1 December - Abbey Wood. Struggling on in spite of Crossrail
Still not a lot going on. If it was a bit warmer I might fill in the gaping hole
Thames Water has left in my front garden. They quickly filled in the hole in the public
footpath but pretended not to know anything about the uncovered manhole in my garden. It’s
the same in Townley road, appliances wrecked by mud and grit in the water supply but
no response from Thames Water.
The only thing currently of interest, and then only to those on the North West corner of
the borough, came out of my attendance at last night’s Abbey Wood Traders’ Association meeting.
Bexley Council recently made a small song and dance out of their new website
yourabbeywood which I thought was pretty useless except to the few who might
be academically interested in long term plans for the area. There was nothing at
all on that website which might boost trade which is suffering dreadfully at the hands of Network Rail.
As mentioned last Sunday,
the number of railway line closures for 2017 has suddenly risen from the promised one to 22 and that’s just the Crossrail related
ones. The lack of complete information drives the local traders to despair.
Network Rail circulated an email on 25th November which said there would
be no Crossrail closure next Saturday, 3rd December but there would be on Sunday 4th.
If
you look at the Engineering Works posters at Abbey Wood station you will see there are no trains throughout the weekend.
The map shows the line is closed only from Slade Green to Plumstead on
Saturday (implying Crossrail work) but all the way up to London on the Sunday -
implying extensive Network Rail work. But the Crossrail email says the reverse.
No wonder the official advice is to assume there will never be trains at the weekend.
However there is now
a useful Abbey Wood website. It seems to be a big secret, only one of the
traders present at the meeting last night knew about it, but apparently it is the work of
the retail consultant who designed the new shop fronts.
It includes a shop directory so you can see what services are available in Abbey Wood. A
rare accolade from me, but it is really quite well done. (It’s on an unusually slow server, be patient!)
P.S. Coincidentally, Bexley Council has published
a Press Release on this subject today complete with photographs of the new shop fronts.
Similar photographs were published on BiB two months ago.