So How Good Is The Overground?
The London Underground is known all over the world and compares well with systems in many cities. It has its problems, but it doesn’t have some of those of say Rome or New York.
Now the Underground has an upstart little brother in the shape of the Overground, which has been in operation for the last couple of years.
Like their middle brother, the Docklands Light Railway, the Overground has been built on the cheap, by reusing old railway lines, tunnels and other infrastructure and then adding new trains and rebuilt stations.
But just as with the DLR, it has been a formula that has worked. The Overground has just one major tunnel, which for an urban railway must be a world record. But what a tunnel, with more history than many museums, as the Thames Tunnel is thought to be the first tunnel built under a navigable river and was built by Marc Brunel and his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel, in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The Overground currently consists of five lines, with a sixth due to open in late 2012. I use the North London Line and the East London Line often as much as seven or eight times a week, as Dalston Junction and Dalston Kingsland stations are within walking distance from where I live.
I like the lines, as the new trains are comfortable with plenty of space for parcels and bikes and they generally run to time. Only once have I had trouble and that was on the North London Line, where I suspect that a delay of twenty minutes or so was caused by a freight train, that shares that line was running late.
The lines also compare well with the previous lines, one of which I described here. But then those lines as I remember them were last upgraded in the 1950s or even earlier.
The Overground also reaches a lot further and in time it will reach all round London and to the lines to Southampton and Portsmouth and eventually HS2 to Birmingham and the North. In a few weeks the North London Line will have a new link at Stratford for HS1 and the London City Airport.
In some ways the Overground and especially the North London Line is unique in that it is a siteseeing railway, which links tourist sites like Kew Garden, Hampstead Heath, Brick Lane, Camden Market and Crystal Palace with a ride that in places gives superb views of the city.
Overground Train on the Embankment South of Hoxton Station
This picture taken of a train on the embankment just south of Hoxton station, shows how the Overground is part of the city in a way that the Underground never can or will ever be.
Several people riding the line have told me has got them their first or a better job and reports have appeared showing that the Overground has improved job prospects and property prices, and even reduced crime. I’ve also heard the latter from a Police Sargeant.
But this is one of the reasons you improve the transport infrastructure, as properly done it makes peoples lives better.
But it is not all good.
The trains can get overcrowded at times and the platforms in places may not be capable of being lengthened, although adding more carriages to the trains might be fairly easy.
Connections to the Underground need to be better and the lack of a Central line connection at Shoreditch HIgh Street is the most glaring. Hopefully Crossrail at Whitechapel will resolve this problem, but will this new line put more pressure on the East London Line?
I do also think that the freight use of the North London Line might get to be a serious problem, especially if trains get larger and more frequent as more containers move off the roads to rail.
The Overground Remembers
In the Great War, 64 men, who worked for the old North London Railway were killed. A memorial was set up to remember them in the old Broad Street station, which was demolished to make way for Broadgate. I used to get off trains from Ipswich at Liverpool Street in the 1970s and then take trains from Broad Street station to Metier’s offices in Stonebridge Park. It must have been the only station in the UK, where you needed to wear a miner’s helmet to be able to see anything. The trains were dark too, with slam doors giving the impression of prison cells. The smell was horrendous and was a mixture of body odour, curry and urine. Well probably not curry in those days, but something when it was emitted from the body the wrong way, gave off a truly obnoxious smell. Wikipedia says this of Broad Street station.
The station was badly damaged in World War II and was never fully repaired.
They certainly didn’t replace the light bulbs.
When the station was closed and demolished, the memorial to the dead was stored at Richmond.
Now though, London Overground has decided to erect the memorial at Hoxton station, directly behind the Geffrye Museum.
The North London Railway Memorial to Employees Who Died in the Great War
The inscription on the memorial says.
In memory of North London Railwaymen Who fell in the Great War 1914-1919
As Hoxton is the nearest station to Broad Street on the old North London Railway, it can be said that London Overground has truly done the right thing.
London’s University of Hole Digging
CrossRail is overseeing a new Tunneling and Underground Construction Academy or TUCA.
After CrossRail has been completed it will operate independently to train staff for other tunneling schemes. The only other such academy in Europe is in Switzerland, which focuses on hard rock tunneling. So if we are to have a Golden Age of Tunneling, we shall be well-prepared in the UK.
CrossRail Isn’t All New
You’d expect that a modern project like CrossRail would be all new tunnels.
But it’s not!
An article in Modern Railways describes how the old Connaught Tunnel from the long-abandoned North Woolwich to Palace Gates line is being opened up to take the new railway. There is an article on the tunnels and some pictures here of the tunnel. You’ll have to page down a bit.
I like this from the introduction to the MR article.
On paper, reusing this existing link, which runs beneath the intersection of the Royal Victoria and Albert Docks, is cheaper and less disruptive than boring a new tunnel. In practice, the work required to bring the route up to scratch is anything but simple which, from an engineering point of view at least, means there’s a lot of fun to be had.
A lot is not good clean fun too, as they will probably have to lay a 1,000 cubic metre concrete slab under water.
Don’t ever say engineering is boring! Even where tunnels are involved.
The Engineering and Architecture of CrossRail
My previous post about CrossRail may give the impression, that I’m rather against the project.
I’m not, as I believe it will really open up London to residents, commuters and tourists. The only problem is it won’t be fully open until 2018 or so.
Railways should always go through a major city, rather than have expensive stations on the ends of two radial lines. It’s cheaper in terms of capital cost and ensures that the expensive trains work harder. Thameslink does this on a North-South basis and CrossRail will do it on an East-West basis, with an major interchange between the two lines at Farringdon station.
Modern Railways this month has a major section on the CrossRail project. It is a fascinating read, which describes how the railway is being threaded from one side of the London to the other and the designs of the various stations on the route.
The biggest conclusion I get after reading the report, is that this a project that although built to a tight budget, will be something of which London will be proud and will be something that can grow and grow as the City demands more transport links. From the pictures in the article it would appear that the visible face of the railway will be impressive and not like the rather utilitarian Victoria line. On the other hand a lot of the design is more on the side of the practical and well-thought, rather than the spectacular, such as seen on some parts of the Jubilee line.
I also feel that particular attention is being paid to the management of the whole project and this has allowed the cost to be reduced by a billion pounds or so, by taking slightly longer. Hopefully, this will also enable the project to be built on time, but these days, we are getting a much better record at completing large projects on time, so I wouldn’t be suprised if the engineers adjusted the project to increase the certainty of an on-time completion.
But that is good project management!
With my history in the field of project management, CrossRail seems to be a project, I’d have enjoyed getting my teeth into.
The Anonymous Widower 