Legal & General Has Acquired One Of The Last Major Crossrail Development Sites
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on City AM.
There have been several stories like this is recent months and I think it shows how Crossrail will generate new housing an business developments across London.
A Detailed Layout Drawing For A Class 345 Train
Someone has requested this using a Freedom of Information request.
Click to access the detailed layout drawing for a Class 345 train.
The formation of a Class 345 train is as follows.
DMS+PMS+MS1+MS3+TS(W)+MS3+MS2+PMS+DMS
Note.
- Eight cars have motors and only one doesn’t.
- The train is composed of two identical half-trains, which are separated by the TS(W) car.
- There are four wheelchair spaces in the TS(W) car.
There is also other information on the drawing.
- 454 seated passengers.
- 1046 standing passengers calculated using a density of 4.025/m² of available floor standing area.
- 4 wheelchair spaces.
- 1500 passengers total
- 51 priority spaces compliant with PRM-TSI
- Trailer car length is 22,500 mm.
- Driver car length is 23,615 mm.
- Train length is 203,380 over mm. body ends.
There’s more information, based on what I read off the end of a train in Weight And Dimensions Of A Class 345 Train.
I estimated the weight of a nine car train to be 328.40 tonnes.
Kinetic Energy Of A Full Class 345 Train
I will assume the following
Train weight is 328.4 tonnes.
It is jam-packed with 1,500 passengers, with an average weight of 90 Kg. with their baggage.
Passenger weight is 13.50 tonnes
This gives a total train weight of 341.9
Calculating the kinetic energy for various speeds gives.
30 mph – 8.5 kWh
50 mph – 23.7 kWh
75 mph – 53.4 kWh
90 mph – 76.9 kWh
I used Omni’s Kinetic Energy Calculator.
Currently, the cost of a kWh of electricity is about fifteen pence to domestic customers, so accelerate a full Class 345 train to 90 mph, costs at that rate around £11.50.
The Deep Resource web site gives various conversion factors.
- A kilogram of coal can be converted into 8.1 kWh.
- A litre of diesel can be converted into 10 kWh.
- A kilogram of hydrogen can be converted into 33.6 kWh.
It’s so easy to do these calculations today, as you can find little calculators and information all over the Internet.
Will Crossrail Trains Run 24 Hours?
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on the Londonist.
We don’t know the answer yet, but the article feels we should never say never.
After all, if Gatwick Airport has trains on a 24/7 basis, surely Heathrow should!
Moorgate Is Being Refurbished In Readiness For Crossrail
I took these pictures as I walked from between Moorgate and Bank stations.
With Moorgate station about to become the Western end of the enormous Crossrail station at Liverpool Street, the office developments in the area are being refurbished or rebuilt, so that commuters have appropriate places to work.
West Ealing Station – 21st June 2018
The progress to create new station buildings at West Ealing station seems to be painfully slow, as these pictures show.
It looks like there are now no platforms on the fast lines and the actual platforms for Crossrail and the Greenford Branch Line appear to be complete except for finishing off.
There appeared to be no if any work going on to built the new station building and the fully-accessible bridge.
But there did appear to be some electrification gantries and wires over the Western end of the bay platform.
Were Network Rail making sure that if it were decided to electrify the Greenford Branch Line, it would not be a difficult job?
If on the other hand, it was decided to use battery trains on the Greenford Branch, I suspect that sufficient electrification could be installed to charge the batteries.
New Bank Tube Station Entrance In Final Stages Ahead Of Opening
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on IanVisits.
Ian suggests that the new entrance under the Bloomberg Building, which will give better access to the Waterloo and City Line, will open in August 2018.
This picture shows the covered Underground roundel on the side of the Bloomberg Building.
Note the workers putting scaffolding on the truck behind.
Underground, these fire doors, which lead to the new escalators and lifts, look ready to be opened for passengers in the area between the travelator, the connecting tunnel and the Waterloo and City Line platforms.
IWill the area be tiled or just painted?
described the tunnel to the left with the blue entrance rail in The New Tunnel Under Bank Station.
This picture was taken from the tunnel on the left, looking at this area.
The tunnel takes passengers right into the heart of the station.
Other Developments
The new entrance at Bank station is the first of several major transport developments, that will happen in the next few years.
New Trains On The Northern City Line In Autumn 2018
The Northern City Line is London’s forgotten train line, with a history coloured by the tragic accident at Moorgate in 1975.
The first development, a year or so ago, saw the Northern City Line introduce seven days a week working.
