Crossrail - operating discussion and opening day 24th May

[swt_passenger]

It’s good to see EL already being used by many and it’s impact will continue in the Autumn. It’s a shame no real consideration was given into the design of Abbey Wood station to extend services further towards Dartford as if the station was designed appropriately it would be easier to start this if demand continues to grow on this leg of the route. SE services on the loops with TL/EL services towards Dartford might be a sensible idea.

If they extend, I believe they’ll extend as two independent tracks making a total four track railway. The original plan did have the Crossrail pair rising between the SE pair, but they changed to the layout as actually built to make Plumstead stabling sidings (which were a late addition), easier to access.

I expect there was plenty of consideration of the pros and cons, it went to a Transport and Works Act (TWA) inquiry.

 

[ijmad]

Provision is there at Abbey Wood for an extension (safeguarded route is to Ebsfleet if I recall correctly) currently just one track but would not take much for the second as the space is there. This would only take the closure of the Felixstowe Road entrance and the movement of some electrical boxes and the creation of a more suitable junction so not exactly hard work.

I seem to recall that was ultimately the reason they decided to terminate the Liz Line on its own separated island platform rather than have it between the two Southeastern lines (which would have been better for customer interchange but much worse for any future extension).

 

[telstarbox]

You can't gold plate a scheme for every potential future configuration because there's only so much money available at the time you want to start building.

 

[Watershed]

I seem to recall that was ultimately the reason they decided to terminate the Liz Line on its own separated island platform rather than have it between the two Southeastern lines (which would have been better for customer interchange but much worse for any future extension).

There could at least have been cross-platform interchange between the southern EL platform and eastbound North Kent line. That wouldn't impede a future extension.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I seem to recall that was ultimately the reason they decided to terminate the Liz Line on its own separated island platform rather than have it between the two Southeastern lines (which would have been better for customer interchange but much worse for any future extension).

That may have been a factor. There was also a desire to reduce the cost of building it. If I recall correctly, in 2010 the incoming coalition Government launched a review of the Crossrail proposals to check that it was worth building and see if it could be built any more cheaply. I believe the design around Abbey Wood was changed to have the EL lines North of the SouthEastern ones as a result of that review. Another motivation for the change was it made building the whole thing less disruptive to the SouthEastern lines.

As others have pointed out, it will make it easier/cheaper to extend the EL later on, although on the other hand it also means that any such extension will be 4-track paired-by-route, rather than the more useful (to passengers) paired-by-direction.

There could at least have been cross-platform interchange between the southern EL platform and eastbound North Kent line. That wouldn't impede a future extension.

I believe making Abbey Wood have the two island platforms was another design-change that was done to save money following the 2010 review. Sadly, the change also made it impossible to have an entrance to the station on Wilton Road, where the previous main entrance was.

 

[thomalex]

I've been looking into the missing interchanges on Crossrail. I thought there were just two but I've discovered a third that would have been really useful:

1. Farringdon link to Barbican Circle, H&C and Met lines - This was to be built into far west side of the Barbican platforms with passengers travelling up from the EL to a new footbridge emerging out of the embankment walls and stairs/lifts down to the platforms. You can see the end building that would have been demolished to build this connection with windows boarded up on Street View here. This was envisaged to be the main interchange with the Circle, H&C and Met lines and explains why the connection at Farringdon is sub par having to cross the street. I'm not sure why or when this was dropped but it seems plans were quite well developed and property bought.
2. Tottenham Court Road link to Central line - The was to be built onto the end of the new passageway which runs parallel to the Central and plans show at some point this would have had a seperate run of escalators running up to Dean Street connecting this entrance in with the Central and Northern lines along with a low level link from the EL platforms. It's now anticipated this link will be constructed as part of Crossrail 2 which will sit underneath the EL. You may notice there is space at the Dean Street entrance to add a fourth escalator when/if Crossrail 2 comes about. The reason for this seems to be the preferred connection with the Central line taking place at Bond Street and it was seen as unnecessary until Crossrail 2 was built which would be a key connection. It's a shame to lose the access to the Underground from Dean Street however costs had to be reigned in somewhere I guess.
3. Paddington link to Circle and District lines - This was a surprise but actually makes a lot of sense. This short link was planned from the far south eastern end of the EL concourse and would run under Praed Street linking with Circle and District line station. If anyone here has used the existing narrow tunnel under Praed Street you will know how overloaded this can become and it's a shame this wasn't built to add much needed capacity here along with being able to interchange without having to traverse the mainline station. Why was this dropped? I've read that the link to the Bakerloo, originally planned as a relatively shallow tunnel, had to be dug at a lower level that anticipated and this added to cost. I presume it was dropped in a response to this with the Bakerloo link prioritised. I can however see this link being needed sooner rather than later given how overloaded the existing Praed Street tunnel is.

