Shepherd's Bush Overground: Finished!

Well almost. These men are putting the last bits of trim onto the aluminium panels that cover the rebuilt part of the station building:
You can see in that picture there are still some bits of back fence to do, and there's some tidying up of the work of the other platform, but I can't see them spinning it out for more than a couple more weeks.

In that spirit, here's an attempt to recreate the very first picture I posted of the station, last October, so you can see the difference:

And here's the widened bit and the non-widened bits of the platform together:


Update: According to the latest TfL board papers, opening is pencilled in for October 1. [Thanks to D-Notice in the comments]

Finally, a bonus picture of the enormous new Shepherd's Bush Central Line station:

Imperial Wharf construction begins!

If you believe this press release or this press release, they've finally started work on site at Imperial Wharf station, just 5 short years after it was approved (in May 2003). Hurrah for St George!

[Thanks to Rick for the tip]

ELL works at Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace is one of the strangest stations on the network. It's built on the apex of a triangular junction with platforms on two sides of the triangle. While one side is perfectly normal, the other is, well... see for yourself:
That vast building is the station footbridge - and you can only see half of it in that picture. This is the platform area:

It once had six platforms and a twin-span overall roof. The roof has been gone for over a hundred years, there's nothing left of the two middle platforms, and only the through platforms are in use. So the current configuration looks like this:

Crystal Palace will be one of the termini of the extended East London Line, and they'll need a couple of terminating platforms. So given the choice between reinstating the existing side platforms, or rebuilding the centre platforms, they've chosen something completely different:
That's according to the latest planning application, which although not explicitly stated, will see the northern island taken out of use. I expect most East London Line trains will use platform 5, as getting out of platform 3 means crossing the other line.

I've marked the locations of the planned lifts as black squares, but I don't understand them. The one on the 3/4 island gets you to half way up the station's stairs, which is useless, and the one on the 5/6 island gets you to nowhere.

As for what's happening at the other new terminus, West Croydon, they're just putting in a siding beyond the station.

East London Line phase 2 works to go ahead

According to this planning application, "funding has been secured" for enabling works for the phase 2 extension of the East London Line (network map) to be done before the line reopens.

To be clear, this isn't the full scheme, but it does involve building a rather substantial grade separated junction, like so:
You can view a much larger version of that picture, and a reverse angle shot in this document (sans annotations), and an explanation in this one.

The junction is located at the northern tip of the Silwood triangle (near Surrey Quays station), which currently looks like this:
That's taken from the footbridge marked on the diagram above, with the East London Line on the left, and temporary works sidings on the right, on the path of the phase 2 extension.

The work proposed to do before phase 1 opens in 2010 (and before phase 2 is given the green light) includes building the underpass, replacing the footbridge, and building earthworks to take the phase 2 tracks down the side of Silwood Triangle, but no further.

That London Overground interchange map

London Overground have quietly added walking interchanges to the London Overground network map found on trains:

Oddly they don't tell you which line the other station is on (except at West Hampstead), and some of them are completely useless (Kensal Green to Kensal Rise) and, as noted, some of the most useful ones are missing (Wanstead Park-Forest Gate).

Of course there's nothing saying these are meant as interchanges at all. Maybe they're just to show that stations in places you've never heard of (like Brondesbury) are near places you have (Kilburn).

Shepherd's Bush/White City/Wood Lane interchanges

When the new stations at Shepherd's Bush and Wood Lane open there'll be two new out-of-station interchanges, requiring a short walk outdoors to change between lines. But how short?

Interchange #1: Shepherd's Bush (Overground) to Shepherd's Bush (Central Line)
Just across the bus station.

Approximate gateline-to-gateline walking distance: 100 metres.

Interchange #2: Wood Lane (Hammersmith & City Line) to White City (Central Line)
A stroll along Wood Lane right past BBC Television Centre.

Approximate gateline-to-gateline walking distance: 230m.

Top secret London Overground news

Well, not very secret. But I've been sent a non-public London Overground presentation that contains a few interesting bits.

Firstly, there's an updated rendering of the new London Overground trains:
Compared to the old rendering, it's gained eyeliner and a thicker orange stripe that continues around the front, and lost its Overground logo, Bombardier logo and number (though there should be a real one of these to ogle by now).

Moving on, it's stated the East London Line will reopen in "January 2010". Although completion much earlier than the "Summer 2010" public date have long appeared in TfL's board papers, this is the first time I've seen them telling anyone it'll open so much earlier.