Now, the Class 313 trains, which are some of the oldest in the UK, are being replaced with new Class 717 trains, that will offer increased capacity, frequency and passenger comfort.
The Northern City Line terminus at Moorgate station will also be linked directly to Crossrail, when that line opens.
For many travellers in the Northern part of London and Hertfordshire, their route to the City will be much improved.
The final frequency has not been published, but it looks like there will be at least twelve tph on the Northern City Line to and from Moorgate station.
With a step-free cross-platform interchange at Highbury & Islington station, effectively Moorgate station will become a second Southern terminus of the Victoria Line.
Crossrail Between Paddington And Abbey Wood Stations In December 2018
This will be the first phase to be delivered and Crossrail will initially provide a twelve trains per hour (tph) service between Paddington and Abbey Wood stations from December 2018.
This will mean that the double-ended Jumbo Crossrail station, which will serve Moorgate station at its Western end and Liverpool Street station at its Eastern end, will open a short walking distance to the North of Bank station.
For those not wanting to walk, the link will also be one stop on the Central or Northern Lines.
Crossrail Between Paddington And Abbey Wood Stations In May 2019
This will be the second phase to be delivered and Crossrail will initially be provided a twelve tph service between Paddington and Shenfield stations from May 2019.
Crossrail To Heathrow And Reading In December 2019
The full Crossrail service will open in December 2019 and will provide the following services from Moorgate-Liverpool Street.
- Six tph to Heathrow
- Two tph to Reading
- Two tph to Maindenhead
- Twelve tph to Abbey Wood
- Twelve tph to Shenfield
In the Central section, there will be twenty-four tph between Padsdington and Whitechapel stations.
Bank Station Upgrade In 2022
Bank station is being upgraded and this is said in Wikipedia.
TfL is also retunnelling and widening the Northern line platforms, and adding lifts and new entrances on King William Street and Cannon Street. The work, agreed in 2015, will be carried out from 2016 to 2022 and will boost capacity by 40%, with 12 new escalators, 3 new lifts and a new travelator (or moving walkway) to connect the Northern Line and DLR to the Central Line.
It is a massive upgrade, as this visualisation shows.
Note that the two larger diameter tunnels at the left of this visualisation are the tunnels and platforms for the Central Line. The third tunnel is the pedestrian tunnel that links the Waterloo and City Line to the main station.
The capacity upgrade at Bank station, will surely mean more people will be drawn to the area.
Bank Junction Improvements
The City of London has a project called All Change At Bank, which aims to improve the roads and pedestrian routes at Bank Junction.
Their web site gives these objectives.
- Reduce casualties by simplifying the junction
- Reduce pedestrian crowding levels
- Improve air quality
- Improve the perception of place, as a place to spend time in rather than pass through.
At present Bank Junction is restricted to buses and cyclists on Monday to Friday, between 0700 and 1900.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see this restriction increased, especially as more pedestrians are drawn to the City at weekends and in the evening.
The Future Of The City As A Leisure And Tourist Destination
When I lived in the City in the early seventies, nothing happened in the City in the evenings or at the weekends.
Over the years, the City has started to use these freer times for other activities.
- The Barbican Arts Centre and Tate Modern have opened.
- Quality shopping has greatly increased and improved.
- Pubs, bars and restaurants have often increased their hours.
- Better walking routs along and over the Thames have opened.
With its superb transport links, I can see the City of London becomes a much more important leisure and tourist destination.
Conclusion
The City of London is becoming a 24/7 area of London and the Waterloo and City Line must go with the flow.
It should run seven days a week, as do all other Underground lines.
Eventually, there will be a need for a Night Drain!
Elon Musk Goes Underground With High-Speed Trains
The title of this post is the same as that of an article in the Business section of last Friday’s Times.
This is the first paragraph.
Futuristic electric trains will soon be whizzing under the streets of Chicago at up to 150 mph after Elon Musk’s tunnelling company was chosen by the city to build a new high-speed commuter link.
Currently, the Blue Line train takes about forty-five minutes for the eighteen miles at a cost of five dollars.
Heathrow Airport is eighteen miles from the City of London and Crossrail will do the trip for thirty-three minutes when it opens, next year for a cost of under a tenner.
So what is Musk proposing?
- A journey time of twelve minutes.
- Passengers will ride in skates, which will carry up to sixteen people on concrete tracks.
- Skates will run at a frequency of 120 per hour for 20 hours a day.
- The fare would be twenty-five dollars.
- The system would cost about a billion dollars.
It is a technically ambitious proposal.
There’s more in this section called Chicago in the Wikipedia entry of The Boring Company.
