RMweb Gold Joseph_Pestell Posted August 31, 2016 RMweb Gold Share Posted August 31, 2016 I get the impression that what you can almost guarantee was carefully thought out in the original design might be found wanting in practice because the passengers weren't as carefully designed as the station. Next year (I think), it will be 50 years since we started to have ticket barriers on the Underground (Victoria Line). There are still passengers who struggle to use them. My late father (not very PC) used to describe such equipment as "not for dimmies". Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fenman Posted August 31, 2016 Share Posted August 31, 2016 It is interesting to compare it with the footbridge (nee transfer deck) at Reading... The (to my eyes) rather lovely 1960s stations on the Great Eastern - particularly Broxbourne and Harlow Town - have recently been through interesting changes. Originally designed with access stairs from the station to a covered bridge giving access to stairs down to each of the island platforms, the bridge was split longitudinally with a dividing wall. To the north was the passenger corridor, to the south a parcels corridor with huge lifts from the station and each of the platforms. With the death of parcels traffic, the dividing wall has now been demolished, the lifts swapped for passenger-operated jobs, and suddenly the overbridge is a vastly bigger, light-filled, welcoming space (even with a few shops on it at Broxbourne, and good waiting areas at both stations). Many people seem to hate 1960s architecture, but the best of it (and BR(ER) was blessed with some very talented modern architects) is both rather civilised and seems to be very adaptable. Paul Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ron Ron Posted August 31, 2016 Share Posted August 31, 2016 Lots of photos on the latest page of this thread..... http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=320395&page=44 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Lurker Posted September 1, 2016 Share Posted September 1, 2016 I avoided the chaos of yesterday - today is my first day of commuting into LBG on the Southeastern lines since the latest changes. My observations: 1. it is irritating to have to go down the stairs/escalators into the concourse only to have to go back up again to get to London Bridge Street. 2. the stairs/escalators seem even slower to traverse than the old "slopes" 3. there seem to be too few gates in the gateline Maybe as I get used to finding somewhere else to board the train, the irritation of 2 and 3 will diminish, and may be the slope will eventually reopen. However, reports of platforms being too skinny are misleading - at least compared to the old island platforms 1 and 2, which were far narrower and more dangerous when crowded. Hopefully the pm journey home will not be the nightmare it was yesterday Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium phil-b259 Posted September 1, 2016 RMweb Premium Share Posted September 1, 2016 I avoided the chaos of yesterday - today is my first day of commuting into LBG on the Southeastern lines since the latest changes. My observations: 1. it is irritating to have to go down the stairs/escalators into the concourse only to have to go back up again to get to London Bridge Street. 2. the stairs/escalators seem even slower to traverse than the old "slopes" 3. there seem to be too few gates in the gateline Maybe as I get used to finding somewhere else to board the train, the irritation of 2 and 3 will diminish, and may be the slope will eventually reopen. Nope - the old slopes (as in the west end subway access to the high level platforms are being completely obliterated* as:- (1) They are / were in the way of the new track layout / platform setup (2) There is a deliberate desire to try and spread passengers further along the platform and thus throughout the train. As has been noted before, many commuters seem determined to try and cram themselves into the first couple of London end coaches so as to be 'first off' at Charring Cross / Cannon Street (and the pre rebuild LB). Having the platform access points more or less in the middle of the platforms will hopefully encourage LB commuters to reposition themselves within the train - to the advantage of everybody. Yes it means they have a little further to walk, and yes at present some of those walks are made longer by the fact that there is still lots of rebuilding still to be done on the north side but the overall intention behind the changes is sound. *Some form of emergency escape will still be provided at the western ends of the high level platforms in accordance with current design regulations that require the provision of two means of escape / evacuation - but it is very much an emergency escape route and has not been designed to be used by hordes of commuters on a daily basis. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Lurker Posted September 2, 2016 Share Posted September 2, 2016 Shame. The reason people travel near the exit is that they want to minimise their travel time, including the walking bits. A nice concourse doesn't compensate. On a commuter station a concourse is to be traversed through as quickly as possible, not a grand point of departure/arrival. And to all intents and purposes London bridge is a commuter station, unlike say, St Pancras International. I find it strange that the slopes get in the way of the track layout as it passes over where the slopes come out - the walkway between the Tooley Street bridge and the station approach and the track/trains have happily been running above them for the past year or more. The planning seems to ensure that anyone from a Southeastern train who wants to either walk across London Bridge or go to London Bridge Street will now permanently have to go down the stairs/escalators and straight back up some more. And I have now realized what people mean about the platforms being two narrow - where the stairs/escalators come up gives very narrow platforms. Not as narrow as parts of the old platforms 1 and 2 however. Of course the narrow bits are where people want to be to get out near the exit at their station; Hither Green and Sidcup for sure, although Sidcup's footbridge is being moved down the platform so this will mix it up a bit. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium phil-b259 Posted September 2, 2016 RMweb Premium Share Posted September 2, 2016 Shame. The reason people travel near the exit is that they want to minimise their travel time, including the walking bits. A nice concourse doesn't compensate. On a commuter station a concourse is to be traversed through as quickly as possible, not a grand point of departure/arrival. And to all intents and purposes London bridge is a commuter station, unlike say, St Pancras International. I find it strange that the slopes get in the way of the track layout as it passes over where the slopes come out - the walkway between the Tooley Street bridge and the station approach and the track/trains have happily been running above them for the past year or more. The planning seems to ensure that anyone from a Southeastern train who wants to either walk across London Bridge or go to London Bridge Street will now permanently have to go down the stairs/escalators and straight back up some more. And I have now realized what people mean about the platforms being two narrow - where the stairs/escalators come up gives very narrow platforms. Not as narrow as parts of the old platforms 1 and 2 however. Of course the narrow bits are where people want to be to get out near the exit at their station; Hither Green and Sidcup for sure, although Sidcup's footbridge is being moved down the platform so this will mix it up a bit. Its not meant to compensate - as I pointed out NR / SE have enough problems with all the Charing Cross / Cannon Street commuters wanting to squeeze themselves into the first few coaches without adding London Bridge commuters as well. A human being takes up a certain amount of physical space and it is impossible for the entire train to cram themselves into the coach nearest the buffer stops and be out the station 'first', so why pretend it is somehow achievable. The placement of the station entrance / exits where they are at LB, should in theory, smooth the flow - hopefully in the peaks 50% of people will use one set of stairs / escalators with the other 50% using the other - rather than 100% all trying to file down a single subway as used to be the case. Of course in an ideal world the platforms would have their access points at either end to create a double ended station - but the physical constraints of the site plus the fact that the majority of users would want to use a western access as its closer to their end destination means the back to back escalator / stairs to a common concourse is as close as NR can get to said perfect setup. While yes this makes the middle of the platforms a bit narrow, the numbers of commuters travelling to or from Hither Green, etc pales into insignificance compared to the numbers expecting to be alighting / boarding at LB, so their needs must come first. Its a fact of life that station access points vary, and in some cases they will indeed coincide with the narrow sections of platform at LB, but short of physically widening the footprint of LB station as a whole there is not much that can be done about that. Naturally it will take a few months before commuters learn the new setup and train themselves up accordingly (note that is not a negative statement - people don't start commuting into London and know from day 1 exactly the best place to sit even if the station has stayed the same for the past 50 years - it takes time to build up the relevant knowledge) so in the meantime there are bound to be complaints / issues with people flow. Give it 6 months and I expect that it will flow just as well as the older setup did - and by 2018 when northern bit of the concourse and the currently restricted access passageways have been fully opened up things will be even better. So yes you have to walk further (mostly undercover) than you used to - but I fail to see why exactly fit and health commuters are making a fuss about it. Like it or not , the railway system these days has to increasingly be designed around ever increasing passenger numbers and the need to try and keep things flowing. Minimising platform dwell times by trying to space users out forms an integral part of that strategy, just as the removal of seats in favour of standing / squeezing as many as possible in every carriage is increasingly used at the expense of on board comfort. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fenman Posted September 4, 2016 Share Posted September 4, 2016 Here's an architecture critic's view. Paul Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium John M Upton Posted September 5, 2016 RMweb Premium Share Posted September 5, 2016 Well I took a look around the new lower levels during my break this lunchtime and promptly got lost. If you head through the ticket barriers from the platform escalators and go on straight ahead as is the logical route towards Tooley Street you will like me and plenty of others today wind up in a dead end adjacent to the toilets!!! It's all a bit of a mess..... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ron Ron Posted September 13, 2016 Share Posted September 13, 2016 Cannon St. lines now temporarily slewed across to the new future Thameslink platforms. Demolition of the last old section is now underway. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
