Hackney Wick Station Opens
Hackney Wick station is now almost fully rebuilt and the new facilities are open to passengers
It is a design, that draws heavily on brutalist architecture, but the general feeling is that people seem to like the station.
The station is simple in layout, with a double subway through the embankment, which was built alongside and inserted at Easter 2017, as I wrote about in A Tough Way To Spend Easter.
- One side of the subway is reserved for ticketed passengers and the other when it opens will be a new route under the railway.
- Access to the platforms on top of the embankment is by well-designed high capacity staircases and two lifts.
- The staircases have similar hand-rails with built-in LED lighting, as I saw yesterday at Abbey Wood station.
- The station does not have ticket gates and relies on passengers to just touch in, as at several stations on the London Overground.
- But then the station will be used for large sporting events at the Olympic Stadium.
- It also has wider platforms than it used, to accommodate large numbers of passengers.
There is still some work to do, like adding the signage and opening the subway for those not using the railway.
I only met one person, who didn’t like the station. He struck me as an artistic type and said the money should have been spent on other things.
But Hackney Wick needed a new high-capacity station and a high-capacity walking route under the railway.
- It is the nearest station to the Olympic stadium.
- There is a large amount of housing development in the area.
Currently, the station handles two million passengers a year and this will surely rise.
A Comparison With The New White Hart Lane Station
Various sources say that the rebuilding of Hackney Wick station will cost £25million.
White Hart Lane station is also being rebuilt in conjunction with Tottenham Hotspur’s new ground and redevelopment of the area.
This also needs to give access to a high railway line, which is on a brick viaduct, that can be incorporated into the structure, rather than replaced, as at Hackney Wick.
According to this article in Construction Enquirer, the budget is £18million.
Modern step-free stations to handle two million passengers per year, don’t come cheap!
On the other hand, once built most stations last for at least a hundred years.
White Hart Lane opened in 1872, whereas Hackney Wick opened in 1980.
So it looks like the Victorians did a longer lasting job, than British Rail!
A First Ride In A Nine-Car Class 345 Train
This morning, I had a first ride in a nine-car or full length Class 345 train.
I just took it between Paddington and Hayes & Harlington stations and back again.
The overall impression, is how much longer they seem, than the seven-car version currently working between Liverpool Street and Shenfield.
Gravitricity Gets An Imperial Seal Of Approval
This article on Renewable Energy Magazine is entitled Gravitricity Technology Turns Mine Shafts into Low Cost Power Storage Systems.
This is the first paragraph.
A report by independent analysts at Imperial College London has found that Scotland-based Gravitricity’s gravity-fed energy storage system may offer a better long-term cost of energy storage than batteries or other alternatives – particularly in grid balancing and rapid frequency response services.
I am starting to believe that Gravitricity’s simple, but patented system has a future.
The Imperial report says the system has the following advantages.
- More affordable than batteries.
- Long life.
- No long term degredation.
The main requirement is a shaft, which can be newly sunk or an old mine shaft.
Hopefully, reusing old mine shafts, must save costs and remove hazards from the landscape.
No-one can say the system isn’t extremely scientifically green.
I have some thoughts.
Eco-Developments
Could clever design allow a mine shaft to be both capped and turned into an energy storage system?
Perhaps then housing or other developments could be built over the top, thus converting an area unsuitable for anything into something more valuable. with built in energy storage.
More Efficient Motor-Generators
One of the keys to efficient operation of a Gravitricity system is efficient motor-generators.
These are also key to efficient regenerative braking on trains, trams and other vehicles.
So is enough research going into development of efficient motor-generators?
The Anonymous Widower 