04:38 I can't believe it still hasn't opened.
04:39 Hang on...
04:40 The very first 'Elizabeth line' train departs Paddington bound for Heathrow. Nobody notices.
04:42 The second 'Elizabeth line' train departs Shenfield bound for Liverpool Street. Nobody cares.
05:45 Queue at Abbey Wood already snaking down past Sainsburys.
06:05 Queue at Paddington has already eaten Costa out of bacon rolls.
06:10 Mayor spotted flogging purple socks to waiting passengers.
06:20 Polite crowd of train obsessives surges through ticket barriers.
06:25 Station staff who've been here a year say "blimey look, actual passengers".
06:30 First proper train departs Abbey Wood for Paddington.
06:33 Second proper train departs Paddington for Abbey Wood.
06:38 First "See It Say It Sorted" announcement.
06:53 First "damn, I got off at the wrong end of this really long platform."
07:05 Passengers discover that once you've reached Abbey Wood the best thing is to come back again.
07:15 Social media flooded with purple content.
07:30 Every carriage, concourse, platform and passageway now heaving.
08:00 The Central line is really quiet this morning.
23:00 If you've not been on the line yet, are you really a Londoner?
23:31 Last train of the day glides into Paddington.
23:59 OK, been there done that, what's next?
Crossrail's not the only big London project launching this week. The Abba Arena in Stratford is opening too, the hexagonal amphitheatre where four Swedish avatars will pretend to perform to their back catalogue. What's more construction's taken less than a year to complete and it's actually opening on the day they said it would. You don't get that with a purple railway.
Officially the arena opens on Friday, which you can tell because they've attached a countdown sign to a lamppost alongside and the number of days is currently on 4. But every big opening needs a dress rehearsal, even when the performers don't exist, so that's what's been going on this weekend.
The first dress rehearsal was on Friday night and apparently Benny turned up and sat incognito in the auditorium. Attendees were sworn to secrecy, and successfully so, a bit like the Olympic Opening Ceremony dress rehearsals ten years earlier. Further shows took place on Saturday and Sunday, perhaps now veering more towards previews than rehearsals, and I unintentionally found myself in the heart of the crowd yesterday afternoon. Timecheck: Performances will take place at 3pm at weekends, and at 7.45pm every night except Tuesday and Wednesday. Overall running time is 90 minutes (without an interval).
I thought the DLR was a lot busier than usual but it wasn't initially obvious why. The crowd waiting at Stratford had a 'mates and families' vibe, very much the sort of out-of-towners you usually see feeding into North Greenwich clutching a £50 ticket for a big name gig. So I was surprised when they all got off one stop down the line, well over a hundred strong, then twigged as they surged down towards London's newest performance mecca. Transportcheck: The extra-wide stairwells at Pudding Mill Lane coped admirably but the two ticket validators at the foot of the steps struggled, especially given the high percentage of concertgoers unfamiliar with contactless travel.
The arena couldn't be more perfectly located, you just step out of the station and the entrance is the other side of a (closed) road. Here a merry operative directs the crowd into one of two orange-taped queueing slaloms, "seated to the right, dancing to the left". The two halves have roughly similar capacities and are similarly eye-wateringly priced. Whichever way you go a ticket check and a security patdown follow, and then you're into the outer courtyard where the refreshment options are. When they say the arena opens 1 hour and 45 minutes before the show starts, what they're hoping is that you'll spend as long as possible drinking and nibbling out here. Pricecheck: Bottles of prosecco sell from £40, wine from £26, cans of gin and tonic are £6.50 and a can of Coca-Cola is £2.95. Details of food concessions have not yet been released.
There's also merch, some of it on sale outside from smiley staff stationed behind a silver stall resembling travelling luggage. I spotted t-shirts, reusable bags in multiple shades, some kind of belted top and what might have been a programme (or the modern equivalent). A few attendees were so keen to reach the merchpoint that they strode across the wildflower border that's magically appeared here over the last few weeks, and may not last much longer if miscreants keep taking selfies while standing in it. Instagramcheck: The exterior looks a lotmoreimpressive after sunset with the rainbow lettering and rainbow lighting in sharp contrast to the darkening sky.
Opening night for the public is Friday, just as they said it would be, but a sign says that the whole of Barbers Road is going to be closed on Thursday from 10am to midnight so I bet some massive promotional junket is going to sneak in a day early. I'm tempted to wander down and listen from nearby to see what the chosen setlist might be. Whatever, the arrival of the first crowds is an amazing transformation for a backwater that's not been this busy since the heady days of summer 2012, and all thanks to a band who aren't even going to turn up. Abbacheck: Hurrah if you're going soon, or even if you've been already, and I hope to bring you a review before the summer's out.
And in what's perfect timing for concertgoers, the waste management centre immediately nextdoor appears to have entered a demolition phase. Last month lorryfuls of icky liquids were still being delivered for processing, queueing outside the arena as they waited to gain entrance, but now its outbuildings are being knocked down and the yard's being cleared. Meanwhile round the corner on Cooks Road the longstanding warehouse and abandoned oil depot have very recently been reduced to piles of rubble in what's the opening phase of a separate riverside development. It's all going to be flats around here, inexorably, eventually, as indeed is the Abba Arena's ultimate fate. Best come dancing soon before new neighbours move in and complain about the noise.
It's the weekend before Crossrail so several bus routes in south Newham have been significantly tweaked to provide better rail connections. "We need more buses at Custom House", they said, "so let's break existing routes and then break others to fill the gaps and then cut others short while we're at it".
• The U-shaped 104 has been split into two straighter routes, the 104 and the brand new 304.
• The 241 has been curtailed to Prince Regent, so the 474 has been diverted along its former route, so the 330 has been extended to cover the 474's former route.
