If You Want Good Publicity, Black Death Is A Surprisingly Good Idea
I have a Google News alert for Crossrail and today, it flagged up nine stories on the web.
Eight of these were about the story I reported on yesterday, about the finding of a cemetery for plague victims.
Usually, companies try to disassociate themselves from death and other dark stories.
If you’re wondering the other story, was about Crossrail driving up residential property prices. But then rising property prices are a good news story in many peoples’ minds.
Tunnelling Through Black Death
Crossrail has come across some unusual going on its tunnelling throuygh London. According to this article, they have hit a Black Death burial pit. Here’s a couple of paragraphs.
A burial ground was known to be in an area outside the City of London, but its exact location remained a mystery.
Thirteen bodies have been found so far in the 5.5m-wide shaft at the edge of Charterhouse Square, alongside pottery dated to the mid-14th Century.
Analysis will shed light on the plague and the Londoners of the day.
You have to admire the way that Europe’s biggest project is handling the archaeology.
Strangely, I can’t remember any of the excavations finding any unexploded ordnance from the Second World War.
Crossrail Launch An Arts Programme
Crossrail do seem a bit different to your average company, with some of the things they do, like their excellent archaeological program, which resulted in last year’s exhibition called Bison to Bedlam.
Now they have launched an arts programme, as they report here. I’m glad to see too, that they have spelt programme correctly.
Loading Crossrail Spoil At Limmo
I have been trying to get a picture of this for some time and finally did this morning from the Emirates Air-Line cable-car..
Loading Crossrail Spoil At Limmo
You could actually see the spoil pouring off the white conveyor into the ship. It’s obviously an easier way to get rid of all the spoil, than using an armada of trucks.
Crossrail Looks To Yorkshire
Crossrail has made an appeal for firms in Yorkshire and Humberside to become suppliers to Europe’s biggest construction project. It’s all reported here in the Yorkshire Post.
I did write a post about Custom House station, which is being built in Sheffield and transported to London and installed on site. That sounds like a clever and affordable way to create stations.
The Crossrail Spoil Conveyors At The Limmo Site
The pictures show the conveyors to take spoil away from the tunnels being dug from the site on the Limmo peninsular.
The pictures were of course taken from the Emirates Air-Line cable-car.
Metro Gets On The Crossrail Bandwagon
If you have a freesheet like the Metro or the Standard or even a newspaper like the Sun, you need good pictures and stories to fill the pages.
A week or so ago, it was the Sun and today Metro gets in on the act, with this set of underground pictures of Crossrail.
Crossrail is proving to be an excellent page filler for popular newspapers.
Engineering Open Heart Surgery
Not my words, but those of Linda Miller, describing on the Crossrail web site, the work being done to upgrade the Connaught Tunnel. The full article is here.
It may be an odd mix of words, but we all know what she means.
Winding Through The Crossrail Works
Crossrail are building their rail line along the line of the old North London Line to North Woolwich. Their blue fences were everywhere.
Some of the pictures were taken from a pedestrian bridge over the site and others were taken on that excellent photographic platform, a London double-deck bus. In this case it was a 473, that goes from Canning Town station to North Woolwich, where the Woolwich Ferry berths.
Note how the Brick Lane Music Hall dominates the first part of the route.
Exploring The Woolwich Station Box
Berkeley Homes had the excellent idea of having an open day to show those that wanted the inside of the new Crossrail station box at Woolwich.
It was a very professionally organised visit and we had met in the Dial Arch pub and then walked down into where in a few years, trains will be either rushing through at up to 100 kph or stopping to drop off and pick up passengers.
I have called the two ends of the box, London and Kent. The former is the western end and the next station is Canary Wharf, whereas the other is the eastern end that leads to Abbey Wood.
There are going to be some stunning pictures here, when the tunneling machines break through on their way from Plumstead to Canary Wharf.
The Anonymous Widower 