7 February (Part 2) - The Wilton Wall
Those
who have taken a look at the daily updates to
the next Crossrail photo feature
will have seen the new Abbey Wood island platform asphalted and the southern station support
wall adorned with red shuttering. Yesterday the cavity was filled with
concrete, it took fewer than seven hours including the preliminaries and clearing up afterwards.
The wraps are due to come off next Tuesday and Wednesday.
As you can see, it will be one massive plain concrete wall and that is only to
support the span across the tracks. The station will be above it and totally
dominate Wilton Road.
There are no plans for decorative cladding according to a
usually well informed insider. The curved roof serves to soften the outline when
viewed from above but only the pigeons will arrive that way.
Elsewhere
the Church Manorway footbridge
still has no disabled access and the Bostall Manorway bridge is nearly six months old
and yet to see its first ‘customer’.
Abbey Wood station is still said to be on course to despatch the first train from the
new London bound platform on 22nd February. I can’t see it being fully fitted
out by then but the essentials should be there, like the luxury of a roof which
Abbey Wood has not seen since the Victorian station was knocked down in 1987.
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