Finally, they have a construction schedule for the North London Line upgrade, and the extensive line closures required:

• April 2009 to April 2010: Camden Road to Dalston
  Freight trains will be diverted onto the passenger tracks. Currently freight trains use the single track on the north side of the passenger tracks, which needs to be rebuilt as double track during the upgrade. It's unclear what the effect on passenger services will be.
• April 2009 to June 2010 (Sundays): Hackney Wick to Stratford
  
• Dec 2008 to April 2009 (Sunday and some Saturdays) Gospel Oak to Woodgrange Park 
  
• April 2010 to June 2010 (weekends): Kensington Olympia to Clapham Junction
  They need to convert Latchmere Curve, just outside Clapham Junction, from single to double track.
• April 2010 to May 2010 (weekends): Willesden Junction to Kensington Olympia 
• Jan 2010 to Feb 2010 (weekends): South Action to Acton Central 
  
• April 2009 to Jan 2011 (Sundays): Acton Central to Gospel Oak
  

They don't actually give specific reasons for these closures, so the two above are mine, and otherwise it's for general track, signalling and power upgrades for the new high frequency service.

Gospel Oak-Barking Line news

A few quick quotes from the Barking - Gospel Oak Line User Group's latest news update:

[...] as all the track works to permit 4-trains-per-hour running will be complete, commissioned and tested by Easter 2009, we want that service frequency to start ahead of schedule in May 2009 [...]

[...] the new in-train maps show useful details of walking distance between our stations and others nearby - but oddly omit the Wanstead Park/Forest Gate interchange

[...] As a stop-gap the three-seat rows are to be converted to two-seaters to increase standing room, but regrettably it seems the North London Line trains are taking precedence over ours for this work to be done

Waltham Forest Council have assured us that there is firm commitment at senior level to getting the long-overdue pedestrian link constructed between Queens Road and Central

Oddly, they don't seem to know Boris thinks the line's getting three car trains in 2010.

East London Line progress: the official version

Reader Edward Betts has scanned in his copy of East London Line News, a newsletter delivered to local residents. The fourth page is the one with the interesting details on it, going over work for the next few months.

Shepherd's Bush Overground: Idiots!

The Good News: They've finished filling in the gap in the platform left by moving the wall back.

The Bad News: They've put those fscking street lights back in!


On the other platform they've finishing paving over the gap where the new entrance is (see the last update), but they still need to put the panes of glass over where the old one was:

There's now very little left to do other than fixing a handful of cosmetic gaps and putting up Overground signs. I've noticed the protective plywood is off the ticket barriers, so the place is on its way back from being a building site and to a railway station.

As an aside, the last issue of Modern Railways contains a brief note blaiming the narrow platform on the need to accommodate the West London Tram terminus alongside. Here's a diagram from the planning application, with the Overground platforms in orange and the tram tracks highlighted in red:
Not terribly convincing.

East London Line progress photos: July 2008

Construction of the East London Line extension continues apace. Since I haven't checked in on progress since May, so it's time for another look at how they're getting on.

At Dalston Junction, the station is going to be in the basement of a massive development, and they've now put in the floor above the station. Trains arriving from Highbury & Islington will go through the hole on the right:

Via the magic of the telephoto lens, here's a glimpse of Haggerston station from Richmond Road. The white vertical line is the Regent's Canal bridge even further in the distance:

And here's Haggerston station from ground level:

At Hoxton station they've been digging out the viaduct arches and laying a concrete slab, and in the foreground are the fundations for the stairs and/or lifts alongside the viaduct:

That mysterious building alongside the site is huge, and could possibly be a ticket office. It has a large opening in the side roughly at viaduct level:

Here are a couple of glimpses of the top of the viaduct from a nearby tower block. It looks like they're starting to prepare the ground for tracklaying:


The viaduct ends in Shoreditch, and it looks like they're deliberately not connecting it up so they can keep this access ramp. Note the massive concrete support column where the viaduct will eventually be:

Turning the camera slightly to the right, they've finished this section of the viaduct and are working on the next section that connects it to the Shoreditch High Street bridge:

On the other side of Shoreditch High Street the viaduct linking the bridge to the already-finished Shoreditch High Street station viaduct is also taking shape:

They're also working on the viaduct between the station and Brick Lane, but it's very hard to see or photograph.

At Brick Lane they've put in this little walkway so they can build the viaduct across the top, although there's no sign yet of them doing so yet:


Just to the left is the notorious GE19 bridge. Reader Steven Gee sends in this picture of the missing slab:
Going by the known measurements of the bridge, I estimate the weight of the slab that fell on the bridge at around half a ton.