• The incredibly twisty 300 now twists down very different roads.
• The 101 no longer goes to Beckton Retail Park, and the 262 now goes no further.
I went out yesterday to experience the changes first hand, and it may not surprise you to hear that the changes have been implemented badly. I know I slag off The Bus Change People a lot, but this is even more of pissup in a brewery than usual. Missing timetables, wrongly-placed tiles, out-of-date maps and useless generic advice all contributed to a lot of mystified passengers and some rather angry ones too.
With changes of this magnitude what you really need is a summary map, but no such map has been provided. I can't even show you a summary map from the original consultation because there wasn't one, plus that consultation's been deleted, plus this is actually two consultations combined, plus a number of the routes aren't doing what was suggested anyway.
So I've made my own summary map, given TfL can no longer be arsed. It's based on the maps they gave up making in 2016 and it's a bit rough and ready, but it's probably the only way you'll get your head round what's going on. Click to embiggen.
See how Custom House is now served by six bus routes (it used to be three). See how you can now get to Custom House from every direction (except south). See how TfL have stopped duplicating the DLR (you can no longer get a bus between Prince Regent and Royal Albert, nor between Pontoon Dock and City Airport). And see how Beckton Asda is now the terminus for five routes (it used to be three) which may be why the bus station was seriously clogged up yesterday.
But this yellow notice is all that's been posted up at affected bus stops. It does mention there's a brand new bus route, so that's a plus, but everything else is unhelpfully vague. It relies on you checking a webpage which, as we discovered with buses in Abbey Wood last weekend, isn't even the page where the changes are listed. Even if you get that far the text doesn't link to the individualroutemaps on the TfL website, perhaps because nobody's updated those yet so they still show what these buses used to do. Also, although a dozen spider maps have been updated on the TfL website I didn't spot any of these in real life, only old maps rendered obsolete overnight. All that useful information and they keep it to themselves.
The most useful place for proper information would be Custom House station, given TfL have tweaked all these routes ready to cater for onward passengers, but no such luck. The bus stops immediately outside only display timetables for a nightbus, i.e. nothing for the existing 147, the new 304 or the newly diverted 474. The bus stop facing the platforms still has a spider map dated August 2013, so is egregiously wrong, while the bus stop across the road is still stuck in October 2021. I think there's a new spider map just inside the ticket barriers where nobody can yet see it, but there's nothing outside on the footbridge nor any signs pointing to where the buses are nor anything whatsoever useful at ground level.
On my travels I discovered that timetables for the 241 have been updated but not those for any other route, suggesting TfL's contractors only printed one set before heading out in the van. I also discovered several stops where the yellow notice had been stuck on top of a correct timetable concealing it, while leaving a now incorrect timetable on full display. If you can't get a change right that's been five years in the making, what hope is there?
The most disgruntled passenger I met yesterday was a pensioner at Beckton bus station. He'd travelled here on the 300, discovered how mangled the new route was and was now waiting to go home. He was not happy and shared his disquiet with fellow passengers and an off-duty bus driver. "What's happened to the 300?" The bus driver was very knowledgeable, and politeness personified. "Well how is anyone supposed to know that?!" None of the maps or timetables at the bus stop had been updated. "Gordon Bennett!" He admitted he'd seen the yellow notice but had disregarded it. "Never in my wildest dreams did I believe it would mean this." He was a pensioner with an app on his phone so fairly alert, but in the absence of a map all he could do was read out a list of stops. "It no longer goes down Stansfeld Road, it's a ridiculous route." He advised another passenger not to take the 376 instead. "It goes all round the houses, it takes forever." He grumbled with the actual bus driver as we boarded. "I can't believe it, this is stupid." And he prolonged his disappointment by engaging a growing entourage all the way to Plaistow. "A lot of people are going to go to the wrong place today." He was not wrong.
As well as riding the 300 I also rode the brand new 304 from end to end. This is the eastern half of the former 104, broken at Prince Regent Lane and extended to a new bus stand at Custom House. It starts and finishes at a Crossrail station (which you might think was unique but the 86 does too). And it wasn't busy...
Route 304: Manor Park to Custom House Location: London east, purple zone Length of bus journey: 5 miles, 30 minutes
The first stop on the 304 is just opposite Manor Park station (whose roundel looks to be retaining its TfL Rail branding to the bitter end). The 474 also starts here and follows the same route south through East Ham for the next two miles, so that's the bus most Day One passengers were going to catch. They'd never heard of the 304 and there wasn't a map or a timetable, so when a bus came along saying Custom House on the front they gave it a miss. At least someone had been along and changed all the tiles from 104 to 304, but it clearly wasn't yet enough. On Forest Drive a lady waved us past. Across Romford Road a mum refused to let her son board on the way to his violin lesson. On High Street North a dad asked the driver if she was going to the market and decided to give the 304 a punt. Everyone massing outside the tube station piled aboard the 474 behind us instead. One day they'll learn but in the absence of useful information that day was not today.
Not everybody bailed. A dozen folk boarded by the town hall, having deduced that a route number ending in 04 might be what they wanted. A dishevelled man clutching a plastic dinosaur flagged us down with deliberate intent. But at the next stop an old man carrying two stuffed Asda bags was not so fortunate. He stared bemused at the front of the bus, checked the timetable except there wasn't one, looked briefly inside the shelter for a bus map, raised his eyes to read the Countdown display which didn't help, and before he'd finished faffing we'd driven off. If only he'd read the yellow notice and put his shopping down and got his phone out and checked tfl.gov.uk/buses as the Bus Gods intended... but there wasn't time and he didn't look like he owned a smartphone anyway.
