The Crossrail Portal At Royal Victoria From The Bridge
I was on the bridge at Royal Victoria DLR station this morning and took this picture of the works creating the Crossrail tunnel portal at Royal Victoria.
The Crossrail Portal At Royal Victoria From The Bridge
When completed the tunnels will go under where I took the picture to the next station, which is Canary Wharf. Custom House station and the crane used to put the pieces together is in the distance to the left of the electricity pylons.
According to the documentary on Crossrail, it was a tight squeeze at Tottenham Court Road, but this shows it’s as tight as a duck’s arse, virtually everywhere.
Rude words are allowed when talking about Crossrail, as one of the female project managers used the F-word in the documentary.
East Suffolk Gets A Community Rail Partnership
The two East Suffolk Lines out of Ipswich to Felixstowe and Lowestoft are being proposed for a Community Rail Partnership. It’s reported in Modern Railways, but strangely not in the East Anglian Daily Times.
I have travelled these lines occasionally over the last few years and still go to my long-suffering dentist in Felixstowe. I have only been to Felixstowe once since the opening of the Bacon Factory Curve, but it does appear that this development has made trains on the East Suffolk Lines more reliable and better to time.
The Ipswich to Felixstowe branch, must have one of the simplest schedules anywhere on the UK rail network. A single Class 153, just trundles up and down the line every hour over a dozen times a day.
A Community Rail Partnership can only benefit the line.
So what enhancements would I like to see on the Felixstowe branch.
A two coach train should probably be used, as at times the line gets busy and increasingly there are passengers with bicycles.
But the line doesn’t necessarily need a train with a toilet, as Ipswich and Felixstowe stations both have excellent facilities.
One thing I’d like to see is better interfaces with the buses at Felixstowe, but as ever the information is as visitor-unfriendly as you will find. It should at least have a town circular that goes to all the important places in the small town, arriving and leaving at the station convenient for the trains.
It should also have bike hire.
So let’s hope the Community Rail Partnership improves the line.
One possibility that might happen is electrification to Felixstowe Port, which would completely transform this line, Then an old electric multiple unit with perhaps three coaches, could be saved from the scrapyard and given a well-deserved sprucing up and retirement on the Suffolk coast.
I don’t know the Lowestoft line as well, but properly looked after by a Community Rail Partnership, it could be a serious asset to the towns on the route.
One thing is missing from the services back to London from Lowestoft and Felixstowe is the lack of a late train to get back to Ipswich and on to London.
The last train from Lowestoft leaves after nine on most days and at 20:05 on Sundays, whereas the last train from Felixstowe leaves just before half past nine all the week.
It’ll be good to see how the rail services develop in this proud part of Suffolk.
Ticketing In London Takes Another Big Step
Over the last month,since London’s buses went cashless, the silence has been deafening about this issue and I haven’t found any news reports about problems or complaints.
So it was no surprise to see that from September 16th the Underground, Overground and DLR will accept contactless bank cards.
There are still a few small steps to take, like bringing all of other rail companies into the system. Once this is done, you could say turn up at Gatwick Airport touch your contactless bank card on the reader and then again, when you get to Victoria, to get into Central London. Obviously, you can do that from September 16th at Heathrow or City Airports, as they are in the Transport for London area.
One of the things also to be introduced is a weekly cap. So will this mean that if you put a weekly ticket on Oyster, you won’t need to any more.
Boring Television
It’s fascinating to read the heavyweight reviews on the BBC2 program, The Fifteen Billion Pound Railway, in the Independent and the Telegraph.
When did serious engineering programs get such coverage?
The Times has a report, if you’re a subscriber, but there’s nothing in the Guardian.
The Fifteen Billion Pound Railway
I’ve just watched the latest episode of the BBC documentary on Crossrail call the Fifteen Billion Pound Railway.
Part of this episode told a history of tunneling through the last fifty years, through old film and the eyes of one of the tunnellers, who’s been digging for fifty years, starting with manual methods on the Victoria line.
It is fascinating to see how techniques have improved even over the last couple of decades.
Just as with North Sea Oil exploration, where projects got easier, as cranes got bigger, it looks like tunnelling will get easier, as tunnel boring machines get bigger, more powerful and better designed.
So when they build Crossrail 2 will it be a quick and more financially efficient project? Having spoken to some of the planners of the project on Friday at Dalston Library, I suspect it will be. Especially, as they are cutting out one of the Hackney stations to save a billion and moving one terminus from Alexandra Park to New Southgate stations.
