bang in the middle of where some major Crossrail works need to be, so they’ve had to move the station – by building a completely new station.

The new Pudding Mill Lane will open on the 28th April, meaning that for 10 days, there will be no DLR services on this branch between Poplar and Stratford.   But before then, get down to the old PML station to see it before it goes …

Pudding Mill Lane

Pudding Mill Lane

 

02 Apr 14

Liverpool Street Crossrail Station progress

After our visit a couple of weekends ago to the sites of the new Bond Street Crossrail station that are currently under construction this week we were able to visit part of the new Crossrail Liverpool Street Station.

Just like Bond Street, as the new station has very long platforms, it will also have two ticket halls; a western one at Moorgate (the station entrance in Moorfields) and an eastern one at Blomfield Street. At these sites, shafts that will provide ventilation and emergency access, and house mechanical and electrical equipment for the new ticket halls are currently under construction. There will also be connecting corridors at each ticket hall to enable interchange between The Underground at Moorgate and Liverpool Street.

The 250 metre long platform tunnels are currently being excavated and constructed from a temporary worksite in Finsbury Circus. Crossrail’s tunnel boring machines will travel through these tunnel later in 2014 to complete the route to Farringdon.

You can see the Finsbury Circus site in the background of the photograph below.  The area behind the blue hoardings is a compensation grouting shaft site.  The red coloured construction to the left was a device intended to load lorries taking away earth from the site, but was found to be too noisy in practical operation. Noise is constantly measured by microphones (see if you can spot them on the buildings) and any breach of the noise regulations is notified by text message to the contractors and the City of London automatically.

Crossrail Moorgate Shaft site

Crossrail Moorgate Shaft site

The existing ABN AMRO Bank building on the site was demolished and some of the piles that used to support it removed before work commenced on the shaft itself in 2013.

Crossrail Shaft Construction at Moorgate

Crossrail Shaft Construction at Moorgate

86 tonne mobile crane at Moorgate

86 tonne mobile crane at Moorgate

60 metre high diaphragm walls were constructed first (you can see these around the outside and are textured identically to the ground from which they were dug), the supporting structure for the mobile crane was put into the ground (it is further cross braced as it gets revealed as the excavation progresses) and then the actual excavation of the material in the shaft commenced.

Reinforced concrete supporting rings (containing 2000 tonnes of steel) are constructed as the shaft gets deeper to support the walls.  Once complete the shaft will be 40 metres deep.

The mobile crane in use is brand new, weighs 86 tonnes and was delivered from Switzerland at Christmas. A very exciting Christmas present for the project the site manager told us!  One for the crane-spotters!

We’ll also be posting about the Crossrail Whitechapel and Farringdon sites later on in February too.

10 Feb 14

Bond Street Crossrail Station progress

This weekend we were lucky enough to be able to visit both sites of the new Bond Street Crossrail station that are currently under construction.

The new station will have two ticket halls, the western is at 65 Davies Street (behind the current Underground station) and the eastern is on the corner of Hanover Square and Tenterden Street.

From the 2nd floor of Crossrail’s offices next door we were able to get a birds-eye view over the Davies Street site:

Bond Street Western Ticket Hall site.

Bond Street Western Ticket Hall site.

The walls and excavation for the 25-metre deep ticket hall at Davies Street were completed by Costain Skanska Joint Venture (CSJV) last year and the site has now been handed over to Crossrail’s tunnelling contractor BFK who will construct the pedestrian access tunnels and station platforms.  The site will then be handed back to CSJV who will complete the ground floor.  Another developer will add further storeys to the building which will be clad in bronze.

The Bond Street platform tunnels were completed last year when tunnel boring machine “Phyliss” passed just to the south of the station box.  This was followed by TBM “Ada” whose route went directly through the site of the (at the time unexcavated) station.  BFK now have to mine from the station box to reach the southern platform tunnels.

This part of the station has been built directly over the Jubilee line and many controls were in place between CSJV, Crossrail and TfL to make sure that no damage could accidentally occur.  The site will also be connected by a new pedestrian tunnel to the new Bond Street Underground station ticket hall and entrance on Marylebone Lane over the road north of Oxford Street, so you will be able to interchange with the Jubilee and Central lines here.

The two platform tunnels connect the Davies Street site to the Hanover Square site a short distance away.  The platforms are 250 metres in length (the length of two and a half international football pitches) and each Crossrail train will have a capacity of 1,500 passengers.  In fact, passenger flows in the station have been modelled in such a way that it can be evacuated in 7 minutes should two of these full trains completely empty one immediately after the other.

After viewing the Davies Street site, our group took a short walk to Bond Street itself, where behind an anonymous gate and building façade lies the Hanover Square site – we were able to get out onto a small roof there and look down onto the site:

Bond Street Crossrail Eastern Ticket Hall site.

Bond Street Crossrail Eastern Ticket Hall site.

Unlike at the Davies Street site which will be linked to Bond Street Underground station, despite its proximity to Oxford Circus Underground station, there will not be any link here.  This is deliberate as Oxford Circus station is one of the busiest.  It would also make the site into one huge station complex and make it unmanageable as far as evacuations are concerned.

At the Hanover Square site we were also able to see one of the “grout shafts”:

Bond Street Crossrail Grout Shaft

Bond Street Crossrail Grout Shaft

There are five of these shafts dotted around the sites with bores spreading radially out into the surrounding area.  Should movement of buildings be detected then grout, (concrete without the aggregate), can be pumped into the ground to stabilise it.  Movement is checked for automatically every seven minutes by remote control.  Crossrail have seen movement of only 23mm which is well inside their allowed tolerances.

Work is progressing well at Bond Street and Crossrail say “We’re half way there”.  Services in the central tunnel section are not due to open until December 2018 (pretty much 5 whole years away) and there will be a year of testing once all the infrastructure is complete in 2017.

The cost of the whole project? £14.8 billion, of which The Exchequer, TfL and Private companies are contributing one third each.

We’ll also be visiting the Crossrail Liverpool Street and Farringdon sites later on in February too.

03 Feb 14