LU Haynes Manual Cover
The serious London Underground aficionados amongst you, might like this Haynes Manual that’s coming out at the beginning of June.
You can pre-order it on Amazon here.
Or if you can wait, we also hope you’ll be able to pop into the London Transport Museum Shop in Convent Garden in person and pick up a copy from there too.
Oh no! One of our favourite shortcuts on the tube system – at Piccadilly Circus – is blocked off at the moment, the infamous blue hoardings blocking our way.
This is the view from the Piccadilly Line side (which is signed to the Bakerloo Line!) which lets you nip up part of the emergency spiral staircase to the northbound Bakerloo Line platforms. We can assume that it is blocked off in a similar fashion on the Bakerloo Line side meaning you can’t use it as a shortcut down to the Piccadilly platforms anymore … let’s hope it’s temporary and not permanent!
Blocked off access
Here’s the rather disappointing view that greeted us when we swung by Walthamstow Queen Street the other day when we were in the area.
Thou shall not pass
About a year ago, they built steps and ramps on the north side of the station to allow another way in and out of the station, but although the access infrastructure was put in place, it was blocked by a temporary gate because the Oyster card readers were not in place.
Well, it’s been over a year now, and yet although the Oyster card readers are now clearly visible in the picture and installed, it seems that officialdom and red-tape is still holding things up, and the entrance is STILL not open … for reasons which we cannot fathom at all.
The new Docklands Light Railway Pudding Mill Lane station, which is now the largest on the DLR network, was open today to the public for the first time; so, of course, we went along there to have a look for ourselves.
New Pudding Mill Lane
The new concrete and glass station is in a slightly different location, as the previous station is being demolished to make way for the Crossrail tunnel portal at Pudding Mill Lane where it will join existing railway lines through North East London to Essex. DLR passengers will be able to interchange with Crossrail at Stratford station. The new station is also double-tracked and trains arrive there together regularly as clockwork, Crossrail say this will boost capacity and enable the railway to carry an extra 1,100 passengers per hour on the route between Stratford and Canary Wharf / Lewisham.
The New Platforms
There were many other people there, taking photographs and generally having a look at the pristine new station on its opening day and a surprising number of staff (we counted at least 7 or 8), for what until 10 days ago was a tiny station, we’re not sure why or if they were suddenly expecting an influx of passengers now the station is bigger! However we noticed that the lifts aren’t presently working so it may have been they were there to assist with accessibility needs until the snagging work going on by the builders is completed.
Pudding Mill Lane – Old Station
It was also very noisy, as the work has already begun to demolish the old station.
Of the people there, we were lucky enough to be able to meet the architect of the new station, Dan Moore, who was taking photographs of his work and was justifiably proud of what had been achieved with a DLR station, compared to the old “Tin shed in the sky” as he put it.
He very kindly pointed out some interesting features of the station to us, that aren’t immediately obvious to the casual observer.
e.g. Presently, there are three staircases side-by-side up to each of the platforms. But, underneath the outside two staircases, they have already built escalator pits and space for machine-gear, so once the stations gets busier they can simply lift the staircases out and install escalators. Clever eh?!
Pudding Mill Lane Exterior
Also, as you enter the station (currently behind hoardings) there is a large brick façade. This façade currently conceals 1000 square metres of retail space, so when it’s needed, it can be demolished and shops fitted out in its place. There’s even a yard area behind the station for deliveries and refuse etc, again all planned for future expansion as the surrounding area becomes more developed, and the station busier.
Pudding Mill Lane – Exit
Outside the station there is still some Crossrail work and access required, so there is a hoarded off walkway to get you to Stratford High Street, and also a separate access route to take you onto the Greenway (which is well worth a walk on if you’ve never been there), the View Tube and on to the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park (but it wasn’t signposted as such).
Diamond Geezer was down there at 7am when it opened has now put a complete Flickr gallery of photos online.
And lastly, of course, no Station Master visit to a station would be complete without the obligatory noting of the best exits, counting the steps and facilities and a sketch map of the station so we can update that information for the next release of the App!
So the Central Line is not stopping at Bond Street for a couple of months due to Crossrail works, but on our first pass through last night, we noticed that although the ‘Station Closed’ sign was of course up, it was just the usual ‘back of the tube map’ variant swung out, and wasn’t as nice the ‘Station Closed‘ signs where the WHOLE station had been decorated as such when Edgware Road on the Bakerloo was closed recently – although that was for a much longer period of time.
Which means this is the ‘pass thru’ photo that we snapped as we travelled slowly through …
Non-stop at Bond Street
With major tunnelling works taking place on the Jubilee line over the Easter weekend, there are no Jubilee line services between Finchley Road and Waterloo.
We always like it when something like this happens, as it means you get to see an unusual working – in the case a Jubilee train departing northbound out of Platform 3, which is where they normally run through southbound.
Watching the movements for a few minutes revealed that the normal northbound platform for Jubilee line services (Platform 2) was closed altogether and trains instead were scheduled every 5 minutes to arrive into Platform 3, and then reverse out north again.
Interestingly on the hand-written sign though, we can’t work out why NEASDEN is so important as to be written all in upper case?
Normally TfL make quite a noise and give you a lot of advance warning about station closures, but it feels as if this one has crept up on us.