Just before the dual carriageway the 304 bears off down a residential backroad running parallel to the Greenway. This is Lonsdale Avenue where for a confusing half mile the old 104 and the new 304 coincide. A mother with a tiny baby stopped us to ask if the bus was going to Stratford, like every bus down Lonsdale Avenue has since the 1980s, but we weren't so she had to wait for an original. Levels of confusion were not helped by the tiles at two stops now saying "towards Newham Hospital, Beckton or Upton Park", whereas for Beckton you actually needed to be on the other side of the road. Just before we reached the brand new section the only other passenger upstairs alighted and I was left with the upper deck all to myself.
We crossed the Greenway and entered Newham General via a bus gate. Two of the stops along this section don't yet have a 304 tile, which thus far is a rare mistake. But on the far side of the A13 the Tile People have totally buggered it up for a different route, the much maligned 300. Perverse tweakage means the 300 now follows Prince Regent Lane in the opposite direction to before, i.e, you need to be waiting on the other side of the road, but for some reason all the tiles have been removed so it looks like the 300 doesn't run this way at all. This is what happens when you send rank amateurs out to do a job of work.
The 304 terminates after a brief run along Victoria Dock Road parallel to Crossrail's tracks. I spied a purple train pulling out of the platform, running empty while operating yet another test service for the umpteenth month in a row. When we finally stopped there were only three of us left on board, including the man with the plastic dinosaur so I reckon he must have known what he was doing. The driver parked up on the 'new' stand, which has actually been waiting for this moment since 2020, and a phalanx of Day One bus photographers excitedly captured the moment. I checked the bus stop and obviously there was no map and no timetable because why would anybody bother? As you listen to the fanfare of Crossrail publicity over the next few days listing all the train facts in copious detail, remember that nobody gives a stuff about the buses.
It's time for a Crossrail quiz.
See if you can answer the ten questions before scrolling down to see the answers. (Remember there are 41 stations altogether, not just the 10 new ones)
Q1) Which two Crossrail stations will not be open when the service begins?
Q2) Which Crossrail station has the shortest name? Q3) ...and the longest?
Q4) Which is the only Crossrail station that isn't (yet) step-free?
Q5) How much is an off-peak contactless single from Reading to Shenfield? a) £12 b) £17 c) £22 d) £27
Q6) Where can passengers ride Crossrail for free?
Q7) Which Crossrail station interchanges with the most other TfL services?
Q8) Which station has the most Crossrail platforms?
Q9) Which is the southernmost Crossrail station?
Q10) Which is the oldest Crossrail station?
Go on, try answering them before looking at the answers.
Or answering some of them.
Even one of them.
You're only spoiling it for yourself by scrolling down straight away.
Answers
Q1) Which two Crossrail stations will not be open when the service begins?
One is Bond Street (which isn't ready yet and should open 'later this year').
The other is Heathrow Airport Terminal 4 (which is due to reopen in the middle of June).
Q2) Which Crossrail station has the shortest name? Q3) ...and the longest?
That'll be Iver for the shortest name and Heathrow Airport Terminals 2&3 for the longest.
If you ignore Heathrow then Tottenham Court Road is the longest at 18 characters, but T2&3 has nine more.
Q4) Which is the only Crossrail station that isn't (yet) step-free?
The only station that hasn't yet earned its step-free blob is Ilford, where work is still underway on the main ticket hall and its three new lifts. Completion is anticipated in 'summer 2022'. TfL are blaming Network Rail, and Network Rail are blaming unexpected problems with pre-existing concrete.
Q5) How much is an off-peak contactless single from Reading to Shenfield?
It's £17, which was answer b), but rises to £29.60 if you make the journey at peak times. It's cheaper than buying a standard paper ticket, so don't do that.
Q6) Where can passengers ride Crossrail for free?
All rail transfers between terminals at Heathrow Airport are free of charge, so anyone can ride Crossrail between T2&3, T4 and T5 for nothing. Just don't go one extra stop to Hayes and Harlington because that'll cost you over £6.
Q7) Which Crossrail station interchanges with the most other TfL services?
At Paddington Crossrail interchanges with four different tube lines, and at Stratford connects to two tube lines, the Overground and the DLR. They're in joint second place with four each. But the winner with a total of six is Liverpool Street which connects to the Overground, the Northern line at Moorgate and four other tube lines at Liverpool Street. Just think twice before you decide to switch between the Northern line and the Overground because that is going to be one hell of a long walk.
Q8) Which station will have the most Crossrail platforms?
Most Crossrail stations have two Crossrail platforms, so we can ignore those immediately. A few stations have platforms Crossrail trains use only rarely, for example during engineering works, so I'm going to ignore those too. Reading uses four possible platforms for Crossrail terminators, so that's one of the higher totals. But the joint winners are Paddington and Liverpool Street, both of which have two Crossrail platforms in the depths and three Crossrail platforms in the mainline station, a total of five. By the end of the year Paddington will only have Crossrail platforms underground, i.e. the standard two, but Liverpool Street is destined to retain its above ground terminus at peak times so that should be the eventual victor.
Q9) Which is the southernmost Crossrail station?
This proved rather harder to answer than I was expecting, not least because this is an east-west railway and the route map is quite deceptive. Abbey Wood isn't even in the top five. Check on a proper map and this all comes down to an unexpectedly tight battle between Reading and Heathrow Terminal 4. Technically Reading wins because the main station entrance is slightly further south than any part of the Heathrow station. Alternatively Heathrow Terminal 4 wins because its platforms extend fractionally further south than Reading's Crossrail platforms (which are on the northern side of the station). I'll accept both as correct answers, but you'd never guess from the tube map that Reading was even in contention.
Q10) Which is the oldest Crossrail station?
