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)

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.