ChicagoChicago - The London Transport Museum on Covent Garden is indeed a mighty museum, there is also a depot in Acton that stores quite a few trains and other materials. The best railway museum in Britain (perhaps the world) is based next door to York Railway Museum which houses possibly the nicest looking train ever built: the LNER Mallard.
Britain is fortunate to have a vast network of heritage railways for tourists and train-fans.
Progress Update on the East London Line Extension
londonreconnections.blogspot.com has pictures on the ELLE. The update goes from north to south, a map below illustrates where the updates are from.
Shadwell-Whitechapel
While the track and signalling is all new, the tunnels and surrounding walls go back many decades as this is the approach to the Thames Tunnel - the world's oldest underwater tunnel and the first to use a tunnel shield. This is the stretch between Whitechapel and Shadwell.
New Cross Gate
On the old East London Line, New Cross Gate was one of two southern termini (the other is New Cross on a branch slightly to the east - both stations are on the same road), but will be extended south to two new termini at West Croydon and Crystal Palace.
The station has five platforms, the outer two will be used by the ELL, while the innter three will retain their use as commuter train platforms.
The first aerial picture shows the new bridge to allow ELL services to avoid crossing the Brighton Main Line. The line curving to the left is the branch to New Cross, while the lines in the foreground are for the South Eastern Main Line (New Cross is a station on the line).
The second aerial picture shows the vague path of another branch for the ELL which will be constructed to link up with Clapham Junction in the west. It goes from the bottom left, under the railway lines, across the site of where the blue pedestrian bridge is (this would be the site of a new station called Surrey Canal Road) bfore curving off to the right.
The two major lines are the South Eastern Main Line (bottom two brick viaducts) and the Brighton Main Line on their approach to London Bridge.
Crystal Palace
Crystal Palace is one of the two southern stations on the ELL. The present staton as four platforms arranged in two sets; the first is on a curve (not visible in the pictures), while the other two are visible in the below pictures, where there also used to be another four additional platforms (hence the large gap).
In this main section, work has begun on preparing for the former bay platform to the right to be reinstated as a terminating platform for the ELLE. Another bay platform in the middle will be created, as will a brand new island platform to serve as another terminating ELLE platform and commuter train services. The present platform 4 (visible to the right in the last picture) will be decommissioned as passengers will alight on a new island platform where the gap is at present.
On another note the brick walls show the only remains of a vast glass roof that spanned the length of the platforms, but was unfortunately taken down early last century due to safety concerns. There also used to be another Crystal Palace station (the still-open station is the Low-Level station) called Crystal Palace (High Level) which was fantastic looking, but closed in the mid-20th century, for which little remains - pictures here:
http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/s...el/index.shtml
West Croydon
These three pictures are of the southern terminus at West Croydon. A disused bay platform is being filled in so that the station can return to use as a three platform station. ELLE services will use this platform allowing commuter services to use the outside two platforms.
