What began as a plan for a cross-London rail route over 40-years ago and became the Crossrail project is now an operational railway, carrying over 1-million passengers every week since May 2022. The Elizabeth Line is a technically advanced, interoperable main line railway which by the time this paper is read will be providing through train services between Reading and Heathrow Airport in the west and Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.
David Burton will outline the history of the route and the project which has delivered the infrastructure. The journey from development of the original designs and concepts to delivery of integrated systems has been fraught with challenges and the reasons behind these will be outlined. Whilst the construction of the tunnels under central London was in its own way a technical feat, the fit-out and commissioning phases of the programme meant bringing multiple complex systems together. The paper will go on to discuss how the interfaces between these have been integrated and tested.
Some of the most significant technical complexities are those around the signalling systems used and the transitions the trains have to make between them. The communications networks on which these rely have also proved to be more difficult to integrate than expected, with multiple interfaces. Whilst work on these systems is still not complete, reliability is now at a level where train service performance on the central section is achieving some of the highest PPM scores in the country. Inevitably how quickly problems can be resolved when things go wrong has become a focus of engineers’ time. The speaker will discuss how these issues have been addressed and the impact of operational restrictions on the service delivery teams.
To round off the paper, the speaker will look at some of the higher-profile issues which dogged the project in its most difficult period. From mid-2018 until Rail for London Infrastructure formally took over operation of the Central Operating Section under ROGS in March 2021, getting the programme back on track has required extensive engineering intervention. Barely a week went by without a new problem emerging, from slow closing platform screen doors to catastrophic failure of high-voltage plant. Individually none of these would have been show-stoppers, but when combined it fell to the skill and judgement of engineers to overcome the blocks.
This will be an on-line presentation using GoToMeeting. Details will be sent before the meeting to those that register. Please register via Eventbrite before 1700 on 24/11/22
IRSE members and non-members are welcome to join us.
Please contact the London & SE section directly for any questions via londonse@irse.org