Tuesday 27 May 2008

The DLR disruption in pictures

I've been on a visit to the scene of this week's DLR disruption and it turns I was totally wrong about what the problem is. The bit I thought they might be demolishing is on the right in this picture, and as you can see, it's all still there:
This shows part of Delta Junction looking west towards Westferry. Before work started to upgrade the junction there were two westbound tracks leading from the two platforms at West India Quay (to the left) that didn't merge for some distance. They've now made them merge much closer (the new-looking track on the left), leaving a redundant second track (in the middle of the picture).

The next step is to turn that track into a replacement eastbound line so the existing one (on the flyover at the top) can be demolished and lowered to make trains dive under the West India Quay-Poplar track that this picture was taken from.

Let's have a look a bit further west where this new eastbound track will reconnect to the main line:
Now this is why the service is messed up. To turn the second westbound track into an eastbound track they needed to dig up the concrete track bed and remodel the junction, which has also severed the other westbound track. The route trains are meant to take from West India Quay to Westferry is around the mini-digger, past that man's arse, through the fence and over the sandbags. On the other hand, there's nothing stopping them at least running eastbound trains on the flyover (on the columns), but apparently they're not interested in trying that.

I've no idea what's gone wrong, but they were still drilling and demolishing this afternoon, so don't expect them to be putting the track back imminently. There are a few more trips over that footbridge at Poplar in your future.

If you haven't understood a word I just said, have a look at the diagrams on page 5 (or 7) of the Enivronmental Statement summary. If you can't get enough, read the full version.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's no point running eastbound trains over the viaduct if they can't get them back west again.

Although I'm sure there's a crossover just east of Westferry station so perhaps they could run a very limited service using the viaduct bidirectionally?

Anonymous said...

Talking of engineering "issues": http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7424757.stm

Anonymous said...

there is a crossover just before Westferry Station which trains could use to run trains from south to west. However, with West India Quay platform 1 closed, all trains heading south use platform 2, so there is no spare capacity to run trains heading west.

Apparently, the problem could go on for much longer than next week

Anonymous said...

The DLR doesn't want to try and reorganise their trains to improve service for passengers.

I'm on the Beckton branch, and before this happened, our service was being stopped at Poplar during the rush hour, and if we wanted to travel onto Tower, we'd need to wait for the next King George V train.

However, it seems the DLR coordinate these trains so the King George V train to Bank is just ahead of our Beckton train, so we then have to wait another 7mins or so for this.

Why can't our service be just ahead of the King George V service, so we don't have to wait long for the connecting service ???