What A Waste Of Valuable Land
I took these pictures as the train passed the Southall Gas Works site to the west of Southall station.
As can be seen these days it is mainly used as a car park for passengers using Heathrow Airport.
That is a terrible waste of a site, that could be cleaned up and used for much-needed housing. This Google Map gives an impression of the extent of the site.
Southall Gas Works
But things are happening and there is a web site called The Southall Gasworks, put up by the Berkeley Group, who are developing the site.
In this post entitled Could The Golden Mile In Hounslow Get A Station?, I postulated that the gas works site could be linked to Hounslow’s Golden Mile and the Thames by a tram and concluded by saying this.
I think that there are possibilities for a well-designed solution in the area to connect the Golden Mile to Southall station for Crossrail.
There are certainly possibilities to link everything together.
- Southall station will be served by Crossrail’s high-frequency trains.
- The Brentford Branch is an underused working railway.
- The Southall Gas Works development needs good public transport links.
- The Golden Mile needs rejuvenating.
I do think we’ll see lots of small-scale connectivity to Crossrail and this would be an easy one to build.
Some Transport Related April Fools
This year was particularly good for April Fools in the papers and around the Internet. The Times today even has a discussion on the Letters Page today, about which of their stories yesterday were real.
There were three transport-related stories, that I found.
1. Wombles fan plays April Fool’s Day joke in Kensal Green
2. Councils at loggerheads over Croxley Rail Link viaduct colour scheme
3. Like A Bat Out Of Crossrail
It is good to see that gentle humour isn’t dead yet!
Torch Chasing in West London – Ealing
Today the torch arriving in Ealing, so I took the Central line out to Ealing Broadway station. I took these pictures before and mainly after an early supper in Carluccio’s in Ealing Green.
This road has a lot of good memories for me, as in a wine bar here, a lot of the plotting and design concerning Artemis was done over lunch, whilst some of us were working in Richard Evans house.
Those were the days and I suspect anybody who reads this will drink to absent friends.
The Anonymous Widower 