 

[ijmad]

Very interesting, especially the Paddington one which I hadn't seen before.

I guess all is not lost when it comes to these links, given how large the Crossrail concourses are you could probably get away with walling off a little to do a breakthrough for a new passenger link without even shutting down the service.

I could imagine the Barbican link being constructed to bring step free access to the station at some point in the future, especially with the expected redevelopment of Smithfields Market another entrance might be needed for passenger volumes that may end up regularly commuting through, along with some lifts.

Paddington might be constructed in future when TfL's finances are in better shape similarly to relieve the main Crossrail entrance. I've always thought a stronger link to the District/Circle at Praed St could make the Wimbleware services more attractive for those wanting to commute to the City or Canary Wharf.

Who knows...

 

[swt_passenger]

I've been looking into the missing interchanges on Crossrail. I thought there were just two but I've discovered a third that would have been really useful:

[…]
Paddington link to Circle and District lines - This was a surprise but actually makes a lot of sense. This short link was planned from the far south eastern end of the EL concourse and would run under Praed Street linking with Circle and District line station. If anyone here has used the existing narrow tunnel under Praed Street you will know how overloaded this can become and it's a shame this wasn't built to add much needed capacity here along with being able to interchange without having to traverse the mainline station. Why was this dropped? I've read that the link to the Bakerloo, originally planned as a relatively shallow tunnel, had to be dug at a lower level that anticipated and this added to cost. I presume it was dropped in a response to this with the Bakerloo link prioritised. I can however see this link being needed sooner rather than later given how overloaded the existing Praed Street tunnel is.
View attachment 115494

We discussed the removal of the District Circle link in the original Crossrail construction thread a couple of weeks ago. There was another drawing where (as you note) the Bakerloo link ran at a higher level just under the lawn, but the link to Praed St was a “T junction“ with it, rather than shown separately at the end of the Crossrail station as in your diagram.

 

[SynthD]

That Paddington link looks very short. It may have been taken out because there is not room to act as a sponge for a queue in excess of capacity.

 

[swt_passenger]

That Paddington link looks very short. It may have been taken out because there is not room to act as a sponge for a queue in excess of capacity.

It all adds up to good reasons not to bother. And a trench under the road at the right level looks simple but could have disturbed significant amounts of utilities…

 

[345 050]

I attempted to do EL to Central at Tottenham Court Road twice today and failed horribly. There is a passageway at the eastern end of the crossrail platform which leads to a Warren of passages. I believe all these passages lead to the Northern line platforms. It looks like it is possible to do EL to Northern to Central. But I do not have enough knowledge of the existing layout to work out the quickest way to do this. Interestingly some of the signs in these passages say Northern line and Central line, but other signs have Central blanked out, which was interesting. Certainly the Interchange with Northern line is fairly good at TCR. Have not yet attempted Moorgate/Liverpool Street interchange to Northern line, I look forward to that one.

Worth pointing out that Whitechapel, woolwich, and possibly Custom House(?) were not originally proposed to have crossrail stations, which may explain why they do not have fantastic interchanges.

