Abbey Wood Crossrail station moves towards completion and first test trains
The new station at Abbey Wood is seeing a last minute rush to be ready for completion by October 31st – a little over six weeks.
Much external cladding is to be applied and we have to hope it alleviates what is currently a drab use of colour and materials. The lift shafts have glazing applied and escalator work is ongoing.
There’s still doubts over how the station building will work at street level in Abbey Wood.
Drab material choices and inactive frontages could be a worry. The station presents its best face for those arriving on a bus from other places rather than the actual residents in the town in which it exists who will approach from Wilton Road and Felxistowe Road.
Work continues on the flyover. Two lanes each way (one a bus lane) will reduce to one which could impact on bus times and bunching as they stop.
Widening work the paving on the flyover seems a bit odd in the long-term if bus passengers will lose out – who would walk along it when going via stairs or new lifts is quicker?
Test trains
Once the station is complete test trains will commence in November. Crossrail announced last week that the last part of track had been installed. Over the coming year work will focus on fitting out other stations and installing signalling and electrical systems.
New trains are being sent progressively to the line between Liverpool Street and Shenfield for public testing.
As ever, Bexley is Bonkers is doing a superb job capturing changes on a daily basis with many more (and far better) pics than seen here.
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will passengers be able to take test trains from abbey wood to liverpool street from november 2017 or are they empty train tests until the full opening in december 2018?
Definitely no passengers but they will be parked at Abbey Wood overnight.
I think we’ll only see how it’s all going to work at street level once the forecourt paving around the new steps and lifts is complete.
I haven’t been able to find out what’s going to happen to the existing gateline entrance on Wilton Road, or to the bridge crossing which is currently the only way onto the Southeastern platforms (and is having escalators installed, or so it appears), but if that entrance is still open once the station building is complete then it may be the best way for local residents (at least from the south side) to enter the station.
Funneling all foot traffic through the shiny new building doesn’t seem logical anyway; other similarly-sized stations have multiple ways in and out.
The current entrance on Wilton Road is temporary and will close soon. The buildings, stairs and second bridge span (connecting to the permanent bridge now having escalators installed) will be removed.
That span and buildings used for a ticket office could have been used for a second station entrance to the west at Mottisfont Road, with the span connecting to another permanent bridge not yet open. Sufficient land exists to do so in the form of council owned garages by the platforms. It would cut off a fair amount of time for those in parts of Abbey Wood and Plumstead.
Everyone coming from Wilton Road will be funnelled up the stairs/lifts. On the other side there is a street entrance.
That seems rather poorly planned. Almost as if they didn’t really consider local resident commuters when planning the entrances and just wanted to show off their shiny new Crossrail station building to potential property buyers…