This is the ramp down from the bridge. It looked pretty much like this at the time the bridge collapsed, so I'm not certain they've been able to work on it:

Conversely, here's the nearby ramp down into the East London Line cutting:

Just west of Valance Road there was a brick arched bridge, which has been demolished and replaced:
This is to provide clearance so that trains coming up the ramp from the cutting can get under it.

Just north of Whitechapel there's not a lot happening:


At the north end of the East London Line platforms at Whitechapel they've been busy digging out Crossrail interchange subways:

Just south of Whitechapel they've busy laying new track:

And south of the river, they've completed replacing the track on the New Cross branch, though they seem to have forgotten the conductor rail:
There's no sign of any connection to the main line here for works trains to get in, which was once rumoured.

As always, it's just about impossible to get a decent photo of anything at the New Cross Gate depot site, but they appear to have finished the concrete shell of the control centre buildings; finished the ramps up to the flyover; put in the second, smaller span of the flyover; and are in the very early stages of laying track.

Stratford International aerial photo

The Olympic Development Authority have published some amazing aerial photos of the Stratford Olympic site, including this one that shows the Stratford International DLR extension very clearly.

Here's an annotated version (click to enlarge):

You can see exactly where the track will go, taking over the North London Line route on the right and then running alongside the existing tracks on the left. They've been quietly boxing in the route at the Stratford station end, in order to build over it. The North London Line will be diverted to use new platforms parallel to the existing main line platforms, using the track along the right hand edge of the picture to get there.

This image shows a similar view but from nearer Stratford station.

[via Skyscraper City]

Another East London Line bus disappears

London Underground are thinning out the East London Line replacement bus service again:

From Saturday 19 July 2008, bus service ELS, between Whitechapel and Shoreditch (Bethnal Green Road) will be permanently withdrawn. Route ELW will be extended to serve Shoreditch on Sunday mornings and during Monday to Friday peak hours.

From Monday 21 July the ELC frequency will be reduced to every 10 minutes in peak times.

Member Dstock7080 on the District Dave forum reports the ELW will also be downgraded from double to single deckers.

The cuts are probably due to the small number of people using the services (which is puzzling, given they do not collect fares). ELS is the oldest of the routes, having started in June 2006 when Shoreditch tube station closed, and I've never seen anyone on it. The ELC runs between Canada Water and New Cross, and likewise seems to be poorly patronised.

This follows the withdrawal of route ELP in February, probably because it was duplicated by the more frequent Route 381, which became the official replacement bus. Tube ticket acceptance on the 381 has now been extended to Surrey Quays, along the route of the ELC.

(there's a map of the new routes on the last page of the brochure linked above)

A few more West Hampstead Interchange details

In recent months plans have emerged to improve the interchange at West Hampstead in conjunction with the upgrading of the Thameslink station that will be done for the Thameslink Programme.

The various parties actually held a meeting last October but minutes have only just been made available, with lots of new details. The proposals are:

Thameslink Station – a new entrance on Iverson Road and new footbridge to west where platforms are wider to allow lifts. Existing entrance would remain open for people to/from the north. This will reduce pressure on West End Lane (WEL) pinch point.
NLL station – saw off front with a modest development to south at the same scale as current buildings.
West End Lane (WEL) – Make carriageway a uniform 7 metres all the way through and improve the public realm (footways on the west side) and crossings. Fully signalled junction with pedestrian crossing at WEL/Blackburn Road and widened footway between there and to beyond the NLL station would be provided.

The new crossing provides access to the tube station, which will remain on the other side of West End Lane. I've made a quick mockup of the changes in Google Maps. One victim of the scheme - and likely source of contention - is the trees between Iverson Road and the Thameslink station, because at least some of which will need to be removed to make way for the new entrance.

More London Overground sign shenanigans

Following on from the late decision to switch from orange on white to orange, reader Simon has spotted a third kind at Clapham , this time blue on white with an orange stripe. Clapham Junction is managed by South West Trains rather than Over- or Underground, which may explain it.

Meanwhile London Overground's Interim sign standards (Version 5!) now codify the situation of having white-on-orange outside and black-on-orange inside. TfL have a whole load of these available. On page 13 of this one you can see Hackney Central with lifts but very narrow platforms.

What the Overground disruption is for

As I've posted about before, most of the London Overground network is going to be disrupted this autumn for engineering work. If you haven't seen it, the official leaflet about the replacement buses and changes to service is online.

