Elizabeth Line / Crossrail Updates.

[Pacific231G]

A few photos from the Evening Standard showing work in progress on Crossrail.

Some photos show work going on in the deepened and refurbished Connaught Tunnel.

You can also see the OHLE conductor rail installed, or being installed.

 

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/revealed-amazing-images-show-progress-of-crossrail-engineering-work-with-18-months-to-go-a3579131.html#gallery

 

 

.

Interesting Ron

Has much use been made before of rigid OHLE conductor "rail;"  instead of a contact wire suspended from a catenary wire?

I know very little about OHLE but assume the advantage is that it is rigid so its position can be more closely defined relative to the tunnel roof and without a catenary wire requires less space as well as doing away with the tensioning weights etc. required for catenary.

Furrer+Frey who make it (is it their system that Crossrail is using?) also claim that it is "fix and forget" needing far less maintenance than catenary which they say would be particularly relevant in tunnels.

Would its disadvantage be that it is heavier than a catenary wire and possibly more difficult to zig zag to avoid wear on the pantograph collector head being in one place?

 

Interesting that in their own publicity film Crossrail refers to it as the "rigid overhead catenary system" which is of course a contradiction suggesting that they don't actually know what the word catenary means.

 

Update :I've just discovered that overhead rail is used ontunnel and trench sections of  ligne C of the Paris RER.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_line#/media/File:Overhead_rail_P1220601.jpg

and has been installed in the Simplon tunnel to enable a larger loading gauge.

Edited July 6, 2017 by Pacific231G

[pH]

Update :I've just discovered that overhead rail is used ontunnel and trench sections of  ligne C of the Paris RER.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_line#/media/File:Overhead_rail_P1220601.jpg

and has been installed in the Simplon tunnel to enable a larger loading gauge.

 

There was an earlier topic on here where several other applications were mentioned - http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/73388-how-common-is-this/

[unravelled]

I took a walk along Factory Rd last Saturday. Most masts are up, but no overhead cables yet, though there are plenty on the walls...

 

Photos in this album, https://www.flickr.com/photos/unravelled/albums/72157628656429811 , which i've reordered to put the new ones at the start.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[jetmorgan]

I can't see that this BBC news article has been posted yet.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40458246

[adanapress]

As yes, but how do they manage the transition from normal catenary, to the rigid, presumably just before the tunnel entrances.??

[jim.snowdon]

I can't see that this BBC news article has been posted yet.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40458246

What it doesn't tell you is that although West Drayton hasn't been entirely demolished, there has been equally little progress on its platform extensions or the new footbridge. The whole job of converting the stations to TfL's glass palaces appears to have ground to a standstill, with rumours of the money having run out. The cost of TfL vanity seems to have struck again.

 

Jim

[Ron Ron Ron]

As yes, but how do they manage the transition from normal catenary, to the rigid, presumably just before the tunnel entrances.??

 

 

Easily, just as in numerous examples both here in the UK and in other countries where conductor beam/rail is used.

 

 

 

Here's an example of a tunnel crossover using rail/beam.....

 

 

 

Another method.....

 

[WCML100]

great to hear about oyster being extended into heathrow! easier and cheaper journeys for me then

[phil-b259]

Its being reported that TfLs bid to increase Crossrail services to Reading have been sucessfull

 

http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/tfl-confirms-boost-to-elizabeth-line-train-frequency/

 

All things being equal (i.e. no increase in infrastructure capacity), that suggests that the remaining 'residual' GWR services to Reading have been abandoned and those living along the corridor will have to get used to the toiletless over sized tube trains for rail transport to / from the Capital.

 

Will the predictions of some (that the generally well off users will go back to commuting by high speced motor cars) be proved correct or will the improved reach of Crossrail into the Heart of London mean they put up with the interior downgrade.