A lot of Crossrail stations have been around for a long time, indeed the majority are 19th century. By my calculations 14 were first opened between 1838 and 1840, even if they're not quite the same buildings they were then. West narrowly beats east because the line to Berkshire opened in 1838 and the line to Essex in 1839. The Great Western Railway ran its first services between Paddington and Maidenhead on 4th June 1838, which ought to be the key date we're looking for except my research suggests every single one of those Day One stations has since been re-sited. Even Paddington started out on a temporary site which eventually became a goods yard. I therefore believe we have two winners, both of which opened on 1st December 1838, which are Hanwell and Ealing Broadway. What's more Hanwell is still gorgeous and Grade II listed, even after the addition of lifts, so is easily Crossrail's most traditionally attractive station.
A new railway means a new tube map. And as you might expect from a map that now contains the tube, DLR, Overground, trams, cablecar, river piers, Thameslink, fare zones, step-free blobs and Swedish furniture stores, the new addition doesn't exactly leap out.
Crossrail's light purple is a lovely shade but fails to stand out on a multi-coloured diagram in the way you'd hope a flagship megaproject would. It's not even solid purple, it's hollow with a white stripe down the middle, which makes it unexpectedly hard to follow the line across the map.
It's also very much not a straight line, bending a total of twelve times on its journey from Paddington to Abbey Wood. Clearly it hasn't been easy to thread a new line through the maelstrom of the existing network, so the sheer volume of content on the tube map has forced some rather inelegant twists. Time was when the Central line was the horizontal baseline on the map but even that now has eight bends between Notting Hill Gate and Mile End. The new horizontal baseline, somewhat inexplicably, is the Hammersmith & City line which now runs straight all the way from Moorgate to Barking.
One purple bend that probably ought to exist but doesn't is at the far end of the line. Abbey Wood is shown as being due south of Woolwich whereas in fact it's due east, with Plumstead similarly badly placed. Meanwhile across the river the east-west DLR lines through the Royal Docks have had to be rotated to run north-south to accommodate the purple line squeezing through. The tube map is of course famous for not needing to reflect geographical truth, but adding Crossrail is distorting reality far more than before.
The competition for 'The tube map's worst interchange' is now a battle between Paddington and Liverpool Street.
Paddington's always been complicated because it includes two tube stations, only one of which is step-free, but it also now has to depict a split-level Crossrail disconnect. The five connected blobs bear no relation to interchange reality (although to be fair this is exactly the same mess as on the previous map, just with an extra Crossrail connection added). So sprawling is this spidery interchange that passengers on the Bakerloo line may now be hard pushed to spot the name of the station between Warwick Avenue and Edgware Road.
But Liverpool Street is much worse. This five-blob seesaw is a consequence of Liverpool Street's Crossrail station connecting to two different tube stations, a complicated scenario which the map entirely fails to simplify. The two blobs on the left are supposed to represent Moorgate and the three on the right Liverpool Street (and include two consecutive stops on the Circle/H&C/Metropolitan lines). Good luck to anyone unfamiliar with London trying to work out which name applies to the top right blob. Also pity any mug who assumes from the map that you can alight at Moorgate and interchange through to the Overground, because technically you can but it'll involve a mighty hike down to the Crossrail platforms, along their full length, then back up and out across the concourse of the mainline station.
Note that Barbican does not appear on the map as a Crossrail interchange, as was the initial intention. This may be to help keep things simple or it may be because the Barbican connection ended up being reduced to a single lift at the far end of just one platform so TfL are hoping most people forget about it.
By contrast the interchange at Farringdon is now almost elegant, certainly in contrast to the extended trainwreck it looked before. The map's designers do have a habit of making a mess the first time they introduce something on the tube map, them modifying and enhancing it in later editions so it's not quite so ghastly. See also the former drooping Battersea Power Station extension, the massive connectors at Finsbury Park and Blackfriars, the unnecessarily large gap between the Jubilee and Metropolitan lines, the City Thameslink kink and the spaghetti tangle around Peckham Rye.
Yes, Thameslink is still here. It was initially introduced during the pandemic and retained during the closure of the Bank branch of the Northern line to help showcase alternative routes, but the initial intention was for this to be temporary. Instead a decision has been made to keep it on, not least because taking it off again would be politically awkward, so its pink lines continue to thread across the map (filling in gaps that could otherwise be used to enable TfL-operated lines to be spaced out better).
A few other changes. Bond Street doesn't have a Crossrail blob (yet) because it isn't ready. Canary Wharf is now a four blob interchange incorporating West India Quay (which is the nearest DLR station to Crossrail). Euston used to be a three blob station but now has four, whereas King's Cross St Pancras slims the other way from four to three. The Jubilee line used to be straight between London Bridge and North Greenwich but now has five bends because there's more to dodge.
A surprising (and unwelcome) addition to the map is the appearance of commercial logos beside certain stations. IKEA are the map's new sponsor, as they were in 2008 and 2009, but this time they've swung a deal whereby little blue and yellow IKEAs are tacked on alongside five stations close to store locations. They're not always optimal connections. Walking from Neasden to IKEA is a miserable trek along and over the North Circular, best not attempted while lugging furniture, while the IKEA at North Greenwich is a bus ride away from the highlighted tube station. As for the IKEA in Tottenham that's actually 1½ miles from Tottenham Hale, indeed it's immediately adjacent to Meridian Water but that's not a TfL station so isn't on the map... and what's more the store is closing permanently on 31st August (which is during the lifetime of the tube map).
It's by no means the first time advertisers have wheedled themselves onto the tube map, but the appearance of extra symbols does feel like the thin end of the wedge, especially on a map that already has hardly enough room to fit everything in. At least the cablecar has finally lost its Emirates branding and is now depicted as the brand-free London Cable Car with its two terminals 'properly' named as Greenwich Peninsula and Royal Docks.
