For those who had to endure the reduced timetable and the diversion of services away from London Bridge from Christmas Eve to last Sunday, here is Network Rail’s time-lapse video of the work.
Some observations:
- There was a surprising amount of work to do on the tracks through the new platforms and across the new bridges. It is surprising that this was not done in advance.
- There was not much activity on the (now separate) lines to and from Cannon Street. Perhaps it would have been possible to run some services into Cannon Street on working days between Christmas and New Year?
- There is a lot of graffiti on the sides of the new bridges. Why are the new tracks so open to trespassers – with all that could mean in future to service reliability?
The full Thameslink story accompanying the video is here.
The bulk of the work shown across the new viaduct at the western end was the sluing of the tracks. Difficult to do that in advance :-). The non-slued track was definitely there in advance.
I see from comments elsewhere (London Reconnections) that a significant amount of the work was the relocation of signalling for Charing Cross to just east of London Bridge to the Three Bridges centre. This included changes to the track circuit technology, and now-redundant insulating sections were removed from the plain track. Not sure if this signalling shift included the Cannon Street route – if so, this would explain why that route was blockaded for the whole period. That, or access for material transfer trains (I see at least one of those).
@Mike: Thanks. We also noticed that the major work was at the western end, which is why we had the question about the Cannon Street lines. They are now completely separate back to New Cross, and did not seem useful for engineering trains. There was some work on platforms 3-4 at London Bridge to put up a hoarding to protect the new work site, but that could surely have been done over a weekend.