Queen opens $25B railway, Can Fit Tallest Skyscraper at 1 Station

In March, I took a special tour of two stations along the Elizabeth line and also rode the train. The first station I looked around was at Paddington — one of London’s major train stations, which opened in 1854.

Paddington Station on London’s Elizabeth line is so large that London’s tallest building, The Shard, could be contained inside, Crossrail CEO Mark Wild stated during the tour.

Wild claimed that the Elizabeth line was first planned 23 years back and that construction has been ongoing for 13 years. It’s finally opened after missing several deadlines.

Queen Elizabeth II visited Elizabeth Line to celebrate its launch. She was able to add money to an Oyster card at London’s Paddington Station.

TfL offered reduced fares and an additional hour on the Elizabeth line to the Queen for her funeral on September 19. It also established a Paddington station flower memorial and declared a two-minute silence for passengers.

Source: Insider.

Some stations along the Elizabeth Line have artistic details. Paddington Station featured clouds on the glass ceiling. It represented every type of cloud found in the sky.

It cost £1 million, or $1.3 million, per meter to build this tunnel between the Elizabeth line and the Bakerloo line at Paddington Station, Wild said.

There was an issue with the radio system that meant trains stopped running for two hours prior to the tour. Wild acknowledged that there were still some “niggles or quirks” with the railway.

Glass paneling slides open to allow trains to pass through the tunnels. This allows for the cooling airflow to be separated from the station’s air. The trains are air-conditioned unlike underground London trains. According to Crossrail’s website, more than 1,500 km of cable supply the new line with ventilation and power as well as lighting.

The Elizabeth line trains were spacious and bright, in comparison to the London Underground tubes and other UK trains. TfL employees told me that the carriages were 1.5x larger than the city’s subway trains.

It was quieter than underground transport systems so I was able speak with other passengers. It was also smoother than other tube journeys, which can be bumpy.

Wild explained that the driver gave me a clear view from his cab over the tunnels. They can go up to 40m underground.

Eight tunneling machines — each at 1,000 tonnes — were used to created 42km of new rail tunnels below London, according to Crossrail. The company website states that the tunnel gangs consisted of twenty-two people working in shifts to create winding routes.

Around 250 million passengers will use the Elizabeth line every year. It runs 60 miles east-to-west across London. It will stop at 41 stations along the full route — 10 are newly built and 30 are refurbishments of existing stations.

Elizabeth line trains depart from London’s eastern suburbs and travel through central London to reach commuter hubs in west London.

My journey on one section of the railway — from Paddington to Canary Wharf — took around 18 minutes. According to Citymapper’s navigation app, it would take about 30 minutes to make the same trip by using the existing railway network.

The Elizabeth line takes you from Canary Wharf’s financial center to Heathrow Airport in 38 minutes. It costs the same as a regular tube fare. The journey takes approximately one hour, according to Citymapper.

Although a proposal to build a train that runs from east to west through London was made in 1830, it took almost 200 years for it to become a reality.

Construction of the line hit £18.9 billion, that’s $25 billion, but Byford said in March that £150 million was still needed to finish the project. He said that Crossrail Ltd was still trying to figure out how to finance the additional costs.

Nearly 100 million liters (or 40 Olympic-sized) of water were pumped out from the station box during construction.

London’s Natural History Museum was also given a fragment of woolly mammoth’s jawbone and an amber chunk that were both estimated to have been around 55 million year old.

The line included more than 63,000 sleepers, 51,419 metres of rail, and 13,500 meters of concrete cubed. According to Crossrail’s website, this is enough to fill multiple swimming pools of Olympic size.

Parts of the new trains were tested in Vienna under extreme weather conditions, ranging from -25ºC up to +40ºC, according to Crossrail.

Wild stated that trials ended March 28. Ghost runs — journeys without passengers — took place before the line opened in May.

Byford admitted that the Elizabeth line was “late” and “overbudget” in March, but he promised “no slippage.”