Another unexpected first appearance is the Barking Riverside Overground extension. This isn't opening until the autumn and will be triggering its own new tube map, but TfL have added it here as a dotted orange line to help raise awareness of its arrival. And whilst you might think that's fair enough, its appearance has created ripples that've distorted the entire northeast corner of the map. The problem is that Barking never used to be anywhere near the river whereas Barking Riverside obviously has to be, not least because it connects to a brand new river pier which also needs to be shown. This has resulted in the Thames being yanked significantly northwards and this has left much less room for the DLR in the Royal Docks (hence its vertical shift) as well as forcing a new bend in the District line at Barking and a new bend in Crossrail at Seven Kings. One tweak, multiple fallouts.
The new tube map is full of "well I wouldn't have done it like that" moments, because as a subjective piece of design of course it is. Indeed it's almost certain that if you'd been tasked with drawing it from scratch you'd have made an even bigger mess of things. But most of the problems with how it looks whittle down to the sheer number of different things the map is now expected to contain, and if a few of those were filtered out it might only look as messy as it did ten years ago. You might even be able to spot the £19bn magnificence of Crossrail threading across the centre of the map, rather than having to look carefully to see where on earth it goes.
n.b. you will eventually be able to see a copy of the new tube map here but it's not appeared yet, despite all TfL's "woohoo we've just unveiled the new tube map" malarkey yesterday.
Thanks to Crossrail thousands of Londoners are about to find themselves in Abbey Wood for the very first time. They might simply catch the first train back, they might go no further than the bus stop out front or they might just nip into the big Sainsburys for a sandwich. But this would be a mistake because there's much to see and enjoy in the vicinity of the station, whether you're a fan of wildlife, architecture, cupcakes or medieval ecclesiastical remains. Here then is my guide urging you to...
Visit Abbey Wood
The shopkeepers of Abbey Wood are bursting to meet you. They've been poised to welcome an influx ever since Crossrail didn't initially open, down in the single street that's optimistically been rebranded Abbey Wood Village. Now you too can grab a haircut at Sir, place a bet at Jennings, drop off a prescription at Brownes or buy a magazine at McColl's (while administrators allow). But more likely you'll be wanting a refreshment option in which case you're sure to be spoilt for choice. The Abbey Arms offers sourdough pizza as well as Sunday roasts and as the pub beside the station is perfectly positioned. Greggs also awaits your eager custom, as does The Olive with its cappuccino-friendly pavement culture and the New Win Son Chinese takeaway with its egg fried rice and two quid saveloys.
And don't miss out on the alternative grazing options to the north of the station. This more modern piazza boasts African cuisine at K's Spice, a Costa machine at Ace's Booze Box and all the sugar you could ever want at Prettyummy Cakes. Don't forget to take a selfie in front of their pink floral display as you unwrap your ganache-finished sponge. But the local foodstore of choice is undoubtedly the big Sainsburys under the gold block of flats beside the Manorway, where residents take time out to stock up on groceries, snacks and freezer food before lugging it home in their bags for life.
If architecture is more your thing, head a little further north into the pioneering postwar estate of Thamesmead. Ignore the Greenwich half - that's quite generic - and instead enjoy what's left of the concrete flats and towers on the Bexley side. Peabody are busy transforming the residential landscape into something a bit more comfortable and a lot less interesting, so best explore soon before they replace the lot. A walk along the lakeside conveniently showcases the two styles, from the bleak bravado of Cygnet Square to the unforgiving podium skirting Trewsbury House. Just don't come hunting for the iconicpromenade where they filmed A Clockwork Orange and Beautiful Thing because that's already rubble.
The lake gets lovelier the further round you go. A recent burst of landscaping has brought wildflower meadows and wooden jetties to the waterside, accessed via meandering paths that weave between pretty pink blooms. The irises are particularly abundant (and particularly yellow) at present. On my nature safari I spotted swans and squirrels, several families of goslings, a hungry-looking heron and a British Airways E190 swooping low on its approach to City Airport. You may not be so fortunate.
If it's a scenic walk you're after, try the arrow-straight elevated Ridgeway path. This runs along the top of the Southern Outfall Sewer, much as the Greenway follows Bazalgette's pipework through Newham, and will raise you up into a world of greenery, birdsong and high pollen counts. Just don't expect to get inside the amazing Crossness Pumping Station museum at the far end because that only has Open Days on Sundays and Crossrail isn't running on Sundays for the foreseeable future.
But the premier attraction in Abbey Wood - the 'seriously I am not kidding this time' treat - is up on the hillside to the southeast of the station. This is Lesnes Abbey, or rather what's left of Lesnes Abbey after Henry VIII dissolved it in 1534. You get a good idea of its scale from the remains of its walls sprawled across the lawn, where free access allows anyone to process up the nave, amble round the chapter house or scrutinise the sacristy. To one side is a lethargic mulberry tree they say James I planted, although they're probably wrong, and if you step up the hill a trio of arty gothic arches provides a frame through which to enjoy an impressive view of central London's clustered towers.
The latest addition to the site is the Monk's Garden, a gated hideaway planted with medicinal herbs and dotted with peculiar eggy sculptures. And if it's sustenance you need then the cafe inside Lesnes Abbey Lodge is probably open, and probably popular, dispensing salads, bagels and decently-priced chunks of millionaire shortbread. Drop by at 10.30 this morning and you might hear a talk on local landscapes by "our resident archaeologist Anthony Thomas", but given Crossrail hasn't opened yet you might want to wait for his Introduction to the Recording of Ancient Buildings on 16th June.