A competition to build a high-speed link from downtown Chicago to the soon-to-be-expanded O’Hare Airport had been reduced to just two bidders by March 2018. The Boring Company was selected in June 2018 and will now negotiate a contract to be presented to the Chicago City Council. Construction is to be entirely financed by The Boring Company, which is subsequently to maintain and operate the link. The system will transport passengers in automated electric cars carrying 16 passengers (and their luggage) through two parallel tunnels running under existing public way alignments, traveling from block 37 to the airport in 12 minutes, at speeds reaching 125 to 150 miles per hour (200 to 240 km/h), with pods departing as often as every 30 seconds
It states it is two parallel tunnels!
Comparison With London’s Crossrail
Crossrail will effectively do the same job in London and a comparison between the two systems may produce some interesting conclusions.
Capacity
Musk’s system will have an hourly capacity of 1920 passengers per hour, based on 120 skates each carrying sixteen people.
Crossrail are talking of six trains per hour, each with a capacity of 1,500 people or 9000 passengers per hour.
I think that Crossrail will need to increase capacity, as Heathrow expands and longer trains and higher frequencies are possible.
But if Musk’s system is a runaway success, can it be expanded easily.
Journey Time
Musk’s system has a journey time of 12 minutes, as against Crossrail’s of 33 minutes
But Crossrail will stop up to ten times!
Intriguingly, the twelve minute is not the headline speed of 125 to 150 mph, but a slower 90 mph.
Routes
Little has been said of the route for Musk’s system, except that it goes between Downtown and O’Hare Airport.
Heathrow to the City of London, also goes direct to London’s major shopping area and the new business area of Canary Wharf.
It is also integrated with London’s existing Underground, Overground and rail lines at several places.
Does Musk’s system have a route structure, that won’t appeal to a lot of possible users?
Musk’s Thinking
This is an extract from the Future Goals section of the Wikipedia entry for The Boring Company.
According to Tesla, Inc. and SpaceX board member Steve Jurvetson, tunnels specifically built for electric vehicles have reduced size and complexity, and thus decreased cost. “The insight I think that’s so powerful is that if you only envision electric vehicles in your tunnels you don’t need to do the air handling for all carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, you know, basically pollutants for exhaust. You could have scrubbers and a variety of simpler things that make everything collapse to a smaller tunnel size, which dramatically lowers the cost … The whole concept of what you do with tunnels changes.
The philosophy is not unlike that of Crossrail.
- I believe that Crossrail has been designed holistically, using the best tunnel and train technology.
- The tunnel power supply is a simple end-to-end rail.
- The Class 345 trains have batteries to make best use of electricity and provide emergency power.
- The batteries will handle regenerative braking, thus minimising heat-producing electric currents in the tunnel.
- Platform-edge doors and aerodynamic trains reduce mechanical energy losses.
- The electric trains do not emit anything into the tunnel, except perhaps a small amount of hot air.
I suspect that Crossrail’s tunnel section will be a very energy-efficient railway.
Conclusion
Summing up both systems we get.
Musk’s system is.
- A billion dollar cost.
- Twelve minute journey time.
- A vehicle every thirty seconds.
- Only for the few, who want to go from O’Hare to Downtown, who can pay a premium fare.
- Limited capacity.
A Crossrail-like solution would be.
- Perhaps a ten billion dollar cost.
- Twenty minute journey time.
- A train every few minutes.
- For everyone, who wants to travel from O’Hare to most places in Chicago with possibly a change, at a normal fare.
- Expandable capacity.
Musk’s system will appeal to the rich and those who like novelty, but I don’t think it is a long-term solution and just like London, Chicago will eventually have a modern railway linking it to the wider Chicago area.
Where Musk is right, is that he believes that tunnelling methods can be improved and become more affordable.
This will mean that more audacious railway schemes will be built.
Ryanair To Open New Base at London Southend Airport
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in the Guardian.
The title gives most of the story, although the article says that flights won’t start until April 2019.
The article also contains this classic example of Ryanair-speak from their airline’s chief commercial officer, David O’Brien.
O’Brien said disruption from European air traffic control strikes, primarily in France, could be the “worst ever” for airlines, which cancelled 1,100 flights in May. “Your tourist going from Britain down to Spain is screwed by a couple of hundred French air traffic controllers,” he said.
The Wikipedia entry for Southend Airport gives these places as Ryanair’s destinations.
Alicante, Bergamo, Bilbao, Brest, Corfu, Cluj-Napoca, Dublin, Faro , Košice, Málaga, Palma de Mallorca, Reus and Venice.
