Sunday, April 27, 2014
This isn't true.
But it will be true tomorrow morning at 0517 when the first Stratford-bound train pulls into the new Pudding Mill Lane station. The line's been closed for the last 10 days so that the connection to the old station can be broken and fresh tracks to the new station can be laid. All that has now happened, and this weekend DLR trains are running in practice mode to make sure everything works. Every few minutes a train glides out of the station along the new viaduct towards Stratford, a band of hi-vis employees at the helm, then a few minutes later another glides back to pull up at the new platforms. Business as usual is now very close.
Nothing's very usual for would-be passengers, though, as the switchback of paths through the surrounding Crossrail site continues to migrate. The usual access up Pudding Mill Lane has been closed, and pedestrians are instead diverted up neighbouring Marshgate Lane. This had been closed since 2007, and was then reappropriated as the main Olympic Park vehicle entrance, but all that temporary infrastructure's now been wiped away. Instead a reinstated road (lined with very young flowerbeds) heads beneath the new railway viaduct and then the old, providing vehicle access to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park Loop Road. Those wishing to walk to the new station are directed through a new lime-walled passage which leads back onto Pudding Mill Lane, and from there they can enter the brand new station from underneath. That's starting tomorrow morning, twelve hours from now, until which time the ghost trains rumble on.
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