Sunrise at Heathrow Terminal 5

Good morning. You join me on the platform at Hounslow West at stupid o'clock, waiting for this, the first service train to Heathrow Terminal 5:
The first surprise was the wind noise once the train entered the new section of tunnel - it's much louder than anything I've heard anywhere else on the network, including the worst of the Victoria Line. I travelled back from T5 on Heathrow Express, and didn't experience anything similar.

The new station is vast. Each part of the station has a wide concourse with the platforms either side, separated from it by glass walls. Here's the Piccadilly Line concourse, with the Heathrow Express concourse visible to the right behind another glass partition:

The Piccadilly Line has the northernmost island, Heathrow Express is in the middle, with space for AirTrack to the south, though there's a solid wall of plasterboard hiding it from view.

The lifts and escalators come up in the space between the main building and the multi-story car park. The escalators only get you as far as ground level (Arrivals), though this isn't clearly signposted. To reach Departures you need to get the lifts:

The Piccadilly Line and Heathrow Express stations have separate lifts up to the various floors. Here's where the AirTrack station's lifts aren't:

The ticket office for both services is on the ground floor in the main building, with the two entrances and sets of ticket machines either side:

The terminal building itself is also vast, as I'm sure you'll be hearing on TV news all day today:

Access to the building allows a closer view of the ULTra PRT system. Here's the track from ground level, weaving beneath the road access:

Here's where it enters the car park at the terminal end, and you can just see the section that be used as the station. There's no construction visible, just various piles of equipment:

You also get a view of the far end of the track. It looks to now be complete all the way to where it enters the new long stay car park that it's been built to serve:

Finally, London Underground have found the wordiest and most obtuse way of instructing passengers that they really ought to get a direct train to T1,2,3:

(if you're thinking about visiting the terminal, I did several laps around it while openly taking pictures in sight of various staff and police, and got zero hassle or even interest from any of them)

Tube map watch: March 2008

A new copy of the pocket tube map is available at some tube stations (click to enlarge):

Changes from the February pocket map are:

• Shepherd's Bush Overground is shown as opening late 2008, rather than just 2008.
• Heathrow Terminal 5 is shown as solid rather than an outline, with red text stating "Opens 27 March 2008", rather than "Opens Spring 2008".
• The Mayor of London, Transport for London and London Underground logos have been added at the bottom.
• The blue boxes show details of the Victoria Line closures rather than just "See key for details"
• Tower Gateway is shown as "Closed June 2008 to spring 2009" rather than "summer 2008".
• The East London Line extension outlines have been removed.
• Bus ELP has become bus 381.
• The National Rail symbol and "Thameslink 200m" text have disappeared from West Hampstead.
• Borough has gained an "Exit only during peak hours" warning.
Liverpool Street has lost its aeroplane symbol.
• Pinner has lost its apparently unnecessary dagger symbol.
• The Piccadilly Line notes now state "Trains via Terminal 4 may stop there for up to 8 minutes".
• The Rorschach test style art on the front has become an RAF roundel, and the advert on the back is for Ikea rather than Oyster.

I got mine at King's Cross St. Pancras tube ticket hall - other stations I've been through recently still had the old one. The current version online is dated January and corresponds to neither.

Heathrow ULTra PRT

Heathrow Terminal 5 will add two extra modes of transport to London's repertoire, both variations on rubber-tyred people movers. The first is fairly conventional and is a lot like the one shown here (though T5 has double-ended cars), running in an underground tunnel to shuttle passengers from the main building to the satellite building where the majority of the terminal's gates are.

The other, ULTra PRT, is much more unusual. It uses four-seater battery-powered pods that operate like automated taxis, allowing passengers to choose their destination before they board, and it will take them straight there. The initial system only has three stations, one in Terminal 5 and the other two in a long stay car park on the northern perimeter, but it's hoped the system will one day cover the whole airport.

It's developed by a Welsh company and is amongst the first of its kind in the world - the only comparable systems are one on a university campus in West Virginia built in 1971 and a tiny one in Las Colinas, Texas.

One of the pods is currently parked on display on the guideway near the terminal building:

As the last picture shows, the guideway is basically complete at the terminal end, but at the northern it's still very much under construction:

You can see the route in this shoddy aerial photo and in the planning application, which I've transcribed it onto Google Maps. The planning permission also includes the layout of the track within the car park, the location of the station at Terminal 5, which is part of the multi-storey car park adjacent to the terminal, and includes a large area for parking out-of-service pods. There's also this long explanation of the system. You can see many more construction photos here.

Although Terminal 5 opens later this month, the ULTra PRT system will not be ready for another year.

AirTrack consultation

BAA have opened their consultation on AirTrack, the plan to link Heathrow into the South West Trains network, with services to Reading, Guildford and London Waterloo. I'd always had it down as a "we'll build it one day" type project, but it's starting to look like they might be serious.

The elements of this scheme are:

• fitting out two platforms at the Terminal 5 station which has already been built tunnelling between Terminal 5 and Hithermoor
• constructing a new alignment across Stanwell moor and Staines moor
• forming a junction with the Windsor line
• building a new station at Staines High Street
• linking the Windsor line to the Virginia Water line in Staines Town Centre (the chord)
• remodelling the existing Staines station

Once this new rail infrastructure is in place, two trains per hour will operate in each direction to London Waterloo, Guildford and Reading. It is currently proposed that services will stop at: Clapham Junction, Richmond, Twickenham, Feltham, Woking, Chertsey, Wokingham, Bracknell, Staines Central and the new Staines High Street station.

There are all sorts of options and details in the brochure. The biggest surprise is BAA's "aspiration" to extend Heathrow Express services to Staines. The area is currently only served by stopping services to London, so this could be a big improvement if through journeys are allowed. They also say they're going to make the Airtrack tunnel overhead electrified, which will require dual voltage trains as the SWT network is all third rail.

Apart from the branch to Heathrow, the main bit of infrastructure needed is a new curve in Staines. Currently the line from Waterloo forks just west of Staines station into two branches, to Reading/Guildford and Windsow/Heathrow. The curve is needed for trains to get between those two branches. Here's a panorama of the area where it will be built, taken from the middle of the fork. The branches on the embankments either side.
Although this is right in the middle of Staines, the only thing that'll be overshadowed by the new line is the back of a shopping centre. This area is already cut off by the two existing embankments, so there are no pedestrians passing through. Although there are no buildings in the way, the line will cut through the car park ramp, and there are various options for how to replace it discussed in the consultation.