This is a paragraph from the article.
Southend’s deal with Ryanair will double passenger numbers at an airport that only reopened six years ago. Its rapid expansion is set to continue, according to the chief executive of its owners, the Stobart Group. “We have a clear and focused strategy to grow our airport to welcome over 5 million passengers a year by 2022,” he said.
That number of passengers would put Southend Airport in the top dozen airports in the UK.
It’s a bit different to when I learned to fly at the Airport in the 1970s.
In those days, the only commercial traffic was the odd Carvair ferrying five cars and a score of passengers across the Channel.
I think Southend Airport will continue to grow for the following reasons.
- Planes to and from the Airport can avoid the busy airspace over London.
- The location and the prevailing Westerly winds, allows pilots on some routes to bring the planes straight in, saving a lot of time.
- Being early encourages passengers to use the Airport again and tell their friends.
- Southend Airport station is less than a hundred metres away.
- The City pf London is about an hour away.
- Currently, the train service is three trains per hour (tph) between Liverpool Street and Southend Victoria stations.
- Greater Anglia is getting new Class 720 trains and trains to the Airport may be increased in frequency.
- Crossrail and Greater Anglia will bring increasing numbers of passengers to Shenfield station for trains to the Airport.
I think it ls inevitable, that as the traffic at the airport grows, that Crossrail will be extended to Southend Airport and Southend Victoria stations.
Heavyweight Backing Expected For £1.5bn Crossrail Extension
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on New Civil Engineer.
This is the first paragraph.
Government infrastructure tsar Sir John Armitt is this week expected to throw his weight behind a £1.5bn extension to Ebbsfleet.
The article also says.
- Circumstances have changed greatly since the 2008 Crossrail Act.
- Canary Wharf Group, who contributed £150million to the building of Canary Wharf station, may be prepared to contribute, as this will give access from their site to Eurostar.
- The extension could support the construction of 55,000 new homes and 50,000 jobs.
The extension would take ten years to design and construct.
Eurostar
After my forays to and from Europe recently by Eurostar, I feel that a Crossrail link to Ebbsfleet will be heavily used.
- As more destinations are served by trains from St. Pancras, more passengers will find Ebbsfleet a more convenient station for the Continent.
- Ebbsfleet will be linked directly to Canary Wharf, the City of London, the West End and Heathrow.
- Crossrail will give an easy Undergound-free link between Wales and the West Country and Ebbsfleet stations with a single change at Paddington station.
- When HS2 opens, there will be an easy Underground-free link between the Midlands and the North and Ebbsfleet stations with a single change at Old Oak Common station.
- St. Pancras only has four platforms with no space to expand, but it could be relatively easy to add capacity at Ebbsfleet.
If I was in charge of designing and building the Crossrail extension, I’d make sure that Eurostar made a contribution, as they will be big winners from the extension.
The City Of London
The extension may be beneficial to the City of London.
- The extension would add more stations within easy reach of terminal stations in the City.
- The extension might give an easier route to and from the City.
- After Brexit, I suspect the institutions of the City will want more good connections to Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt and Paris.
,Perhaps one of the big City companies might like to finance construction and charge a royalty on each rain?
London City Airport
Should the project to build the extension also include building a Crossrail station at London City Airport?
This would mean that passengers between places like Aberdeen, Belfast, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, the Isle of Man and Manchester, and Continental destinations served by train would have a more convenient interchange in London.
Ebbsfleet Valley
Ebbsfleet Valley is a proposed new town of 16,000 homes being built on brownfield land close to Ebbsfleet station.
£300million of government money has been pumped into the project. But according to Wikipedia, there has been criticisms of the project.
London Paramount Entertainment Resort
London Paramount Entertainment Resort is described like this in Wikipedia.
London Paramount Entertainment Resort (commonly referred to as London Paramount) is a proposed theme park for the London Resort in Swanscombe, Kent. The project was announced on 8 October 2012 and it was estimated to open by around 2023.. In June 2017, it was announced that Paramount had pulled out of the project[2]. However, London Resort Company Holdings still insist the project is going ahead.
I’ve never been to a theme park, as I prefer the real thing!
But others will like it!
Conclusion
The beneficiaries of extending Crossrail to Ebbsfleet, include a lot of big players with possibly large financial resources.
I would suspect that some could be persuaded to fund particular parts of the project.
After all, if a housing developer invested say £10 million, in a new station for a development and then found it easier to sell the houses, there comes a point, where they make more profit and house buyers get a much better place to live.
The Anonymous Widower 