The Elizabeth Line

 

On Tuesday the 24th May 2022 the long awaited Elizabeth Line finally opened to the public. The new railway stretches 100km from Reading and Heathrow in the West to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the East. The trains will operate in three different sections and it was the first section from Abbey Wood to Paddington which opened yesterday. It is hoped that the whole route will be opened by the Autumn. It will increase London's rail capacity by 10% and cut many journey times by half.  Three and a half years late in opening with a four billion overspend it is finally here.

As it happened I was leading a walk around Canary Wharf on Tuesday so it was an opportunity not to be missed. I had to have a ride on the new trains.

The Canary Wharf station is the largest on the line and connects the Canary Wharf business area with the City of London, the West End and Heathrow airport. It provides an interchange with Canary Wharf Jubilee underground station, the DLR station and a link to National Rail stations

The ship like design is 250m long and is surrounded by the water of West India North Dock and still allows a navigable channel for boats within the dock.

The station is 28m below a five storey mixed use development of retail and leisure facilities. The upper level of the roof top garden is covered with a 310m wooden open lattice roof which lets in the light and rain for natural irrigation. The garden and some of the businesses have been open since 2017 and the station should have been opened in 2018. So I have also been awaiting its opening for some time mainly out of curiosity rather than a need, although it will probably prove useful if I need to get to Heathrow airport.

There were very long queues early in the morning as people were desperate to be on the first trains. I waited until after midday when the queues had subsided. I was astonished to discover that a large number of people had travelled from around the world to be here today so that they could travel on the Elizabeth Line on the day of its opening.

The escalators taking you down four levels below ground to get to the trains.

Very spacious concourse.

As this is a new station it is fitted with platform screen doors, separating the platform from the train tracks. Many of the stations on the line are existing stations which have had new platforms added.

The inside of the train is similar in design to the Jubilee trains except it is all new. However the ride was so much smoother and quieter, I loved it. I only travelled to the next station at Custom House.

This station is above ground and outdoors so there were no platform screen doors and I could see the train more clearly with its purple and lilac colours.

My souvenir of the day was an underground map showing the Elizabeth Line. The line is shown in purple. It is not a solid line but is shown as two parallel lines to distinguish it from the Underground lines. Although the train does run underground in parts of Central London, most of the route is above ground so it was decided it would not be added to the eleven underground lines. This pleased me no end as I still have another 110 stations to visit on my 'Above the Underground' challenge.