It was only when we saw something in the Metro two weeks ago that we became first aware of it, but now signs are springing up all over the place on the network – with quite a short period of notice.
Another sign
Bond Street is having a lot of work done to it for Crossrail meaning that there will be no Central Line trains stopping at it for three months, and no Jubilee Line trains stopping at it for six months! That’s a hefty amount of time for such a major station in the Zone 1 area.
The shutdown starts on the 23rd of April, which is Wednesday of next week. The full document from TfL can be found here.
That nice chap Tim Dunn created a rather fun picture doing the rounds on the internet yesterday which we rather like – although targeted towards National Rail services (and closure by Network Rail over the weekend) the Tube is having its fair share of replacement bus services (e.g. on the District Line) over the weekend.
Happy Easter everyone!
Easter Replacement Buses
The accessibility works to turn Greenford into a step-free station have picked up pace, and we got word that yesterday would be the last day that the sole-remaining wooden escalator on the Underground would be running, so we popped down to have a look.
Greenford Escalator
Unfortunately, it transpired that the up-only wooden escalator had already been turned off a couple of days ago (we think it last ran on Sunday), and there was no last chance to ride it.
The new up escalator on the far left hand side from the bottom was running, complete with a friendly member of TfL staff pointing it out to people who were failing to read the sign and were going to trudge up the stairs instead.
Closed Off
“They’re replacing the middle stairs as well”, they told us. What with – new stairs? (Actually, it will be wider and with tactile paving). But work apparently starts today on removing it and will be replaced with what’s being called an incline lift – a lift that works along the angle of an escalator. It’s meant to be for those with accessibility issues, but it’s going to be such a novelty having one at a tube station that there are going to be people who go there just to take a ride on it.
Actually, if you want to know what an incline lift is like – there is already one in London here, it’s just not at a station.
Do not enter!
“Can you see what’s different about it .. it’s made of wood!” said a mother bending down with her small child and asking and answering a question all in the same breath. Most people just walked on past, some it seems realised the significance.
So, farewell to our old wooden friend – the sole survivor in the wake of the 1987 King’s Cross fire, as another little piece of Underground history disappears.
This weekend we were lucky enough to be able to visit both sites of the new Bond Street Crossrail station that are currently under construction.
The new station will have two ticket halls, the western is at 65 Davies Street (behind the current Underground station) and the eastern is on the corner of Hanover Square and Tenterden Street.
From the 2nd floor of Crossrail’s offices next door we were able to get a birds-eye view over the Davies Street site:
Bond Street Western Ticket Hall site.
The walls and excavation for the 25-metre deep ticket hall at Davies Street were completed by Costain Skanska Joint Venture (CSJV) last year and the site has now been handed over to Crossrail’s tunnelling contractor BFK who will construct the pedestrian access tunnels and station platforms. The site will then be handed back to CSJV who will complete the ground floor. Another developer will add further storeys to the building which will be clad in bronze.
The Bond Street platform tunnels were completed last year when tunnel boring machine “Phyliss” passed just to the south of the station box. This was followed by TBM “Ada” whose route went directly through the site of the (at the time unexcavated) station. BFK now have to mine from the station box to reach the southern platform tunnels.
This part of the station has been built directly over the Jubilee line and many controls were in place between CSJV, Crossrail and TfL to make sure that no damage could accidentally occur. The site will also be connected by a new pedestrian tunnel to the new Bond Street Underground station ticket hall and entrance on Marylebone Lane over the road north of Oxford Street, so you will be able to interchange with the Jubilee and Central lines here.
The two platform tunnels connect the Davies Street site to the Hanover Square site a short distance away. The platforms are 250 metres in length (the length of two and a half international football pitches) and each Crossrail train will have a capacity of 1,500 passengers. In fact, passenger flows in the station have been modelled in such a way that it can be evacuated in 7 minutes should two of these full trains completely empty one immediately after the other.
After viewing the Davies Street site, our group took a short walk to Bond Street itself, where behind an anonymous gate and building façade lies the Hanover Square site – we were able to get out onto a small roof there and look down onto the site:
Bond Street Crossrail Eastern Ticket Hall site.
Unlike at the Davies Street site which will be linked to Bond Street Underground station, despite its proximity to Oxford Circus Underground station, there will not be any link here. This is deliberate as Oxford Circus station is one of the busiest. It would also make the site into one huge station complex and make it unmanageable as far as evacuations are concerned.
At the Hanover Square site we were also able to see one of the “grout shafts”:
Bond Street Crossrail Grout Shaft
There are five of these shafts dotted around the sites with bores spreading radially out into the surrounding area. Should movement of buildings be detected then grout, (concrete without the aggregate), can be pumped into the ground to stabilise it. Movement is checked for automatically every seven minutes by remote control. Crossrail have seen movement of only 23mm which is well inside their allowed tolerances.
Work is progressing well at Bond Street and Crossrail say “We’re half way there”. Services in the central tunnel section are not due to open until December 2018 (pretty much 5 whole years away) and there will be a year of testing once all the infrastructure is complete in 2017.
The cost of the whole project? £14.8 billion, of which The Exchequer, TfL and Private companies are contributing one third each.
We’ll also be visiting the Crossrail Liverpool Street and Farringdon sites later on in February too.