July 4th 2017 saw the surprise announcement that the Elizabeth line would serve Terminal 5 at Heathrow. Heathrow Media Centre, the public relations department of Heathrow Airport Ltd, let the world know of this Crossrail …
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The Kent Route Study (Part 2): Crossrail to Gravesend
Much has been written about Crossrail in recent years. One topic that has largely slipped through the net, however, is the revival of the originally planned route from Abbey Wood to Ebbsfleet. This was to …
Continue readingOne of the Family: Crossrail’s Transition to Being a Tube
In June 2015 we reported that Crossrail was well on the path to becoming a functioning railway in the making rather than a construction project nearing completion. The man whose job it is to create …
Continue readingThe Friday Reading List: 3 February 2017
As anyone looking to properly understand London’s transport needs and network knows, context, background and best-practice are important. As readers might imagine, behind the scenes here at LR Towers we thus spend a lot of …
Continue readingThe Friday Reading List: 20 January 2017
As anyone looking to properly understand London’s transport needs and network knows, context, background and best-practice are important. As readers might imagine, behind the scenes here at LR Towers we thus spend a lot of …
Continue readingOn Our Line #4: Designing Crossrail’s Stations
In the latest episode of our On Our Line podcast series, Nicole discusses the architecture and design of Crossrail’s stations with architecture critic Hugh Pearman and Crossrail’s Head of Architecture Julian Robinson. Tune in to …
Continue readingThe Elizabethan Age: Crossrail’s Trains Make Their Debut
Today saw the official unveiling of the first of Crossrail’s Class 345s, built by Bombardier in Derby. It would be rude, therefore, not to share with LR readers some photos of the new class in …
Continue readingElizabethan Style: A Look At Crossrail’s Core Stations
To coincide with a new exhibition on Crossrail station design at the Royal Institute of British Architects, the organisation have released a series of images showing the proposed internal designs of a number of the …
Continue readingCrossrail: Making Concrete Progress
With Crossrail well into the phase of building the railway infrastructure we look at progress in the tunnel section and what is being done to push forward ahead of schedule Not just a real railway …
Continue readingThe QE Tube: What’s In A Name?
“It is a gutter title” complained The Railway Magazine. “Not what we expect from a railway company.” The line in question was the Bakerloo, and just how it got that name has always been subject …
Continue readingBoxing Clever: Crossrail at Paddington
With the euphoria surrounding the completion of Crossrail’s running tunnels and the subsequent dismantling of the TBMs it is easy to forget that there is an awful lot of civil engineering construction work still to …
Continue readingPurple Train: A Look At Crossrail’s Rolling Stock
We last looked at Crossrail’s rolling stock when the contract was awarded to Bombardier. Now TfL have made the first digital renders of their new trains available to the public.
Continue readingThe Warehouse
The squealing of machinery comes to a halt and the large red light on the operator’s panel turns green. A buzzer sounds and he steps forward, opening a salt-encrusted gate to reveal a small miner’s …
Continue readingCrossrail: The End of The Beginning
It is said that one of the problems of Channel Tunnel construction was that the British thought they were building a tunnel that just happened to contain a railway. The French, thinking more realistically, saw …
Continue readingLondon 2050 (Part 5): Peak Tube
According to the London 2050 report’s forecasts, the demand for the Underground will rise by 60% in the next thirty five years. That’s a challenging target to address with additional capacity, given the pressures the …
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