How A Sketch On A Piece Of Paper Became An £85m Rail Bridge
The title of this post is the same as an article on inews, which describes the design process for the bridge over the Irwell in Manchester, which is the centrepiece of the Ordsall Chord.
It is a fascinating insight into the design of what could become Manchester’s new icon.
Are Crossrail And Bombardier Having Us On?
A rail journalist sent me this sentence in an e-mail.
Everyone who’s been on a 345 tells me it takes half its time at stations waiting for the timetable to catch up.
So it would appear that they are saving time at each stop.
Liverpool Street To Shenfield
Currently, this twelve stop journey takes 43 minutes in a 75 mph Class 315 train.
It is also scheduled at 45 minutes in the 10:35 service, which is run by a Class 345 train.
The journey time calculator for Crossrail gives 41 minutes.
This works out at a saving of just ten seconds a stop.
Paddington To Reading
Currently, this nine stop journey takes 60 minutes in a 90 mph Class 165 train.
Crossrail will call at five more stations
The journey time calculator for Crossrail gives 49 minutes.
This works out at a saving of forty-seven seconds a stop.
Reading To Shenfield
Currently, the fastest this journey can be done is 103 minutes with two changes and the Underground between Paddington and Liverpool Street.
The journey time calculator on Crossrail gives 102 minutes.
Liverpool Street To Paddington
Currently, this journey rakes 21 minutes on the Circle Line,
The journey time calculator on Crossrail gives 10 minutes.
Conclusion
These figures don’t make sense.
- More time is predicted to be saved on the Reading branch.
- The current trains are faster on the Reading branch.
- I would assume that the current Class 345 train to Shenfield is timed at 45 minutes for scheduling reasons or in case something goes wrong.
- The Shenfield to Liverpool Street times seem to be based on the current timetable with a minute taken off.
- The Reading to Shenfield times can’t be right.
I do wonder if the figures in the journey time calculator on the Crossrail web site are the best estimate that could be made, when the web site was created.
Now, that an Aventra is running, they are not very good estimates.
Reflections At Seventy
I completed by seventh decade this morning at about three, if I remember what my mother told me about the time of my birth correctly.
Dreams Of A Shared Retirement With Celia
Perhaps twelve years ago, my wife;Celia and I made a decision and that was to sell everything in Suffolk, after she retired from the law in perhaps 2015 or so and retire to a much smaller house in somewhere like Hampstead in London.
I remember too, that we discussed retirement in detail on my sixtieth birthday holiday in Majorca.
But of course, things didn’t work out as planned.
Two Deaths And A Stroke
Celia died of a squamous cell carcinoma of the heart on December 11th, 2007.
Then three years later, our youngest son died of pancreatic cancer.
Whether, these two deaths had anything to do with my stroke, I shall never know!
Moving To Dalston
Why would anybody in their right mind move to Dalston in 2010?
It is my spiritual home, with my maternal grandmother being born opposite Dalston Junction station,my father being being born just up the road at the Angel and grandfathers and their ancestors clustered together in Clerkenwell and Shoreditch. My Dalstonian grandmother was from a posh Devonian family called Upcott and I suspect she bequeathed me some of my stubbornness. My other grandmother was a Spencer from Peterborough and she could be difficult too! But that could be because she was widowed at forty-nine!
Celia and I had tried to move to De Beauvoir Town in the 1970s, but couldn’t get a mortgage for a house that cost £7,500, which would now be worth around two million.
So when I gave up driving because the stroke had damaged my eyesight, Dalston and De Beauvoir Town were towards the top of places, where I would move.
I would be following a plan of which Celia would have approved and possibly we would have done, had she lived.
But the clincher was the London Overground, as Dalston was to become the junction between the North London and East London Lines. Surely, if I could find a suitable property in the area, it wouldn’t lose value.
But I didn’t forsee the rise of Dalston!
Taking Control Of My Recovery
I do feel that if I’d been allowed to do what I wanted by my GP, which was to go on Warfarin and test my own INR, I’d have got away with just the first very small stroke I had in about 2009.
In about 2011, one of the world’s top cardiologists told me, that if I got the Warfarin right, I wouldn’t have another stroke.
As a Control Engineer, with all the survival instincts of my genes that have been honed in London, Liverpool and Suffolk, I have now progressed to the drug regime, I wanted after that first small stroke.
I still seem to be keeping the Devil at bay.
Conclusion
I’m ready to fight the next ten years.
Mile End Park Ventilation Shaft – 15th August 2017
These pictures show Crossrail’s Mile End Park Ventilation Shaft.
It’s got to be finished, so that trains can run to Shenfield in May 2019.
Crossrail Around Custom House Station – 15th August 2017
I took these pictures of Crossrail, as I rode between Prince Regent and Canning Town stations on the Docklands Light Railway.
Custom House station is scheduled to reopen in late December 2017.
Action Stations On Crossrail Howler
The title of this post, is the same as that on Robert Lea’s Business Commentary in The Times today.
This is the first paragraph.
Study the route map of the Elizabeth Line – Crossrail as currently s – and gaze in wonder at one of the biggest cock-ups in recent transport infrastructure history.
He then details how Old Oak Common station is not on the map, with its connection to HS2 and the London Overground.
But he does indicate, that as HS2 won’t arrive until 2026, that there is plenty of time to get it right.
He then says.
The real howler is the missing Crossrail station at London City airport.
He finds it amazing that despite Crossrail running under the London City airport, there is no station to connect the City of London and Canary Wharf for that matter to the airport that bears its name.
I tend to agree.
He then says this.
Word is, feasibility plans to retrofit a Crossrail station are afoot with perhaps a delay to operations on the Woolwich branch to accommodate it. You’d think City airport will get this through; the new mayor likes the airport, the airport is prepared to fund construction of the station and, oh yes, the new chairman of City airport is Sir Terry Morgan, chairman of Crossrail.
He predicts a happy ending.
In Crossrail In Docklands, I had a section about Silvertown station, which has been safeguarded in the Crossrail plans and construction.
This Google Map shows the London City Airport and the Southern exit of Crossrail’s Connaught Tunnel.
Note.
- The airport is just to the top of this map.
- Crossrail runs diagonally across the map, with the Docklands Light Railway crossing from East to West.
- Silvertown station will be somewhere on this section of Crossrail.
- In the South-Eastern corner of the map, there is a footbridge over Crossrail.
These pictures were taken of the bridge and the Crossrail tracks underneath.
Note.
- There certainly seems to be a fair amount of space to the side of the London-bound track.
- It might be a bit tight to build a platform on the Abbey Wood-bound track.
- The track is all slab-track.
- Building the station further towards Abbey Wood might be easier.
It shouldn’t be the most difficult construction job to build a station and link it to the London City Airport.
The West Midlands And Chilterns Route Study
This document on the Internet is the West Midlands And Chilterns Route Study.
Waterloo Upgrade August 2017 – Timelapse Video Of Platforms 1-4 At Waterloo Station
This video dates from the 14th August 2017.
The story seems to have gone rather quiet.
There are these possible explanations.
- Everybody is getting through the station without any trouble.
- It was so bad on the first day, everybody has given up.
- The upgrade has finished and everything is running normally.
Or it could just be that it’s all going well and good news doesn’t sell newspapers!
Is This The End Of The Garden Bridge?
This article on the BBC is entitled London’s Garden Bridge project officially abandoned.
Let’s hope so!
The money wasted on the Garden Bridge would have been better spent on improving that much neglected river crossing’ the Waterloo and City Line!
I’d love a Sunday service, but how about a Night Drain?
The Anonymous Widower 