 

[AlbertBeale]

I've been looking into the missing interchanges on Crossrail. I thought there were just two but I've discovered a third that would have been really useful:

1. Farringdon link to Barbican Circle, H&C and Met lines - This was to be built into far west side of the Barbican platforms with passengers travelling up from the EL to a new footbridge emerging out of the embankment walls and stairs/lifts down to the platforms. You can see the end building that would have been demolished to build this connection with windows boarded up on Street View here. This was envisaged to be the main interchange with the Circle, H&C and Met lines and explains why the connection at Farringdon is sub par having to cross the street. I'm not sure why or when this was dropped but it seems plans were quite well developed and property bought.
2. Tottenham Court Road link to Central line - The was to be built onto the end of the new passageway which runs parallel to the Central and plans show at some point this would have had a seperate run of escalators running up to Dean Street connecting this entrance in with the Central and Northern lines along with a low level link from the EL platforms. It's now anticipated this link will be constructed as part of Crossrail 2 which will sit underneath the EL. You may notice there is space at the Dean Street entrance to add a fourth escalator when/if Crossrail 2 comes about. The reason for this seems to be the preferred connection with the Central line taking place at Bond Street and it was seen as unnecessary until Crossrail 2 was built which would be a key connection. It's a shame to lose the access to the Underground from Dean Street however costs had to be reigned in somewhere I guess.
3. Paddington link to Circle and District lines - This was a surprise but actually makes a lot of sense. This short link was planned from the far south eastern end of the EL concourse and would run under Praed Street linking with Circle and District line station. If anyone here has used the existing narrow tunnel under Praed Street you will know how overloaded this can become and it's a shame this wasn't built to add much needed capacity here along with being able to interchange without having to traverse the mainline station. Why was this dropped? I've read that the link to the Bakerloo, originally planned as a relatively shallow tunnel, had to be dug at a lower level that anticipated and this added to cost. I presume it was dropped in a response to this with the Bakerloo link prioritised. I can however see this link being needed sooner rather than later given how overloaded the existing Praed Street tunnel is.

View attachment 115494

Re No 1 here - aha - so my musings elsewhere on this thread weren't just my invention ... there had been a plan for X/Rail to focus mainly on the T/Link connection at Farringdon, with the recommended connection to and from the SSL lines elsewhere (though I'd imagined that meant L'pool St, rather than via Moorgate - woops, I mean Barbican of course - from one end of the Farringdon platforms). The scheme as shown here does look to be a good idea - or would have been...

And I'd certainly have liked the District/Circle Praed Street link - getting to those platforms from Paddington is certainly often a struggle.

 

[grandgarrande]

Re No 1 here - aha - so my musings elsewhere on this thread weren't just my invention ... there had been a plan for X/Rail to focus mainly on the T/Link connection at Farringdon, with the recommended connection to and from the SSL lines elsewhere (though I'd imagined that meant L'pool St, rather than via Moorgate - woops, I mean Barbican of course - from one end of the Farringdon platforms). The scheme as shown here does look to be a good idea - or would have been...

And I'd certainly have liked the District/Circle Praed Street link - getting to those platforms from Paddington is certainly often a struggle.

Worth pointing out that Whitechapel, woolwich, and possibly Custom House(?) were not originally proposed to have crossrail stations, which may explain why they do not have fantastic interchanges.

Sadly with all the cost overruns with the Crossrail stations (Whitechapel going 7 times over budget, Bond Street going 5.5 times going over budget) we are just going to have to make do with some of these inefficient interchanges and also bond street is going to be a 3 min walk to the Jubilee and central line platforms too.

In my opinion Moorgate is a robust interchange for the SSL. Two escalators to the top (as the platforms are 34m deep) and then stairs or lifts down.

When the GEML and GWML hooks up to the central section overloading of the central line will reduce.

The same issues would still be present with Victoria and St. Pancras crossrail 2 stations which will have to be build at least 250m away from any preexisting station tunnels

 

[tomuk]

Ignoring the 'secret' lift at Farringdon East End to Barbican Westbound the walk between the Farringdon East End exit and Barbican is only 180m, along Long Lane and turn Left.