The lessons learned on Crossrail will also effect HS2, where I suspect we’l see even more tunnels, in the final design.
Which Idiot Obscured The Clock?
I was in St. Pancras recently and someone has put pointless stained glass in front of the clock.
Which Idiot Obscured The Clock?
I suppose it’s art, but for those of us who don’t wear watches it’s a big annoyance.
The Back Passage At Kings Cross St. Pancras
A new passage has opened up on Kings Boulevard, which lets you by-pass the crowds going to and from Granary Square, by linking you directly to the subway that goes under Pancras Road
it is certainly magnitudes better than some subways on the Underground.
What Will A Reopened March And Wisbech Railway Mean?
It was mentioned in the blog on Rail News, that a study will look at the reopening of the route from March through Wisbech.
The main reason is that it will allow freight trains between Felixstowe and the North to totally bypass the East Coast Main Line by using the upgraded GNGE.
But will it create better opportunities for passenger services around East Anglia and the Fens?
Getting between Ipswich, Norwich and Cambridge and the North of England and Scotland is not easy, as it means a slow train across East Anglia to Peterborough or a long detour via London.
As an example, going from Ipswich to Manchester takes over four hours and routing is via London. I know a lot of keen Ipswich fans use that route to get to away matches, as the cross country routes are totally inadequate and very crowded.
In a few years time, the TransPennine routes will be electrified, so to get to Liverpool and Manchester from Ipswich, it might be quicker to travel via Doncaster, perhaps changing at Peterborough.
Opening up the route from March to the GNGE would allow direct passenger trains from Ipswich and Norwich to go via Ely and Lincoln to Doncaster.
Lincoln is getting better connections to Nottingham according to the blog in Rail News, so these direct trains might give East Anglia better connections to the East Midlands as well.
But of course, all of this thinking is pie-in-the-sky, as where is the money for shiny new trains?
On the other hand, there might be a glut of hand-me-down InterCity 125s from the Great Western and East Coast Main Lines, as they get replaced by Class 800/801 trains.
So will we see these trains working cross country routes and giving much needed extra capacity out of East Anglia and the Fens?
It’ll be a bit like your mini-cab company saying we couldn’t send the new Nissan, so we sent this immaculate 1970s Jaguar instead. Although the lines wouldn’t be high speed ones, they wouldn’t be slow and mountainous ones, like those through the North of Scotland, where these trains show how good they are.
Repening the line through Wisbech could be unlocking a real box of delights for the East.
Full Steam Ahead On The Railways
As they say the devil is in the detail and this blog post on Rail News has pulled together all of the announcement about rail projects over the last few weeks and especially those concerned with the Local Growth Fund. Here’s the introduction.
Rail and Metro developments in several parts of England are among the principal beneficiaries of Local Growth Fund deals announced by the government on 7 July, it has emerged.
Note that this post only deals with England, so Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could have extra projects to add, like this one for Glasgow.
Britain has seen nothing like this since the Railway Mania of the 1840s.
So what are the key points detailed by Rail News?
1. Birmingham gets extensions to the Midland Metro to link it to Curzon Street station for HS2, Adderley Park station and Edgbaston.
2. Wolverhampton gets a transport interchange.
3. There are further extensions and upgrades to stations and lines in the West Midland.
4. Freight interchange and distribution is to be improved at Daventry and near Cannock.
5.Manchester will get more trams and a busway in Bolton.
6. The article includes the improvements in Cornwall and Blackpool that I’ve already noted.
7. There is money for station and transport improvements in the Thames Valley to link to Crossrail.
8. There has been a commitment to link Reading to Heathrow directly by 2021 and also to look at southern rail access to Heathrow.
9. Reading will get improvements as the line to Basingstoke get electrified, including a park-and-ride station at Green Park.
10. Worcester, Bristol, Nottingham to Lincoln will get serious improvements.
11. The last one in the article is one I wholeheartedly support. It is suggested that the March and Wisbech route might be reopened. This would help freight between Felixstowe and Doncaster completely ignore the East Coast Main Line. I talked about it in this article.
If you look at the projects most are about providing better connections to outlying and forgotten parts of England to the present and future main rail network.
It looks like the Local Growth Fund awards total about £6billion.
The Easy-Entry Spacious Class 378 Train
London Overground’s Class 378 set a high standard for commuter trains.
Note the step-free walk-across entry, the longitudinal seating with lots of space for standees and the articulated joint between carriages.
The Anonymous Widower 