Getting Ready For The Flat Pack Station
Custom House station on Crossrail has been described as the flat-pack station, like in this article in the Standard. Here’s the first paragraph.
A £35 million “flatpack” station for Crossrail is being built hundreds of miles from London in a first for the rail industry.
The new station for Custom House is taking shape in a factory near Sheffield, pictured left, before being transported to London for assembly in 2015.
The question has to be asked, if they will be bringing the station to London by train.
The pictures show the state of the site, with lots of work going on.
If we can buy flat pack furniture from IKEA and their ilk, why can’t Crossrail use similar suppliers?
Phyllis And Ada To Be Buried Alive
This headline from a magazine, seems like something consistent with Halloween.
But it’s not!
The headline actually is from the Crossrail update on the back page of this month’s Modern Railways. It tells how, the two tunnelling machines; Ada and Phyllis, will be left in the ground rather than recovered. The two machines are named after Ada Lovelace and Phyllis Pearsall respectively.
This does seem to be a pity, especially, as they cost ten million pounds each, but getting some of them out will be a very difficult, dangerous and expensive job. I also suspect that there isn’t much of a second-hand market for specialist tunnelling machines, which generally seem to be built for a particular set of conditions and sizes. Crossrail are actually using two different types of machine for their project. There’s more about the tunnelling here.
Kings Cross Square Is Nearly There
Kings Cross Square opens tomorrow and it’s nearly there.
The buses though are back and I came home on a 476 towards Islington, from in front of the station. The driver seemed pleased too, judging by the smile on his face, when I said it was good to have the stop back.
The Fake House Is Coming On
I walked past the new house they’re building round the corner today.
The Fake House Is Coming On
It’s all looking good.
Inside Canary Wharf Crossrail Station
This was one of the must-see events in Open House.
The areas we saw were the bottom levels of Canary Wharf station where trains and passengers go. On the top of these floors is a large retail mall.
This is the future, where stations are more than just means to access the trains. The new Birmingham New Street station has another large retail mall on top and the new Crossrail station at Woolwich, is underneath masses of flats, as is my local station of Dalston Junction. Land is expensive, but digging down or building in the sky only increases its value and hopefully gives benefits to all of us.
Does Good Rail Infrastructure Attract Investment?
I ask this question after reading this article in Global Rail News about the opening of the new Kings Cross Square in a few days time.
This paragraph in the article also caught my eye.
It’s not only the station that is undergoing a makeover. The area around King’s Cross is also undergoing a major regeneration – a project that will soon see Google build its new European headquarters beside one of the capital’s most famous stations.
So if we had left Kings Cross as it was or just cleaned it up, would Google and others be hastening to the area?
I doubt it!
Will Birmingham New Street, Leeds, Derby and Reading stations, which have all been or are being substantially rebuilt have the same effect?
We need a lot more kingscrossification!
The Walkie-Scorchie
This is one of the nicknames of London’s newest skyscraper, usually called the Walkie-Talkie.
The building focussed the sun and melted parts of a car parked in the street. Note the cones to stop it happening again. There’s a report of the incident here in the Independent.
More Demolition At London Bridge Station
As I came back, I passed through London Bridge station.
Very little is now left of the old station.
Note the pristine refurbished Class 465 in one picture.
Some may decry our trains, but we have one of the newest fleets in the world and even ones like these, which are wenty years old, look almost fresh out of the factory.
Pudding Mill Lane Station – 20th August 2013
This set of pictures shows how fast Crossrail and the new Pudding Mill Lane station are progressing, when it is compared with pictures of just over a month ago.
The two tunnelling machines; Jessica and Ellie are soon to be on their way, or might have even left yet on their journey to Stepney Green.
The new station is looking like it will be one of the grandest on the Docklands Light Railway. According to this piece in Wikipedia, it will be completed this year.
As it will be one of the major stations for the Olympic Park and probably the closest to the stadium, I think we’ll start to see pressure to change the name or at least add a tag to Pudding Mill Lane like for West Ham United Stadium. After all there is a precedent at Gillespie Road station.
The Tallest Timber Residential Structure In The World
You’d have thought that this would be somewhere like Japan, Scandinavia or perhaps Canada, but despite it’s name, the Stadthaus is in Murray Grove in the London Borough of Hackney.
Wikipedia says this about the building.
It is thought to be the tallest timber residential structure in the world.It was designed in collaboration between architects Waugh Thistleton, structural engineers Techniker, and timber panel manufacturer KLH.
Stadthaus is the first high-density housing building to be built from pre-fabricated cross-laminated timber panels. It is the first building in the world of this height to construct not only load-bearing walls and floor slabs but also stair and lift cores entirely from timber.
I like it and it shows how modern buildings don’t have to be constructed using traditional methods. It was also constructed in just 49 weeks and residents moved in ahead of schedule.
So as we need more housing and we need it quickly, perhaps we should build more houses and flats using these methods.
The Anonymous Widower 