 

[hwl]

I've been looking into the missing interchanges on Crossrail. I thought there were just two but I've discovered a third that would have been really useful:

1. Farringdon link to Barbican Circle, H&C and Met lines - This was to be built into far west side of the Barbican platforms with passengers travelling up from the EL to a new footbridge emerging out of the embankment walls and stairs/lifts down to the platforms. You can see the end building that would have been demolished to build this connection with windows boarded up on Street View here. This was envisaged to be the main interchange with the Circle, H&C and Met lines and explains why the connection at Farringdon is sub par having to cross the street. I'm not sure why or when this was dropped but it seems plans were quite well developed and property bought.

Farringdon/ Barbican was dropped when they ran into geological issues (more faults than the ground surveys found) and it needed redesigning some elements so they cut some other stuff to save money and try to get back on time. The changes effectively required pausing Barbican works and accepting much delayed opening at Barbican for the planned opening date if they were still to occur.

Indirectly covered (badly) in the second documentary episode...

 

[345 050]

Re No 1 here - aha - so my musings elsewhere on this thread weren't just my invention ... there had been a plan for X/Rail to focus mainly on the T/Link connection at Farringdon, with the recommended connection to and from the SSL lines elsewhere (though I'd imagined that meant L'pool St, rather than via Moorgate - woops, I mean Barbican of course - from one end of the Farringdon platforms). The scheme as shown here does look to be a good idea - or would have been...

Farringdon/ Barbican was dropped when they ran into geological issues (more faults than the ground surveys found) and it needed redesigning some elements so they cut some other stuff to save money and try to get back on time. The changes effectively required pausing Barbican works and accepting much delayed opening at Barbican for the planned opening date if they were still to occur.

Indirectly covered (badly) in the second documentary episode...

Getting it back on time? Well that went well didn't it.....

 

[AM9]

Getting it back on time? Well that went well didn't it.....

Pressing on regardless could have made the delay worse, giving those who just want to complain about the delay even more excuses.

 

[Mikey C]

That may have been a factor. There was also a desire to reduce the cost of building it. If I recall correctly, in 2010 the incoming coalition Government launched a review of the Crossrail proposals to check that it was worth building and see if it could be built any more cheaply. I believe the design around Abbey Wood was changed to have the EL lines North of the SouthEastern ones as a result of that review. Another motivation for the change was it made building the whole thing less disruptive to the SouthEastern lines.

The whole station was a massively disruptive rebuild anyway, involving months of weekend closures.

The original Southeastern station had 2 separate platforms with the tracks in between, so the island platform there now is completely new.

 

[Dave W]

Purely out of interest, is the tunnel between Bakerloo and EL at Paddington brand new? It looked modern, but felt distinctly too grubby for one week's worth of use when I used it yesterday... Spillages, dirty floors, walls, etc.

Other than that - and the documented live data issue at Paddington (the third train was 12 min away whilst the next train was 17 yesterday!) - I really enjoyed the experience. Miles away from using the tube. Stations are vast.

 

[345 050]

Purely out of interest, is the tunnel between Bakerloo and EL at Paddington brand new? It looked modern, but felt distinctly too grubby for one week's worth of use when I used it yesterday... Spillages, dirty floors, walls, etc.

Other than that - and the documented live data issue at Paddington (the third train was 12 min away whilst the next train was 17 yesterday!) - I really enjoyed the experience. Miles away from using the tube. Stations are vast.

Can't imagine there was a tunnel there before, so I imagine it's new for crossrail.

 

[samulih]

Good article on poss. extension re:Abbey Wood https://www.fromthemurkydepths.co.u...lizabeth-line-to-ebbsfleet-and-kent-on-again/

Bexley Council are again seeking feedback on plans to extend Crossrail beyond Abbey Wood towards Dartford and possibly Ebbsfleet.

Option 1 now sees “8 of the 12 Elizabeth line trains per hour that will terminate at Abbey Wood are extended eastwards, sharing the existing North Kent line tracks with Southeastern and Thameslink services.”