And while you're here don't miss out on a walk through Lesnes Abbey Woods. You're just too late for the bluebells, the last of which are now shrivelling, but its extensive hilly paths are always worth a climb. Follow the right track and you might even locate the Fossil Pit discovered in the 1870s by a geologist while out walking his dog. He found shells and sharks teeth in what's since proven to be one of the world's richest 55-million-year-old fossil sites, and so too might you if you dig around in the sand (rules and regulations apply). It's a splendidly peaceful wilderness and very much worthy of a visit, not least because these are the woods after which the station at the end of London's newest railway line is named.
So don't just get the train to Abbey Wood, take some time to experience the surrounding area that's suddenly been connected speedily to central London for the very first time. In particular if you've never seen the abbey ruins you've been missing a trick, indeed there's a lot more here than you might assume from merely stepping outside the station.
TfL don't print timetables any more but they do publish them online, so you can now check to see when Crossrail trains will be running. Initially the line's in three separate sections so there are threeseparatetimetables. Two of these are the former TfL Rail timetables coloured purple but the third is brand new. And it's not exactly complicated.
First eastbound train 6.33am, then every five minutes until 10.23pm, then a 10 minute gap, 10 minute gap, 15 minute gap and shut down for the evening.
It's a little more complicated westbound (where a rogue 10 minute gap sneaks in around 10pm) but not much. See here.
If you want to catch the very first train next Tuesday you need to be at Abbey Wood for the 6.30am service which departs three minutes earlier than its Paddington counterpart.
And it is perhaps just as well that TfL don't print timetables any more because there's a glaring error on the line map where Canary Wharf is incorrectly shown as being in zone 3. Download your copy now while it's still a collector's item.
Yes, the Elizabeth line will always officially be called the Elizabeth line, never just Elizabeth.
If you were paying attention they announced this six years ago. Yes it's going to look silly on line diagrams and rainbow boards and in tube map keys. Yes it's entirely inconsistent with how all the other tube lines are displayed. It is however entirely deliberate, indeed it's been in the brand guidelines and style guide since 2017 to signify that Crossrail is an entirely different mode. You are not the first person to point out the inconsistency, nor to assume it's an error, nor alone in thinking you would have done it a completely different way.
In this respect it's a bit like the decision to name the last station on the Northern line extension Battersea Power Station station. TfL also announced this six years in advance, but oh my god it didn't stop people thinking they'd spotted a hilarious anomaly for the very first time. That got very tedious after a while, and people pointing out that Elizabeth line shouldn't have line on the end is going to get very tedious too.
Also yes, we know you never liked the name in the first place. Had you been Mayor in 2016 you'd have called it something else... less royalist, more generic, who knows... but you weren't. Admittedly Boris's sycophancy turned into a massive coup yesterday when an elderly lady in a yellow coat came to open the line named after her and validated his choice. But this is not a decision you could ever have influenced, get over it.
So I've posted this today as a way to air the arguments once and then never again. If you feel the need to explain why Elizabeth line is a mistake I invite you to do it now and then forever hold your peace. I'll warn you now that any future comments on this topic will be summarily shifted back to this post and added to the end of the conversation where the argument will continue to silently fester.
Carry on calling it Crossrail if you want - I intend to - but let us never whinge about the 'line' on the end of Elizabeth ever again.
Every week TfL publish a list of track closures over the next six months. Previously it's only ever mentioned TfL Rail, even for closures coming up in the autumn, but this week the team finally used the Elizabeth Line brand for the first time. And this means we now know when the first engineering works are going to be. It won't be long.
See how a reduced service on the Reading branch is headed 'TfL Rail west' on Monday 23rd and 'Elizabeth Line west' on Tuesday 24th. The TfL brand really will be extinguished overnight.
The first all-day closure is scheduled to take place on Saturday 11th June, which embarrassingly is just 18 days after the line opens. We've already been warned that the line won't be open on Sundays for the first few months, but here we are with a premature closure on a Saturday too. As the line's Director was forced to explain, further testing is required in preparation for more intensive services, so "there have been three Saturdays identified where we need the full weekend to complete this work." Expect a second Saturday closure on 30th July, a third on 29th October, and probably more if they still can't get the software to work properly.
Also note how the closures are labelled 'Elizabeth Line west', 'Elizabeth Line central' and 'Elizabeth Line east' because when the line opens it'll be in three separate sections. Rest assured there's no expectation these three names will be used in wider circulation - this is just the way they do things on the track closure notice. It'll all be 'Elizabeth Line' as far as the travelling public are concerned (which is perhaps just as well, given that 'Elizabeth Line central' is the name of a new line and an existing line run together).
But this may actually be a bad thing because any time anywhere from Reading to Shenfield suffers a blip in service, the status for the entire line will have to be updated. Every time you see the Elizabeth Line has 'minor delays' or is 'part suspended' you're going to have to check which bit it is, and passengers only interested in the central section aren't going to care about a signal failure near Maidenhead or long gaps between trains through Romford. The Overground suffers from exactly the same problem - an umbrella name encompassing a multitude of components where the bit that's suffering probably isn't the bit you're on.
It's also a total own goal on Day One next Tuesday, because line status is suddenly going to switch to 'Reduced service' at 8pm even though the issue only affects four outlying stations. The Elizabeth Line, alas, is such a sprawling entity that it's often going to look a lot more buggered than it really is.
The Northern line has a long history of widening narrow platforms by filling in tube tracks.
At Euston in the 1960s, rebuilding for the Victoria line allowed the old northbound tracks to become part of a broader southbound platform. At Angel in the early 1990s, a new northbound tunnel allowed the old tracks to become part of a broader southbound platform. At London Bridge in the late 1990s, a new southbound tunnel allowed the old tracks to become a new passenger concourse.