grahame Posted September 13, 2016 Share Posted September 13, 2016 It's a great shame that they are demolishing the SER office 'flat iron' building which is a superb example of an unusually shaped five storey polychrome Victorian structure with it's quirky rocket model on the narrow end (labelled incorrectly as a V2). The Victorian Society is aghast and employed an architect to suggest how to provide a public plaza space and station access in the ground floor area which has been sadly ignored by Network Rail and their designers/developers. G. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ron Ron Posted October 9, 2016 Share Posted October 9, 2016 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium jamie92208 Posted October 9, 2016 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 9, 2016 That's great Ron and a fantastic amount of work in a month. I presume that the site was boarded off from the live railway so that it became a 'normal' construction site for Health and Safety purposes. Jamie Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Stationmaster Posted October 9, 2016 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 9, 2016 That's great Ron and a fantastic amount of work in a month. I presume that the site was boarded off from the live railway so that it became a 'normal' construction site for Health and Safety purposes. Jamie Standard procedure nowadays whenever possible - it avoids all sorts of expensive safety complications turning it into a construction site rather than a worksite on the railway although of course the CDM Regulations then come into play (and it's also subject to a different inspection regime as the Railways Inspectorate technically have no legal powers on a CDM site). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium jamie92208 Posted October 9, 2016 RMweb Premium Share Posted October 9, 2016 Standard procedure nowadays whenever possible - it avoids all sorts of expensive safety complications turning it into a construction site rather than a worksite on the railway although of course the CDM Regulations then come into play (and it's also subject to a different inspection regime as the Railways Inspectorate technically have no legal powers on a CDM site). Thanks for that Mike, I suspected that that was the case. Jamie Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold unravelled Posted October 9, 2016 RMweb Gold Share Posted October 9, 2016 There are a few pictures from today and last week, in my "London Bridge latest" Flickr album. https://www.flickr.com/photos/unravelled/albums/72157632556184415 One thing which surprised me is the use of chestnut paling fencing to separate the worksite from adjacent tracks. It looks oddly out of place in a high tech worksite. Thanks Dave Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold phil_sutters Posted November 16, 2016 RMweb Gold Share Posted November 16, 2016 Cannon St. lines now temporarily slewed across to the new future Thameslink platforms. Demolition of the last old section is now underway. I will own up to not having gone through all 35 pages of this thread, to see if there is a 'before' photo, to compare this with. If there hasn't been, here is one - taken from Southwark's mapping services contractor's office in 1, London Bridge. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ron Ron Posted November 17, 2016 Share Posted November 17, 2016 Views from Tooley St. now that demolition has given way to construction of the final phase........ https://www.flickr.com/photos/archoptical/30713922201/in/photolist-NN5T1M-MXMbpv-NVVmJZ-NKzt8h-NrqTPr-N7M55j-NrqMRK-N7M2jQ-NzcuHP-NrqEjF-N7LXFY-MBpJYo-Nw19Jb-NoSGNq-MBcQ7c-Nw11WC-N7LRzj-N7LQC9 https://www.flickr.com/photos/archoptical/30802596325/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/archoptical/30685550602/in/photostream/ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CwigE92WEAARpb3.jpg:large . Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ron Ron Posted November 17, 2016 Share Posted November 17, 2016 Time lapse videos of what lies behind the hoardings on Tooley St. The arches and last remains of the old station have gone, revealing the construction site and a view of what will be the 2nd half of the new low level concourse........ . Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Storey Posted November 18, 2016 Share Posted November 18, 2016 I will own up to not having gone through all 35 pages of this thread, to see if there is a 'before' photo, to compare this with. If there hasn't been, here is one - taken from Southwark's mapping services contractor's office in 1, London Bridge. London Bridge station - 7.11.2006.jpg That ugly, modern chocolate brown box building on the end of platform 1/2, is where I used to work on many weekends as London Bridge Eastern announcer and solari flaps operator (which were largely automatic when things ran well), when I was Cannon Street announcer (which closed on weekends) in the 1970's. I guess that is the last ever picture of it. Sad to see it go, although......it was quite claustrophobic and very ugly. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Oldddudders Posted November 18, 2016 RMweb Gold Share Posted November 18, 2016 That ugly, modern chocolate brown box building on the end of platform 1/2, is where I used to work on many weekends as London Bridge Eastern announcer and solari flaps operator (which were largely automatic when things ran well), when I was Cannon Street announcer (which closed on weekends) in the 1970's. I guess that is the last ever picture of it. Sad to see it go, although......it was quite claustrophobic and very ugly. ISTR it was found, some years after completion, to be out of gauge, and had to be given a tuck-job. More claustrophobic after that, no doubt. Was Tony Carter one of the regulars? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ron Ron Posted November 18, 2016 Share Posted November 18, 2016 Nightime view from above..... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxOKS3jXEAA0h5H.jpg Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Storey Posted November 18, 2016 Share Posted November 18, 2016 ISTR it was found, some years after completion, to be out of gauge, and had to be given a tuck-job. More claustrophobic after that, no doubt. Was Tony Carter one of the regulars? I really can't remember! Changeovers involved a quick hello/anything up?/goodbye, and my training at LB eastern consisted of Steve Murphy sitting with me for about 20 minutes until he felt he was needed down the pub. Whereas my training to operate LB Central was to spend an entire shift with Daisy Bell, for which Derek Best never stopped giving me schtick.... Back to topic.... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ron Ron Posted December 21, 2016 Share Posted December 21, 2016 A month on from the last videos of progress on the final phase. How are they getting on? Yesterday, 20th December 2016....... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ron Ron Posted December 21, 2016 Share Posted December 21, 2016 More from today (21st) ......... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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