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Crossrail opening delayed (opening date not yet known)

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Chris M

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Running Abbey Wood to Paddington is self contained within Crossrail signalling control system so they could have got the trains running prove the base software and then in parallel dealt with the interfaces. I reiterate this whole thing is being vastly more difficult that it should be by on overly complicated requirements with a resulting software production that has clearly got millions of permutations that need to be tested and proven that theres no 737MAX style software glitches.
While Abbey Wood to Paddington is self contained, that stretch of railway has no depots so you need a working interface to at least one of Ilford and Old Oak Common.
 
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hwl

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Yes, that's fine. I understand that. But surely Crossrail should be signing off the spec? It's hardly like they pointed at the hole in the ground and Crossrail just said 'put whatever you want in there', is it?

If it was completed ahead of rest of the schedule, argubly more reason to keep a very close eye on it instead of being stretched over fit out of a dozenish stations!
CR got the civils spec right most of the time but M+E has been a disaster there seems to have been some assumption that the contractors would do more than they did in this regard and they could be a bit hands off...
 

306024

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While Abbey Wood to Paddington is self contained, that stretch of railway has no depots so you need a working interface to at least one of Ilford and Old Oak Common.

Old Oak Common. 9 car units would be too long to maintain at Ilford, even a 7 car doesn’t quite fit in A shop.
 

matt_world2004

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Running Abbey Wood to Paddington is self contained within Crossrail signalling control system so they could have got the trains running prove the base software and then in parallel dealt with the interfaces. I reiterate this whole thing is being vastly more difficult that it should be by on overly complicated requirements with a resulting software production that has clearly got millions of permutations that need to be tested and proven that theres no 737MAX style software glitches.
A big problem is for ventilation purposes there can not be more than a certain amount of trains in a. Certain section the signalling struggles with this
 

Taunton

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While Abbey Wood to Paddington is self contained, that stretch of railway has no depots so you need a working interface to at least one of Ilford and Old Oak Common.
When the Blue Trains were introduced in Glasgow in 1961 (at a fraction of Crossrail cost) there were two separate networks, north and south, but only one depot, on the north side. Nothing prevented them moving the trains with a diesel loco across the about 2 mile freight link between the two halves.

You just have to think how to achieve things. There are, alas, far too many nowadays, and the railway unfortunately seems to have more than its fair share of them, whose opening approach is "you can't". Did nobody ever watch the film Apollo 13?
 
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Nicholas Lewis

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While Abbey Wood to Paddington is self contained, that stretch of railway has no depots so you need a working interface to at least one of Ilford and Old Oak Common.
Its the transition on the move thats the issue we know 345s work on plain vanilla 4 aspect signalling so as they would be ECS moves no drama stopping and swapping over signalling systems at the interface to get back to OOC. Targetting perfection is killing this project this industry used to be so brilliant and finding solutions and work arounds to run the service now its just a world of no can do
 

Chris M

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The issue here is the desire to use the "self-contained" Paddington-Abbey Wood section for testing without requiring a working interface between signalling systems. How do you propose to move trains from one or other of the depots to the core, which necessitates movements using at least two different signalling systems, without a working interface between the signalling systems?
There is, of course, no issue at all with moving trains between the eastern and western operating sections not via the core, but that's not relevant here.
 

Domh245

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Targetting perfection is killing this project this industry used to be so brilliant and finding solutions and work arounds to run the service now its just a world of no can do

A fudge now just means it needs fixing later. It's better (read, cheaper) to get it right once rather than implement a short term solution before then replacing it with the intended solution at a later date
 

Nicholas Lewis

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A big problem is for ventilation purposes there can not be more than a certain amount of trains in a. Certain section the signalling struggles with this
another example of over complicating things. These are wide bore tunnels not tube size yet the Victoria line didn't have such restrictions and unless the line operator intervened it was possible to have two trains between stations on certain sections.
 

Malcolmffc

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another example of over complicating things. These are wide bore tunnels not tube size yet the Victoria line didn't have such restrictions and unless the line operator intervened it was possible to have two trains between stations on certain sections.

The Victoria line is of course famous for being unbearably hot
 

kevin_roche

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Its the transition on the move thats the issue we know 345s work on plain vanilla 4 aspect signalling so as they would be ECS moves no drama stopping and swapping over signalling systems at the interface to get back to OOC. Targetting perfection is killing this project this industry used to be so brilliant and finding solutions and work arounds to run the service now its just a world of no can do

During the recent (December) Transport Committee meeting Mike Wild said that the transitions were now working. He did not say which transitions but it was in response to a question about Heathrow. I guess that is the ETCS to/from TPWS transitions, which were a late addition to requirements because of the lack of ETCS between Paddington and the Airport Junction, but it may be the TPWS to CBTC transitions too. He also said everyone was most worried about the transitions but they proved to be working.

I believe the current software issues are bugs that have been found in the Siemens Trainguard MT software used in the central section as there was a mention I read that some also affected Hong Kong metro though they had not noticed that before they checked specifically for them.

A big problem is for ventilation purposes there can not be more than a certain amount of trains in a. Certain section the signalling struggles with this

The timetable planning rules specify only two trains may be in any ventilation section at a time. A ventilation section appears to be a station platform or the section between any two stations. There are separate ventilation sections in each direction.
 