[The Stationmaster]

Its being reported that TfLs bid to increase Crossrail services to Reading have been sucessfull

 

http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/tfl-confirms-boost-to-elizabeth-line-train-frequency/

 

All things being equal (i.e. no increase in infrastructure capacity), that suggests that the remaining 'residual' GWR services to Reading have been abandoned and those living along the corridor will have to get used to the toiletless over sized tube trains for rail transport to / from the Capital.

 

Will the predictions of some (that the generally well off users will go back to commuting by high speced motor cars) be proved correct or will the improved reach of Crossrail into the Heart of London mean they put up with the interior downgrade.

 

Well that's me back to increasing GWR's car park contractor's revenue in Reading if we are going to be 100% lumbered with these overgrown underground trains for journeys to/from London.  I wonder what the local commuter group will think of the news (which I have duly conveyed to them)?

 

I suspect that what is most likely is that more people will drive to Reading if it's near enough.

Edited July 13, 2017 by The Stationmaster

[Joseph_Pestell]

https://www.londonreconnections.com/2017/final-result-crossrail-heads-terminal-5/

 

Interesting article and some good photos. Shows that the 345s have been allowed out without yellow ends.

[Paul.Uni]

Proposed changes to London Buses as a result of Crossrail: https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/buses/elizabeth-line/

[The Stationmaster]

https://www.londonreconnections.com/2017/final-result-crossrail-heads-terminal-5/

 

Interesting article and some good photos. Shows that the 345s have been allowed out without yellow ends.

 

Interesting but whoever writes it is far from well informed about non-Crossrail matters.  The 30 minute interval on the Henley branch is something the local commuter group has been pressing GWR for over the past couple of years, or longer. and the big problem is line speeds which has meant that in order to comply with Timetable Planning Rules the off-peak weekday service at Wargrave has been reduced from a 45 minute interval to a 60 minute interval.  As it happens (and contrary to London Reconnections' inaccurate statement) Wargrave is not 'lightly used' and is in fact the most heavily used of the two intermediate stations on the branch line.

 

Talking of the branch  as 'a feeder to Crossrail' will no doubt further increase the ire of the local commuter groups whose particular interest is the shortest possible journey times to and from Paddington and they are currently offered by the through trains (to cease later this year) and connections into/out of HSTs.  Yet again it seem sthe Crossrail Londoncentric line of thought is actually not considering what local travellers actually want (including connections westwards from Twyford as far as the Henley & Marlow branches are concerned.

 

I am incidentally still waiting to see if the front or the back end of Crossrail trains will be platformed at Twyford in the Up direction as the platform is too short for a complete train and cannot be extended at either end.

[phil-b259]

Interesting but whoever writes it is far from well informed about non-Crossrail matters.  The 30 minute interval on the Henley branch is something the local commuter group has been pressing GWR for over the past couple of years, or longer. and the big problem is line speeds which has meant that in order to comply with Timetable Planning Rules the off-peak weekday service at Wargrave has been reduced from a 45 minute interval to a 60 minute interval.  As it happens (and contrary to London Reconnections' inaccurate statement) Wargrave is not 'lightly used' and is in fact the most heavily used of the two intermediate stations on the branch line.

 

Talking of the branch  as 'a feeder to Crossrail' will no doubt further increase the ire of the local commuter groups whose particular interest is the shortest possible journey times to and from Paddington and they are currently offered by the through trains (to cease later this year) and connections into/out of HSTs.  Yet again it seem sthe Crossrail Londoncentric line of thought is actually not considering what local travellers actually want (including connections westwards from Twyford as far as the Henley & Marlow branches are concerned.

 

I am incidentally still waiting to see if the front or the back end of Crossrail trains will be platformed at Twyford in the Up direction as the platform is too short for a complete train and cannot be extended at either end.

 

The whole tone of the London Reconnections (and other London centric websites) article on Crossrail is very much 'sod the needs of everyone outside the GLA area - its a London project for Londoners' mentality with those outside effectively being told to stop whining - London (and the views of those who live - and can of course vote in Mayoral / GLA elections) are far, far more important than anywhere else.