And now Bank station is getting in on the action. [8 photos]
17 weeks ago this was the dingy southbound Northern line tunnel with a narrow platform on the left and the running tracks on the right. Over the years many millions have huddled along its length trying to dodge other passengers squeezing past. But now it's a bright and welcoming passenger concourse with a dividing line down the middle where the edge of the platform used to be. It's suddenly entirely safe to stand beyond what used to be the yellow line. There are also benches along the far wall where previously only passengers inside the carriages could sit. It's quite the transformation.
Look carefully at the northern end (where the stairs come down from the Central line) and a pair of double doors marks the spot where trains formerly emerged from a tunnel. A single offset door at the other end (where the escalators descend from the District line) marks the spot where trains formerly headed off towards Morden.
The northbound platform is pretty much unaltered but no longer feels so squashed because it backs onto a spacious concourse. A combination of pre-existing mini-arches and larger knock-throughs allow passengers to pass between the two.
The real dazzler is the new southboundplatform, hewn out of the London clay before this year's line closure took place and since sewn into the fabric of the network. It's not this wide because it comprises previous tunnelwork, it's this wide because this is 21st century forward-thinking and they built it that way. Think of all the pipework, infrastructure, vaults and cabling they had to dig around to create this enormous cavern in the very heart of the City.
All the usual Day One phenomena were present yesterday. These included (a) men in hardhats wandering around looking for snagging that might need fixing overnight, (b) TfL bosses gliding through the station surveying their latest engineering triumph, (c) gentlemen with cameras circling the passageways while trying to take photos with no other gentlemen in them. At least one child was joyfully explaining to his Dad which bits used to be train tracks and which were new, courtesy of a Geoff Marshall video he watched last night.
It's not all perfect yet. The public address system is currently distorted so the announcements are mostly inaudible. The sole display board on the southbound platform persistently insists that the next train will be stopping at 'London Bridge, Morden & Morden'. And whoever commissioned the southbound line diagrams forgot to check them properly because Borough station is missing its 'tick' on every single one of them, even the large curved ones on the platform walls. Someone's already scribbled in the missing blob using a black biro down one of the crosspassages.
The crosspassages are quite long and also quite blue. Some of this blue is the intended final panelwork but the rest is temporary hoardings waiting to be taken down later in the year. That's because yet more infrastructure has been constructed in the gap between the platforms including (i) escalators down to the DLR (wow) (ii) escalators up to a new entrance on Cannon Street (wow) and (iii) moving walkways (wow) leading to escalators up to the Central line (wow). These won't open until the end of the year, but basically you ain'tseen nothing yet.
In the meantime it's great to finally have some space at Bank, not to mention a decent connection between the Monument end of the station and the rest, as this labyrinthine station inexorably untangles. If you've not been down yet expect to be impressed as you suddenly pass from familiar passageways into this brighter bubble, transformed at speed. In any normal month at TfL this'd be the absolute highlight, so best get down before next week when Crossrail trumps the lot.
Five years ago TfL launched a major consultation aimed at tweaking the bus network in readiness for Crossrail services. When we launch fast new trains, they reasoned, people will need better ways to get to our stations. A year later they published their conclusions confirming that over 30 different routes would be affected, and then of course the purple service never launched.
I would link to that consultation but unfortunately TfL deleted it last year along with every other consultation they'd published pre-2021. We're updating to a new platform, they said, it'll be much better but regrettably we'll have to delete our archive. Any pdf they uploaded during the last two years lingers on the site here, shorn of all supporting documentation, but absolutely everything before that has been lost. For details of any consultation launched before May 2019 their official advice is to send in a Freedom of Information request and bugger the expense, presumably because that was still cheaper than coming up with a means of preservation.
Most of the West London changes (routes 140, X140, 218, 266, 278, 306, 391, 440) occurred in December 2019. Most of the northeast London changes (routes 104, 300, 304, 330, 474) are taking place next weekend, just before Crossrail finally unfurls. And a bumper selection of changes in southeast London (routes 129, 180, 469, 472, B11) took place on Saturday, so I've been out for a ride to see what's happened and how successful the implementation might have been.
I think it's fair to say that TfL haven't been particularly helpful in announcing the changes to the travelling public. Turn up at any bus stop along the affected routes and all you'll see is this.
We've made some changes to these five routes, it says, and hints that some of those changes might be quite significant. But it doesn't tell you what those changes are, nor tell you how they might affect services at this particular stop because this is a generic notice designed to be posted up everywhere.
• Some existing routes will be permanently re-routed, extended or stop short of their current destinations.
• The frequency of some routes will be increased or decreased.
Instead the notice suggests you visit a web address, so hopefully you brought your smartphone with you. Oddly it invites you to head to tfl.gov.uk/buses which isn't where the changes are listed. They are in fact at tfl.gov.uk/modes/buses/bus-changes, which I presume somebody somewhere thought would be too hard for mere mortals to type. Instead they're relying on those who land at tfl.gov.uk/buses spotting the unspecific link to 'Bus changes' further down the page, assuming they even get that far.
The Bus changes webpage does have all the detail but only in text format. For route 180 for example, TfL expects you to unravel this.
Route 180 will be changed to run between North Greenwich Bus Station and Erith Quarry. Buses will be rerouted at Charlton Station to run to North Greenwich via Anchor & Hope Lane, Bugsby's Way, Millennium Leisure Park, Southern Way and West Parkside. Route 180 will also be extended from Mulberry Way in the Belvedere Industrial Area via Church Manorway, Lower Road and West Street to Erith Town Centre and then via Bexley Road and Fraser Road to terminate at the entrance to the Erith Quarry housing development. Route 180 will no longer run between Charlton Station and Lewisham Town Centre. For Greenwich Town Centre change at Stone Lake Retail Park to route 177. For Lewisham Town Centre change at Millennium Leisure Park to route 129. Route 180 will also no longer serve Fishers Way or Crabtree Manorway in Belvedere. Route 180 will run every 10 minutes during the daytime on Monday to Saturdays and every 15 minutes during the evenings and all day on Sundays.