Taunton

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And also predating numerous current safety standards.
Well the JLE was outfitted with the latest state-of-the-art signalling in 1998-9, which never worked properly. So they went back, very quickly, to 2-aspect colour lights and tripcocks. Nobody whinged that it was not "current safety standards", because it worked perfectly well and perfectly safely. I wonder where the contingency plan for Crossrail if the signalling doesn't work is.
 

samuelmorris

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Well the JLE was outfitted with the latest state-of-the-art signalling in 1998-9, which never worked properly. So they went back, very quickly, to 2-aspect colour lights and tripcocks. Nobody whinged that it was not "current safety standards", because it worked perfectly well and perfectly safely. I wonder where the contingency plan for Crossrail if the signalling doesn't work is.
I'm not referring to the signalling system - I'm not aware of any argument that legacy signalling systems are inherently unsafe, just inefficient. The safety standards I'm referring to concern ventilation, evacuation routes, building materials etc.
 

mrmartin

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Now summer 2021 according to crossrail. Seems to have been moved up from autumn to summer in the space a few days?
 

stuu

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Well the JLE was outfitted with the latest state-of-the-art signalling in 1998-9, which never worked properly. So they went back, very quickly, to 2-aspect colour lights and tripcocks. Nobody whinged that it was not "current safety standards", because it worked perfectly well and perfectly safely. I wonder where the contingency plan for Crossrail if the signalling doesn't work is.
That only happened, at significant cost, because of the immovable deadline of 31 December 1999. If it weren't for that they may well have delayed the JLE until the signalling was working, and avoided the need to expensively resignal the line 10 years later.

Spending the time (and money) getting it right will be worthwhile once it works
 

kevin_roche

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Now summer 2021 according to crossrail. Seems to have been moved up from autumn to summer in the space a few days?

You are comparing apples and Oranges. Summer 2021 is what Crossrail are planning for. Autumn is what the TfL budget is planned around in case of any further delays, that's what recent headlines have focussed on. The press are not good at identifying the differences.
 

Taunton

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Nicholas Lewis

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Crossrail announcement here

http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/art...al-london-expected-to-commence-in-summer-2021

interesting that they are now anticpating full opening by mid 2022 which implies the addition of Shenfield and Reading services in Dec 2021 and May 2022 Timetable changes.

Looking on the Crossrail webpage they have a link http://www.crossrail.co.uk/construction/our-plan-to-complete-the-elizabeth-line/ which currently returns an error 404 code! So much for the transparency over what the plans are.
 

samuelmorris

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Crossrail announcement here

http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/art...al-london-expected-to-commence-in-summer-2021

interesting that they are now anticpating full opening by mid 2022 which implies the addition of Shenfield and Reading services in Dec 2021 and May 2022 Timetable changes.

Looking on the Crossrail webpage they have a link http://www.crossrail.co.uk/construction/our-plan-to-complete-the-elizabeth-line/ which currently returns an error 404 code! So much for the transparency over what the plans are.
I'd say it's a pretty good metaphor for the plans ;)
 

ijmad

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The timetable planning rules specify only two trains may be in any ventilation section at a time. A ventilation section appears to be a station platform or the section between any two stations. There are separate ventilation sections in each direction.

Does this place a hard limit on the future potential for frequency improvements? Obviously we know the line will be doing 24tph when it's fully operational and probably for a number of years after, but 28tph and even 32tph have all been suggested as possible in future if demand for these services grows. Personally I have a feeling 12tph to Canary Wharf / Abbey Wood will look inadequate quite quickly. If there's a safety limit on the number of trains in a section that might mean there's not a lot of headroom? Hope not!
 

kevin_roche

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Does this place a hard limit on the future potential for frequency improvements? Obviously we know the line will be doing 24tph when it's fully operational and probably for a number of years after, but 28tph and even 32tph have all been suggested as possible in future if demand for these services grows. Personally I have a feeling 12tph to Canary Wharf / Abbey Wood will look inadequate quite quickly. If there's a safety limit on the number of trains in a section that might mean there's not a lot of headroom? Hope not!

I believe that has been taken into account in the plans.
 

samuelmorris

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Does this place a hard limit on the future potential for frequency improvements? Obviously we know the line will be doing 24tph when it's fully operational and probably for a number of years after, but 28tph and even 32tph have all been suggested as possible in future if demand for these services grows. Personally I have a feeling 12tph to Canary Wharf / Abbey Wood will look inadequate quite quickly. If there's a safety limit on the number of trains in a section that might mean there's not a lot of headroom? Hope not!
Two trains between each station when the stations are only 1m30-2m30 apart from each other doesn't seem too limiting, I'm not really sure you could do much better than that anyway in normal service.
 

hwl

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Does this place a hard limit on the future potential for frequency improvements? Obviously we know the line will be doing 24tph when it's fully operational and probably for a number of years after, but 28tph and even 32tph have all been suggested as possible in future if demand for these services grows. Personally I have a feeling 12tph to Canary Wharf / Abbey Wood will look inadequate quite quickly. If there's a safety limit on the number of trains in a section that might mean there's not a lot of headroom? Hope not!
everything designed for 30tph bear in mind the other expansion option is to increase the trains to 11car.
 

HSTEd

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The issue here is the desire to use the "self-contained" Paddington-Abbey Wood section for testing without requiring a working interface between signalling systems. How do you propose to move trains from one or other of the depots to the core, which necessitates movements using at least two different signalling systems, without a working interface between the signalling systems?

How often does an all electric multiple unit with no toilets actually have to visit the depot?
Couldn't you just take a suitable track from the turnback siding at Paddington (or wherever the core signalling stops) to the depot under engineering possession and run a convoy of coupled units back and forth at night?
 
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