It was a big weekend for Crossrail, the much-delayed megaproject, as ordinary humans arrived to test its safety procedures for the first time. Five major exercises are planned over consecutive weekends as part of Trial Operationsphase 2, their aim to check the robustness of the railway in a variety of challenging scenarios. 5000 volunteers have been signed up - generally TfL employees, their friends and family - so my very special thanks to the member of staff who offered me an invite. With all sorts of exciting evacuation scenarios to choose from, including "in Tunnel to Station" and "via Emergency Shaft", only a fool would have chosen the dull above-ground one. Except the dull above-ground one came first, which offered all sorts of bragging rights and smugness points in finally gaining access to the system, sowhywait?
Departure point for Sunday's exercise was Woolwich station, a convenient launchpad because it's not shared with any operational railway. I was pleased to see the ticket hall primed and poised for launch, including this week's station closures poster and a rack plumped full of tube maps that don't have Woolwich station on them. On this occasion there were also check-in tables by the ticket machines for the handing out of 'Volunteer' lanyards and for making sure you hadn't just wandered in off the street. A separate table dispensed roundel-branded goodie bags, which were larger than they needed to be given their contents, plus a juice and croissant breakfast. Should have saved that for later. And with admin duly sorted it was time to venture down into the depths.
Woolwich is Crossrail's simplest subterranean station, accessed via a bank of three escalators at one end only. There are also lifts but on a day like this what you really want is the full Descent Into A Brick Void experience. At the foot of the escalators is a broad island platform with doors to either side, not the twin bores the central London stations have, plus a long line of concrete pillars down the centre and overhead lighting that resembles showerheads. The station's clean lines are aided by the Next Train Indicators being embedded in the glass above the doors, not hanging above. It wasn't long before 400-or-so volunteers were spread out to claim a seat aboard a knowingly faulty train, which I suspect was the largest crowd these platforms have yet seen. It won't surprise you to hear than the train departed later than the scheduled time... but this was fine, the longer to admire the architecture the better.
Fractionally after noon the doors beeped shut and the inaugural journey set off. Whoosh... into the tunnel under the Thames. It's a lot quieter than you might be imagining. Whoosh... briefly back up above the ground in North Woolwich. Don't expect to see much, they've built walls either side of the track to block the view. Whoosh... back down into the Connaught Tunnel under the Royal Docks. Was it dimly lit just for today or might that be the norm? And unwhoosh... the train gradually slowed to a halt during the climb on the far side. This was of course the plan - a simulated breakdown in the open air - but the journey had been much too brief, indeed hadn't even made it as far as the next station.
And now the sitting-around stage began. It was never going to be quick because everyone had to pretend the 'emergency' was unplanned, but there was a collective hope that the simulation might move swiftly. Not so. It took about half an hour before the driver flipped into evacuation mode, first with a loudspeakered request for "competent railway staff or police officers to assist with de-training". The train was plainly rammed with competent railway staff because that was the invite list, but they had to pretend not to be and sit tight. The driver's job was then to walk down the train and check everyone's mobility because not everyone can climb down from a stalled train, and you can imagine how long that took. The first hour ticked inexorably down.
I can't recommend spending Sunday lunchtime trapped with 400 other passengers in a nine-carriage train just short of Custom House station. It was all very well having a goodie bag to burrow into but there is a limit to how much fun you can have with a pencil, a souvenir brochure, a flimsy Oyster wallet and an enamel pin. Regular announcements kept spirits up, at least initially. These confirmed exit would be from the front of the train via steps and then along the tracks, which might've been exciting or unnerving had everyone not been expecting it. There were also repeated reminders to "please remember this is an operational railway", I suspect as a reminder not to smash the emergency button in bored frustration and flee onto the tracks.
Somewhere around the 70 minute mark it became apparent that the cavalry were coming, by which I mean an 'incident support team' of half a dozen staff in orange hi-vis approaching down the tracks. It had taken them a surprisingly long time to pretend to arrive, during which period the driver hadn't been able, or allowed, to detrain all by herself. And then they faffed, or rather they engaged in important safety protocols in conjunction with the driver, but from this awkward viewpoint they didn't seem to be hurrying. The lack of toilets about Crossrail rolling stock was starting to become an issue (which was why they'd urged everyone to go in the Dial Arch pub back in Woolwich).
At 90 minutes a man walked through the train clutching a ladder and a fresh voice came over the loudspeakers to say de-training would be starting soon, kicking off with the first carriage. You can probably guess what happened next which is that lots of people stood up and tried to shuffle towards the front of the train, much like when an InterCity approaches King's Cross, and everyone got absolutely nowhere. At least it made a change from sitting down, but it'd be well over the two hour mark before those in the rear coaches made it to the heart of the action. Two sets of doors had been opened in the front carriage, each with a narrow yellow ladder propped steeply down to track level. It was no hi-tech evacuation solution, requiring reversing oneself down eight rungs while being offered assistance from below, hence an inevitable bottleneck.
Somewhat perversely the front of the train had pulled up beside a gate into a work compound, potentially offering immediate escape to safety and the road beyond. But that was locked because the point of the exercise was to evacuate via the nearest station and this required a trackside walk. Ideally the walk would have been between the rails for a little added frisson, but alas this was the point where the marked yellow path left the tracks and crossed to a separate walkway alongside. I should point out that it'd started raining by this point, which wouldn't have been the case had disembarkation been quicker, so everyone got wet before reaching the tip of Custom House station. Total journey time from Woolwich, the best part of three hours.
I imagine station staff must have been thrilled to finally have some real members of the public to engage with after weeks of hanging around with annoyingly little to do. At this point everyone should have been thinking "woo, I'm standing on the platform of my second new Crossrail station of the day", but the long wait and damp conditions merely encouraged swift departure. A media type with a very big lens was waiting on the mezzanine at the top of the stairs, which is as close as those reporting the exercise had been allowed to get. I had no intention of catching the train on Platform A back to Woolwich, not least because after all that waiting around even exclusive access to unopened megaprojects can start to pale.
It was a peculiar experience, all glitz and balloons at the start and a barely a whimper at the end. The total time aboard a moving train had been approximately three minutes, this massively outnumbered by a lengthy wait stuck in a cutting staring at a wall. What's more these are trains I and hundreds of thousands of Londoners have been on before - they've been in service since 2017 - so the novelty came only at the bookends of the journey. Hopefully you'll never have to haul yourself off a Class 345 down a ladder onto the tracks, but at least this collective sacrifice of 400 Sunday lunchtimes helped test what'd happen were it necessary. The day when you can board a train that goes further than one station draws ever closer, but bragging rights and smugness points have already been awarded.