 

This is not just a Crossrail thing though, go back a few years when the sub-surface train replacement programme was underway and there were lots of complaints by passengers from the likes of Amersham, Rickmansworth and Watford about the inferior seating arrangements of the new S stock (lots more transverse / 'tube style' seating) compared to the previous A stock. As with Crossrail, such complaints were treated with destain by London bloggers who decreed that those living in the shire counties had no right to compromise the design of trains for the 'majority' of Londoners - particularly as said shire county residents were not part of London (i.e. they did not pay London council tax / business rates etc) and their 'frequent' tube services + low fares were being subsidised by those who did.

 

However to an extent such bloggers do have a point as:-

 

(i) In the core Crossrail will be very busy and if they want to get a very high frequency (TfL are looking to get up to 30tph, while Thamneslink has quite firmly said even 24tph will be tough to meet due to the number of users within the core section) then a tube train interior is a must

(ii) TfL - and indeed London's tax payers are stumping up the lions share of the money to build it, plus it needs to be recognised that it was only the levy being charged on London council tax payers and businesses (and the need to repay it if the scheme did not get completed) that prevented the Treasury from killing off the scheme at the height of the financial crisis (just as they had done many times before to previous attempts at building Crossrail)

(iii) The numbers don't lie - even if Thames Valley commuters do shun the new Crossrail trains, Crossrail will attract an enormous number of users in East and Central London which will more than make up for any lost revenue. From TfLs perspective the loss of a few thousand whiny Thames Valley commuters is very small beer - even if it makes GWR services / car parks even more overcrowded.

 

Thus critics of Crossrail face a big dilemma here. On the one hand, while they might resent the decisions TfL is arrogantly making, without TfLs involvement Crossrail simply wouldn't have been built as the Treasury would definitely have found a way to kill the scheme if it had stayed in the hands of the DfT when money got tight. As with the borders Railway (or indeed many other transport projects), the choice is rarely one of high spec / low spec or one mode versus another (guided bus vs tram) - its low spec or NOTHING as the purse holders in Whitehall say "stop being so ungrateful - do you want x or not?"

 

With Crossrail, everyone also agrees that there is a need for additional capacity across the centre of London to relieve the overcrowded Central line, that links between the city and Heathrow need to be better and that onward connections from Paddington (which has always suffered from being a long way from the key business / leisure districts of London) - all things Crossrail will help with. So whats it to be? do you oppose such projects on a "well I will be worse off so it shouldn't have gone ahead" mentality or do you take it on the chin for the grater good? Yes in an ideal world Crossrail would be more like Thameslink - but just look how much that has been delayed and mucked around with due to responsibility for driving the project fragmented at privatisation, no one company willing or able to push it forward in their own and with a sponsoring department under the cosh of the Treasury and which has a track record of delaying / cancelling things when told to.

Edited July 14, 2017 by phil-b259

[Joseph_Pestell]

The whole tone of the London Reconnections (and other London centric websites) article on Crossrail is very much 'sod the needs of everyone outside the GLA area - its a London project for Londoners' mentality with those outside effectively being told to stop whining - London (and the views of those who live - and can of course vote in Mayoral / GLA elections) are far, far more important than anywhere else.

 

This is not just a Crossrail thing though, go back a few years when the sub-surface train replacement programme was underway and there were lots of complaints by passengers from the likes of Amersham, Rickmansworth and Watford about the inferior seating arrangements of the new S stock (lots more transverse / 'tube style' seating) compared to the previous A stock. As with Crossrail, such complaints were treated with destain by London bloggers who decreed that those living in the shire counties had no right to compromise the design of trains for the 'majority' of Londoners - particularly as said shire county residents were not part of London (i.e. they did not pay London council tax / business rates etc) and their 'frequent' tube services + low fares were being subsidised by those who did.

