Crossrail - The Big East West Breakthrough

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As you may now Crossrail reached a milestone on the 4th June 


www.crossrail.co.uk/news/articles/prime-minister-and-mayor-of-london-celebrate-completion-of-crossrails-tunnelling-marathon

To celebrate this Custom House Station and the Victoria dock portal was opened to local residents today for a 45 min tour. The tour was along the platforms of the station then down to the tunnel entrance.

I was told the following:

Track laying will start in the next few weeks - The site was spotless in preparation for handing over to the next contractors

The tunnel boring machines at Farringdon have been left underground as they is no easy way to remove them

A shuttle bus will run from Custom House to City Airport once the line open - from the conversation it seems Crossrail are frustrated a station wasn't build at Silvertown , seems a lack of future planning from Newham and City Airport





 

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Great video on the Daily Fail website 


www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3118151/Light-end-tunnel-Incredible-drone-footage-captures-sneak-peek-COMPLETED-26-mile-London-Crossrail.html

[snowman]

Tracklaying is now finished, the Transport secretary is pictured tightening last bolt

Crossrail news link

[snoggle]

Visited three Crossrail sites today as part of London Open House. Unfortunately not to platform level at Farringdon which would have been fun nor Liverpool St ticket hall.

Did get to see the current state of Farringdon's western ticket hall with the diamond roof pattern. This is built on the back of the new ticket hall that was built to cope with Thameslink opposite the 1860s LU station entrance. Saw the basic structure of the ticket hall and the escalators down to the intermediate level then next escalators down to platform level. This was a fairly basis "walk round" tour but there were staff to talk to. I was surprised quite how much has sprung up at street level since I last visited and the site was all holes in the ground.

Then it was on to Whitechapel where we were in a working site. Went in from Durward Street and then through the upper level of the new ticket hall built over the ELL platforms. It was quite a maze of scaffolding to create a safe daytime working site and the essential structure of the roof is all there. Fit out is under way to create the structure of the ticket machine enclosure and control room. The client architect led most of the tour so we got lots of detail on the buiding. If nothing else the visit has confirmed my basic understanding of how the new station fits together. We also saw the stripped out shell of the old Whitechapel Road entrance which now has a level floor from the street before rising up to an upper level where ticket machines and gateline will be. There will also be an unpaid side walkway to the east of the entire ticket hall structure so people can walk from Durward St to Whitechapel High Street when the station is open.

Finally it was on to Canary Wharf where I grabbed some lunch in Jubilee Place. Those posh shopping plazas under all the skyscrapers remind me so much of the enormous shopping plazas in Hong Kong. I was on the 1300 "tour" for Canary Wharf and there was an enormous queue of people largely because this was a self guided tour within a largely finished building. Escalators were working to get us from street to ticket hall and then down to platform level. I've been to Canary Wharf Crossrail before so it wasn't all new. The place is enormous with multiple sets of escalators between levels. Most of the fit out is complete in terms of finishes but not all the systems are installed - a lot of electrical work is outstanding with huge electrical cupboards to be fitted up and cabled. The platform edge doors were revealed for this visit and they're not all in place but it was interesting to see their inner workings. No ticket gates or ticket machines yet either and I had to ask where they would be installed as it wasn't "obvious" where you would choose to split paid and unpaid areas.

All in all very interesting but there is a phenomenal amount of work to do in these places to achieve a handover to the operators from early Summer next year. I did ask if they were "late" at Whitechapel which brought some "diplomatic" comments about "we have deadlines we must meet". Well yes but .... I've heard that one before. There's no doubt it is all very impressive and has broadly been managed very well but I still think they're in the toughest phase of the project as public deadlines loom large.

Photos from each visit will be on my Flickr in the next few days.

EDIT - photos from Farringdon and Whitechapel have been uploaded. Canary Wharf being added progressively from 19/9.