London Luton Airport – Direct Air-Rail Transit
Unlike other London airports, Luton doesn’t have a railway station connected to the airport terminal, to rectify this, a new people mover is being built to connect the present Terminal 1 (and future Terminal 2) with Luton Airport Parkway station on the Midland Main Line (travel time to St Pancras is just 30 minutes). Luton Airport Parkway is also being completely rebuilt with a far larger concourse and pedestrian bridge. Operating 24/7 it will help to drastically reduce transit times and cut pollution and is due to open next year.
Images sourced from: https://twitter.com/nrailops
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Crossrail
A further round of project updates over the past three months.
Images sourced from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/crossrailpress and https://twitter.com/Crossrail
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Crossrail Depot
Royal Oak Tunnel Portal
Paddington
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Bond Street
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Tottenham Court Road
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Farringdon
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Liverpool Street
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Whitechapel
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Canary Wharf
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Custom House
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Woolwich
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Abbey Wood
Unblock the Croydon Bottleneck
The Croydon area is a complex arrangement of several lines in south London focused around the Brighton Main Line (BML). Each weekday some 1,700 trains and 300,000 passengers pass through the area, but it suffers from a significant number of delays to services due to the presence of several flat junctions, limited number of lines and station layouts that cause severe congestion.
With substantial population growth along the BML corridor and additional capacity (via the recently completed Thameslink and new high-capacity 'metro' rolling stock) soaking up demand, there is an urgent need to completely rethink the Croydon bottleneck. The project is broken down into four sections: i) East Croydon station, ii) the Selhurst Triangle junction, iii) Norwood Junction and iv) Windmill Bridge. Delivery will be delivered across 2028-33. There is a video going through the entire project on the following consultation website.
Images sourced from Network Rail: https://carsconsultation.com
East Croydon Station
East Croydon is one of the busiest non-terminal stations in the UK, used by nearly 25mn people every year (a further 6mn change trains for services elsewhere), but the design is poorly suited for the demands of the current century with congestion on the ramps up to the small main ticket hall, and just six platforms. An additional two platforms are planned, but to facilitate this, the entire station will be relocated 200m northwards. Construction will be undertaken in phases (with a minimum of five platforms online at any point of time) so that the station can remain open. When completed, East Croydon will have four new wide island platforms, a large new concourse, a new side entrance, two lifts and eight escalators per island platform, two above-platform transfer corridors to aid dispersing passengers, a new piazza and retail.
Selhurst Triangle
Located to the north of East Croydon, the Selhurst Triangle is the convergence point from the south of the BML and Sutton & Mole Valley Lines and from the north the two branches of the BML heading up to London Victoria and London Bridge. Several dive-unders and fly-overs would be built to replace several present flat-junctions and inadequate fly-overs. By completely grade seperating the lines, overall capacity across the BML will be significantly increased, as will line speeds cutting journey times.
Norwood Junction
The present station will be rebuilt to incorporate two island platforms and two through-running lines for non-stop serices heading to/from London Bridge. I have discussed this project previously in the thread.
Windmill Bridge
Inbetween Selhurst Junction and East Croydon is Windmill Bridge which will need to be replaced to enable more tracks to run through the area.