 

However to an extent such bloggers do have a point as:-

 

(i) In the core Crossrail will be very busy and if they want to get a very high frequency (TfL are looking to get up to 30tph, while Thamneslink has quite firmly said even 24tph will be tough to meet due to the number of users within the core section) then a tube train interior is a must

(ii) TfL - and indeed London's tax payers are stumping up the lions share of the money to build it, plus it needs to be recognised that it was only the levy being charged on London council tax payers and businesses (and the need to repay it if the scheme did not get completed) that prevented the Treasury from killing off the scheme at the height of the financial crisis (just as they had done many times before to previous attempts at building Crossrail)

(iii) The numbers don't lie - even if Thames Valley commuters do shun the new Crossrail trains, Crossrail will attract an enormous number of users in East and Central London which will more than make up for any lost revenue. From TfLs perspective the loss of a few thousand whiny Thames Valley commuters is very small beer - even if it makes GWR services / car parks even more overcrowded.

 

Thus critics of Crossrail face a big dilemma here. On the one hand, while they might resent the decisions TfL is arrogantly making, without TfLs involvement Crossrail simply wouldn't have been built as the Treasury would definitely have found a way to kill the scheme if it had stayed in the hands of the DfT when money got tight. As with the borders Railway (or indeed many other transport projects), the choice is rarely one of high spec / low spec or one mode versus another (guided bus vs tram) - its low spec or NOTHING as the purse holders in Whitehall say "stop being so ungrateful - do you want x or not?"

 

With Crossrail, everyone also agrees that there is a need for additional capacity across the centre of London to relieve the overcrowded Central line, that links between the city and Heathrow need to be better and that onward connections from Paddington (which has always suffered from being a long way from the key business / leisure districts of London) - all things Crossrail will help with. So whats it to be? do you oppose such projects on a "well I will be worse off so it shouldn't have gone ahead" mentality or do you take it on the chin for the grater good? Yes in an ideal world Crossrail would be more like Thameslink - but just look how much that has been delayed and mucked around with due to responsibility for driving the project fragmented at privatisation, no one company willing or able to push it forward in their own and with a sponsoring department under the cosh of the Treasury and which has a track record of delaying / cancelling things when told to.

Yes, there is a fundamental difficulty in reconciling the needs of the busy city-centre core with the needs of longer distance travellers. That could probably have been better addressed by having Slough as the western terminus and cross-platform interchange at Old Oak Common.

[Zomboid]

I am incidentally still waiting to see if the front or the back end of Crossrail trains will be platformed at Twyford in the Up direction as the platform is too short for a complete train and cannot be extended at either end.

If the S stock on the circle line is anything to go by, it'll be the middle that gets platformed and the first and last however many doors won't open.

Though the location of signals will be an important factor in that as they'll obviously want to be able to open the doors whilst waiting at a red.

[phil-b259]

Yes, there is a fundamental difficulty in reconciling the needs of the busy city-centre core with the needs of longer distance travellers. That could probably have been better addressed by having Slough as the western terminus and cross-platform interchange at Old Oak Common.

 

Indeed

 

As has been noted, Thameslink also faces this problem - although as it generally seeks to avoid providing suburban train services in favour of 2tph to places beyond the GLA boundary (as opposed to 14tph all station stoppers mostly within it on the GEML for example), the resulting trains have been designed to try and cater more for the long distance traveller. The downside is dwell time issues in the core - one reason Crossrail has gone for 3 sets of doors per carriage rather than 2 on the 700s for example, and it is why there is no talk of going beyond 24tph for Thameslink, yet Crossrail could get close to 30tph.

[The Stationmaster]

Yes, there is a fundamental difficulty in reconciling the needs of the busy city-centre core with the needs of longer distance travellers. That could probably have been better addressed by having Slough as the western terminus and cross-platform interchange at Old Oak Common.