But I wanted to go over what work they're doing and why, and how it will benefit passenger services. Basically, the problem is freight traffic, particularly container traffic from the ports around the coast of Essex and Suffolk. A lot of this traffic ends up going north on West Coast Main Line, and the only real way to get there is along the most congested part of the North London Line. Here's a diagram:

The current main freight route is in dark blue. Freight from the LT&S Line has to run across both pairs of tracks of the Great Eastern Main Line. Freight from both directions has to pass along the two track section of the North London Line from Stratford to Dalston Kingsland, which is also one of the busiest passenger sections.

It should be obvious from the diagram that it'd be much better to send freight from the LT&S Line along the Gospel Oak to Barking Line (shown in light blue), and that's exactly what they're trying to do. The problem that needs fixing first is that bridges and tunnels along the route aren't tall enough to allow modern containers through. During the closure three bridges over the Gospel Oak to Barking Line will be demolished, and the track in Hampstead Tunnel will be lowered.

Similar upgrades to other rail routes are planned to reduce the importance of the London Overground network to freight. Work to allow larger containers on the Felixstowe-Ely-Peterbrough-Leicester-Nuneaton will provide an alternative to the North London Line, while Southampton-Basingstoke-Reading-Oxford will provide an alternative to the West London Line.

The frequency increases on the London Overground network can only happen if freight traffic is properly managed, and these various upgrades are an important part of that.

Shepherd's Bush Overground: Wall moving complete

Each time I visit Shepherd's Bush Overground, they've made some significant step towards fixing the dodgy platform.

This time, they've filled in the gap between the station building and the moved wall:
Thus the station once again has a continuous retaining wall, and they're now in the cosmetic tidying up phase of the work.

Just out of shot, they've started reinstating the horizontal beams between the metal fence posts at the top of the wall. If they're sensible this will be followed by moving the platform equipment on to the fence and ditching the lamp posts, but it could go either way at this point.

Meanwhile, they've been busy on the other platform too:
They're making it so that the entrance is towards us onto the wide section of platform, rather than to the right onto the narrow section. As on the other platform, this has required adding a great big ugly steel beam to hold the structure together (ignore the yellow scaffold tower in the right picture).

I've also just been sent some pictures by someone who's been on site. This one is taken from the unwidened section at the far north end of the station, and shows exactly how narrow it was as built:
That glass box in the distance is what my second pictures above are of.

More progress at Shepherd's Bush Overground

Things are certainly moving quickly at Shepherd's Bush Overground station. Since two weeks ago...

They've built a neat connection between the moved and unmoved sections of wall:

They've moved all but these last 4 blocks, and cut away that inconvenient pillar and installed a chunky bit of steelwork to take the weight (before):

Instead of putting in new wall-mounted streetlights (like they were meant to), it looks worryingly like they're just moving the old ones:

They're just toying with us, right?

London Overground lose fight against darkness

When London Overground moved in last year, they were quick to replace the external signage at all of their stations with their signature white on bright orange colour scheme:

Looks great in sunlight, of course. Such a shame that their railway network had to be in a city with no sunlight at night, and is instead lit by dingy yellow streetlights, under which white looks orange and orange looks orange.

The Goblin people quizzed them on this a few months ago, but the LOROL suits were insistent, the colour scheme was perfect, the problem was Silverlink's substandard stations, and night time would simply have to be cancelled.

A surprise then, that now they've finally got round to covering over the Silverlink signs on platforms, they've done this:
Slightly less pretty, but actually readable in low light. It's almost as if they've got their priorities in the right order.

One consequence of this U-turn is that if you're on a London Overground train at night and you can't for the life of you read the station signs, you must be at a station managed by London Underground. They replaced their platform signs early on, and are now stuck praying for the sun to orbit the earth.

GE19 bridge collapse: New details emerge

New Civil Engineer has a write-up (reg. req'd) of the latest information regarding the GE19 bridge collapse:

Packing supporting the bridge failed at one support point, causing a second temporary support to fail. The bridge slipped to its final resting position at both points. As the steel warren truss structure fell, one of the precast concrete slabs forming the bridge's deck came loose and dropped onto railway lines below.

So it wasn't scaffolding or part of the support that fell down. The slab in question was part of a thin lightwight deck, probably designed to protect the line from workers above until the final deck was poured on top.

The article mentions that until the bridge is finished they can't bring materials from the Silwood Triangle worksite to the northern extension by rail, which means this cock-up could have delayed the whole East London Line project.

[via District Dave]