19 February (Part 3) - Crossrail progress including the next station closure dates
After
weeks of repetitive progress installing the precast concrete sections which make
up Abbey Wood’s Crossrail platform, this weekend was supposed to be the big one
when some track was laid through the station.
Network Rail’s public relations department kindly kept me in
the loop and discussed with me the best place from which to take pictures but then news
came through that they were only going to lay the ballast. Maybe that is why
there were trains running today despite what the Crossrail notice said.
In the event a couple of train loads of ballast were put down but only from near
the Eynsham Road bridge to just east of the Bostall Manorway footbridge. None in the station.
The
fortnightly set of pictures are in the usual place. The ballast laying is
shown at the bottom of that long page, or click the reverse sort button if you prefer.
Because that page doesn't actually exist - your web browser creates it on the fly -
it doesn't get indexed by Google so the biggest set of Abbey Wood Crossrail
photos is comparatively unknown; even so the Index has been getting around 100
hits a day recently, there must be a lot of train enthusiasts around.
Since the station staff were forbidden from displaying station closure dates
in the middle of last year and the Crossrail version is not very prominent,
passengers are too often left in the dark about the train service and just assume there
isn’t one. I know from my attendance at the Traders’ Association meetings that they are
suffering badly so I asked the station staff when the next closures will be.
According to Southeastern Railways there will be no trains on the next three Sundays, 26th February, 5th and 12th March. Also
Saturday 11th March. Then there is a clear weekend but there will be no trains again on Sunday 26th March.
The last message I had from Network Rail was that there would be more track
laying on both the 4th and 5th March. Maybe plans have had to be changed again
or perhaps if the ballast is down by then the track can be laid end on end by
one of their ingenious machines.