 

I can understand why it wasn't terminated at Slough (the most obvious western terminus for Crossrail) because of the lack of readily (i.e.cheaply/easily) available land on which to build sensible turnround and stabling facilities.  The space existed at Maidenhead to do that but i'm not at all sure, even with its expanded layout and additional platforms if reading will be able to reliably handle 4 Crossrail trains per hour in view of the other trains needing to use that side of the station.  Effectively there is likely to be at least one, and possibly two, additional turnrounds per hour at Reading and in order to achieve reliable running that will more less take complete use of two platforms - one of which is currently used at one end for Cross Country turnrounds.

 

Only a couple of days ago I noticed that a freight which was obviously standing at signals at the west end of the Relief Lines platforms was right back over the whole length of Vastern Road bridge at the east end blocking access to the two central Relief Line side platforms from the Down Relief.  This is admittedly an unusual occurrence but as it hadn't moved by the time i was driving under Caversham Road bridge at the other end it would certainly have been there long enough to 'hit' a Crossrail train running on a 15 minute interval with a reasonably robust turnround allowance  (equally of course it would 'hit' a GWR service).  The GWR plan would probably have had at least one, if not both, of its two trains per hour going west of Reading therefore reducing considerably platform dwell times and thus platform occupation.

 

The original Crossrail trainplan in the early '90s envisaged the use of a single platform at Reading and it quickly became obvious that it was totally incapable of handling 4 trains per hour turning round at Reading (I came up with a  novel solution to that which was built into the trainplan but never got into the public arena) and the basic laws of platform occupation haven't changed since then - two platform faces for 4 turnrounds per hour can cause problems and trains need to be on the dot for the trainplan to be reliable.

[The Stationmaster]

The local user group have taken up Crossrail's '4 trains per hour to Reading' statement with GWR and it looks as if all might possibly not be lost as the Mayoral announcement has jumped ahead of what GWR understand to be the case regarding track access discussions and franchise commitments.  However one user group member (no, not me, has proposed much rattling of cages at DfT, MPs (one of whom is currently the PM and very supportive of GWR initiatives).  So fingers at least possibly crossed and I'm waiting to see what reaction I get, if any, from Transport Focus.

[phil-b259]

The local user group have taken up Crossrail's '4 trains per hour to Reading' statement with GWR and it looks as if all might possibly not be lost as the Mayoral announcement has jumped ahead of what GWR understand to be the case regarding track access discussions and franchise commitments.  However one user group member (no, not me, has proposed much rattling of cages at DfT, MPs (one of whom is currently the PM and very supportive of GWR initiatives).  So fingers at least possibly crossed and I'm waiting to see what reaction I get, if any, from Transport Focus.

 

I wish your friend luck - but at the moment the DfT are giving a very good impression of not caring about anyone elses needs if it clashes with their own hidden agenda when it comes to all things rail. There have been lots of complaints from the Mayor about the lack of Crossrail 2 in recent weeks so is some sort of deal being cooked up in the background? (Crossrail to Reading but TfL have to put more in the pot if they want CR2 for example).

Edited July 14, 2017 by phil-b259

[Vanders]

https://www.londonreconnections.com/2017/final-result-crossrail-heads-terminal-5/

What's more interesting is the map with "Paddington (High Level)" on it. I'd never considered it like that before, but yes now they require the distinction!

[unravelled]

I cycled out to Abbey Wood to take a few more pictures of delvelopments in the area.

 

Latest images at start.

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/unravelled/albums/72157632675037925

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[Siberian Snooper]

I see that there are some GWML style masts appearing between Stratford and Shenfield.

[The Stationmaster]

I see that there are some GWML style masts appearing between Stratford and Shenfield.

 

There were some in various places on the GEML inner area back in 2014

[The Stationmaster]

I cycled out to Abbey Wood to take a few more pictures of delvelopments in the area.

 

Latest images at start.

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/unravelled/albums/72157632675037925

 

Thanks

 

Dave

Dave is the stretch of what appears to be a single line part of the Crossrail passenger train route or simply for stock moves?  If it's the former I can problems ahead as it's going to very much set the possible shape of the timetable.