There are no maps because maps are difficult, or expensive, or at least beyond the capabilities of TfL's current operation. Maps were a fundamental part of the 2017 consultation but they deleted that, remember, and nobody thought to save copies for later when they might be useful. Roger saved them so you can see the full set in his latest blogpost, and Darryl kept the incredibly useful overview map of how all this fits together, but the average punter will never see them.
There are new spider maps. TfL continue to churn these out and a fresh set for southeast London promptly appeared on the TfL website over the weekend. They're also up at bus stops, which is excellent, for example they're all over North Greenwich bus station (but not yet outside Abbey Wood). It wouldn't be rocket science for the Bus Changes webpage to link to the spider maps webpage, or even specifically to the maps for North Greenwich, Charlton, Woolwich, Abbey Wood and Erith. You can work out a lot of what's going on from those.
There are also individual route maps on the TfL website, indeed these have existed since 2014 but TfL often fail to mention they exist. For example you can find a very helpful zoomable map of the 180 bus route at tfl.gov.uk/bus/route/180 - simple as that. Replace 180 with the number of your choice to see any other service (e.g. 129, 469, 472, B11). It would be easy to link through to these maps on the Bus Changes webpage... the catch being that they only show the correct route after the change has been made, which I assume is why nobody ever bothers.
Anyway, because these bus changes are specifically about linking to Crossrail, I've made this summary map of all the routes now serving Abbey Wood station. It's highly simplified and makes no distinction between existing routes and this weekend's changes, but it's a lot better than no map at all.
Here's a look at the five affected routes in a bit more detail.
180 North Greenwich → Erith Quarry
This is the most significant change with the route tweaked at both ends. Out east that means extending the route from Belvedere Industrial Area to Erith town centre - a fresh connection that already looks popular with workers at the distribution centres on Church Manorway. The 180 then doubles back to a new terminus on Fraser Road, supposedly to serve a half-finished housing estate stacked inside an old quarry, although the final stop is outside on the existing 99 bus route so I'm quite not sure why they bothered.
Meanwhile out west a grand switcheroo means the 180, which used to head to Lewisham, now heads to North Greenwich instead. Timetables along the route were updated well in advance, some might say too well, and nearly all the new tiles were in place too (although you missed one on Lower Road, folks). But if you scan along the bus station at North Greenwich you won't see the 180 mentioned on the signs inside, only outside on the bus stop at the very far end, so that's not ideal. The supervisor's solution of sticking squinty A4 printouts to boards doesn't really get the message across either.
129 North Greenwich → Lewisham
The 129 has been a stumpy thing ever since it was introduced in 2006, indeed it used to be one of the ten shortest bus routes in the capital. Now finally it has purpose, extended from Greenwich town centre to Lewisham town centre along the route formerly plied by the 180. But it doesn't cover the entire lost stretch so that makes interchange awkward, plus part of Woolwich Road has just suffered a considerable drop in frequency. Annoyingly the 129's timetables haven't been replaced yet so that'll have confused potential passengers. At least the tiles were mostly all in place (although the tile outside the National Maritime Museum still says 'Alighting point only' even though there's now another two miles to go).
469 Woolwich Common → Erith
This single decker route has been given a nudge to help feed more passengers into Crossrail. Previously the 469 took the lower road direct from Erith into Abbey Wood but now it goes up the hill, along and back down because connectivity is more important than journey time. On my trip I watched the increasingly mystified faces of two dozen passengers who'd boarded in Lower Belvedere as we suddenly veered off up Picardy Road and climbed to Upper Belvedere instead. They did all get to where they were hoping to go, if a few minutes later than expected, but these days it seems you learn by experience rather than being informed beforehand.
472 North Greenwich → Abbey Wood
Two tweaks. Firstly the 472 now zips direct between Plumstead and Thamesmead along Western Way, becoming the express service SE28 has long deserved. Its former wiggle along Nathan Way is still served by the 301, another bonus Crossrail route introduced prematurely in 2019. Secondly the 472 no longer follows a complete loop round Thamesmead before terminating, it now bears off three-quarters of the way round and terminates at Abbey Wood instead. When I rode back the other way there were a lot of confused souls outside Abbey Wood station demanding of the driver whether or not she was going to Morrisons. She was, but they'd have been better off waiting for the 244 or 301 which go direct, and this is why maps and proper information are important.
B11 Bexleyheath → South Thamesmead
This backroad bus has been pruned at its northern end, some would say shafted. It used to go all the way to the Thamesmead Centre but now stops early on Yarnton Way, nowhere especially useful, beside a bank of demolished flats. It's particularly bad news for residents along Alsike Road who now need to take two buses to get to the shops, or walk further and take one. The B11's chop, combined with a frequency cut from every 15 minutes to every 20, has allowed TfL to save money by using two fewer vehicles on the route. They've also cut the frequency of the 129 and the 472, the latter significantly from every six minutes to every eight.
If you're planning to connect to Crossrail then these bus changes are undoubtedly an improvement. But if you were intending to make your usual journey elsewhere they may not be, and good luck trying to work out why.
Yes, the Elizabeth line will always officially be called the Elizabeth line, never just Elizabeth.
Also yes, we know you never liked the name in the first place. Had you been Mayor in 2016 you'd have called it something else... less royalist, more generic, who knows... but you weren't. Admittedly Boris's sycophancy turned into a massive coup yesterday when an elderly lady in a yellow coat came to open the line named after her and validated his choice. But this is not a decision you could ever have influenced, get over it.