Option 2 is “all 12 Elizabeth line trains per hour that will terminate at Abbey Wood are extended eastwards to Dartford on a new segregated railway, which would run adjacent to the existing North Kent line tracks.”

Option 3 sees sees two new bus routes and Southeastern services from Dartford to Northfleet extended from four to eight per hour. No Elizabeth Line services would be extended.

 

[swt_passenger]

Purely out of interest, is the tunnel between Bakerloo and EL at Paddington brand new? It looked modern, but felt distinctly too grubby for one week's worth of use when I used it yesterday... Spillages, dirty floors, walls, etc.

Definitely all built brand new for Crossrail. It wasn’t even opened at the same time as the rest of the Paddington facilities on the day, but it‘s mentioned in post #91 of this thread as being opened by 1100, and “pleasant and spotlessly clean”!

 

[yorkie]

Good article on poss. extension re:Abbey Wood https://www.fromthemurkydepths.co.u...lizabeth-line-to-ebbsfleet-and-kent-on-again/

I note the article is 11 months old now though. If anyone would like to speculate on these proposals, they are welcome to do so in the speculative discussion section.

 

[AM9]

Good article on poss. extension re:Abbey Wood https://www.fromthemurkydepths.co.u...lizabeth-line-to-ebbsfleet-and-kent-on-again/

Their comment on Option 1 mentions the operational impact of running two separate services on one pair of tracks but completely ignores the not inconsiderable problems of SE being 3rd rail and the Lizzie being 25kv OLE.

 

[Watershed]

but completely ignores the not inconsiderable problems of SE being 3rd rail and the Lizzie being 25kv OLE.

There is nothing fundamentally unfeasible about this. The intensively used Thameslink core has a section of dual electrification, as do the North and West London Lines.

 

[hwl]

Their comment on Option 1 mentions the operational impact of running two separate services on one pair of tracks but completely ignores the not inconsiderable problems of SE being 3rd rail and the Lizzie being 25kv OLE.

Rolling stock was specified for easy conversion to dual voltage.

Getting it back on time? Well that went well didn't it.....

Pressing on regardless could have made the delay worse, giving those who just want to complain about the delay even more excuses.

Farringdon was more on time and budget than any of the other below ground core stations (TCR a good runner up). Have a look at the order station were accepted in.

Farringdon was also unusual in that the station civils and fit out were split into separate contracts forcing more transparency and openness early on.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

There is nothing fundamentally unfeasible about this. The intensively used Thameslink core has a section of dual electrification, as do the North and West London Lines.

It's a real pain in the proverbial to make work though, hence why there are no long stretches with both types of electrification. The changeover sections on NLL/TL, and dual-electrified stretches out of Euston are kept to a minimum for a good reason.

 

[345 050]

Just overheard some passengers at Abbey Wood complaining about lack of oyster validators. What's odd is that a lot of thought went into the additional Interchange bridges. But obviously not quite enough to realise that validators would be required. Are any other stations apart from Custom House/Farringdon affected by these issues?

 

[43102EMR]

Just overheard some passengers at Abbey Wood complaining about lack of oyster validators. What's odd is that a lot of thought went into the additional Interchange bridges. But obviously not quite enough to realise that validators would be required. Are any other stations apart from Custom House/Farringdon affected by these issues?

According to TfL they are “preparing a long-term solution” to this issue, as was stated on a whiteboard upon arrival at the Elizabeth Line Farringdon platforms:

 

[thomalex]

In my opinion Moorgate is a robust interchange for the SSL. Two escalators to the top (as the platforms are 34m deep) and then stairs or lifts down.

This I agree with. Personally I feel there should be some way of highlighting the 'best connection' stations, maybe as part of the train announcements.

Barbican remains a rather strange station with it's abandoned platforms, sawn off roof, poor access to the Barbican itself and the general neglected feel of the place for a central station. Surely it must be ripe for some over station development given its location and I do wonder if this factored into the reasons to abandon the plans to link in with Crossrail and make fully step free for now.