This time next week, people will be commuting to work on the Elizabeth line for the first time, but what did it take to get the railway built?

I’ve had a remarkable 14 years reporting on the construction of the new railway, from early public meetings to the first holes in the ground, and now the finished product. There have been lots of good times, and in 2018, a very bad day when the first of a series of delays was announced.

Going on to the building sites meant busy people having to give up their time to shepherd us around, but one thing that was always easy to see was how proud and excited people were to be working on the project. They’re building something that’ll last for a couple of centuries at least, and be used by hundreds of millions of people over its lifetime, which is not something many of us will ever do. Every site visit included briefings from the project manager, and as an “informed amateur”, I’ve personally learned so much about the construction industry over the past decade, and come away with a fresh respect for the people who work on the sites. From the heavy protective clothing people have to wear, and oh boy is it nice to take that off on hot days, to the need to carry oxygen rebreathers in early tunnel sites, just in case they’re needed, undeniably it’s hard work.

And I was usually only there for half a day on most visits, so just imagine doing that every day.

Going onto a building site is a mixed emotion. I am there to do a job, and I am only there because the site owners want to show you, my readers, what they are doing, but undeniably, for someone who doesn’t work on building sites, every visit is really good fun. It’s hard to remember to stay in “serious work mode” and stop walking around with a big excited grin when seeing these amazing places being dug out of the ground.

So I’ve compiled a list of the 25 of my favourite photos from the past decade. Some are chosen for aesthetic reasons, others because they tell a bit of the story that I found enjoyable.

It’s taken a long time, longer than planned, but at long last, I am about to run out of reasons to write about building the Elizabeth line. You know something, that’s a bit emotional.

1] March 2011

This was my first official site visit with Crossrail, and it wasn’t even in London. It involved a trip to a warehouse in Leighton Buzzard, where an early model of the central tunnel stations had been constructed to test some of the early design ideas for digital displays, the lighting panels and the curved walls. Even though it was in a warehouse, once you stepped inside it felt remarkably like you were deep underground.

The “fake Crossrail tube station” hidden in a rural warehouse

2] April 2011

One of my favourite parts of the project has been the reuse of an old Victorian railway tunnel under the docks in East London. The engineering challenges it presented were impressive but no less so than the sheer grandeur of the brickwork and the indomitable project manager, Linda Miller.

Walking through an abandoned train tunnel under London’s Docks

3] May 2011

This was the point where they had dug down to the very bottom of the future station at Canary Wharf, and we’re walking on a sand bed that was laid down some 58 million years ago, which puts the whole project into some sort of context for me as to how old the land is we dig through. I always regret not bringing a handful of it back with me.

I liked this photo as it showed the station in its primaeval raw state before all the clean concrete covered it all up, and the people in the photos give scale to the huge long box that was dug here.

Photos from inside the Elizabeth line station at Canary Wharf

4] September 2011

Gratutitous selfie moment – this was taken in the tunnel portal at Roya Oak, where a few months later a giant TBM would be chewing away at the concrete behind me.

A tour of the Crossrail tunnel portal at Royal Oak

5] April 2012

A return visit to the Connaught Tunnel, and this was one of those “snap a photo and it turns out great” moments. I recall we were walking down the tunnel, and someone from Crossrail was ahead of me. He looks like he’s in deep contemplation of the tunnel – actually he’s stopped for a few seconds waiting for the rest of us to catch up, and I quickly snapped the photo as I was walking behind and I love the result.

More photos from inside the Connaught Tunnel

6] July 2012

The Elizabeth line passes close to Canning Town station, and next to it two deep shafts were dug to launch the Tunnel Boring Machines. On a visit, some workmen were getting a lift back up out of the shaft in a bucket. I snapped this as we were walking around the shaft to go down the stairs and it ended up being one of my all-time favourites from the whole project.

A look at some deep Crossrail tunnel shafts

7] July 2012

The Kingsway subway under Holborn was being used by Crossrail to dig a small shaft down inside the subway to pump out grout under the nearby buildings to prevent subsidence as the TBM passed underneath. For me, this was an exciting site visit as the Kingsway subway was almost impossibly difficult to get permission to visit at the time, so while the shaft was important, it was the wider site that I really wanted to see inside. One of the perks of the job.

It was a very difficult site to photograph to show what was going on though, but I like the slightly eerie way the green netting gives this an almost science-fiction feel about the site. Quatermass watch out.

Photos from inside the abandoned Kingsway Tram Tunnels

8] August 2012

Here Berkley Homes is excavating the site that will become the Woolwich station for the Elizabeth line.

Photos from the Crossrail station construction site at Woolwich

9] December 2012

On an appallingly wet day, a visit to the Plumstead portal involved walking around with the camera under jackets and flipping it out occasionally to take a photo. All tunnels that are under construction have an icon of St Barbara, the patron saint of miners, and I quite liked the combination of ancient religion in a modern building site.

Photos – the Crossrail tunnel portal at Plumstead

10] February 2013

This was a site visit to mark the completion of building the concrete box for the Woolwich station — at a time when it was still uncertain if it would be fitted out and opened to the public. I just loved the long line of massive concrete columns, needed to support blocks of flats above, and the two figures in the far distance, combined with the slightly unsettling thought that it might never be a finished station.

Photos from inside the Woolwich Crossrail Station

11] March 2013

The ugly duckling of the project. I am in hindsight really kicking myself, as I knew there was a delay at Bond Street, but swallowed the PR cool-aid and accepted assurances it was all going to be fine. Had I been more cynical, who knows how much earlier the Bond Street station delays would have been revealed.

I chose this photo as it’s the concrete sprayer in protective white overalls wearing an oxygen rebreather taking a break from manually spraying concrete onto clay walls to create tunnels. A lot of the project away from the big fancy machines was dug manually and in often quite challenging conditions.

Inside the Crossrail station at Bond Street

12] June 2013

I love this photo of the tunnels being dug at Tottenham Court Road station because it includes a full-size truck in the tunnels. People are so used to tube tunnels being fairly small, but Crossrail were driving full-size trucks deep under London. It really shows just how massive some of these underground construction sites were.

A look at the Crossrail tunnels under Oxford Street

13] September 2013

This was a site visit to Paddington, and I like it as it hides as much as it shows. It looks like they’ve only just started digging the hole for the station, but in fact, they laid the slab first, then dug the station out underneath, so lots of people in the offices around spent a couple of years wondering why nothing seemed to be happening. It was all underneath.

Photos of the Crossrail Station at Paddington

14] November 2013

A return visit to Canary Wharf as the newly dug out station box was starting to be filled in, and I like this as it shows that when the public are have descended down to whey they think is the very bottom of the station, there’s yet another floor for equipment and staff underneath their feet.

Inside the Crossrail station at Canary Wharf

15] December 2014

Away from central London, to separate trains heading east-west from those that head toward Heathrow Airport, a huge flyover was built.

I was never entirely happy with my photos from the site, as it was just too big a site and curved around a corner to show off the size of the project, and the flyover was itself just one small part of a much larger site project to untangle a mess of tracks in the area for all trains passing by.

But I am glad I wrote about it, as these enabling works rarely get the recognition they deserve.

Crossrail’s huge Stockley flyover

16] December 2015

A visit to see inside the huge box that was the Paddington station. And as impressive as it was, it was remarkably difficult to photograph as it was so cluttered with scaffolding and equipment that you couldn’t see that far in front of you. It was only when standing on the scaffolding staircase that you could appreciate the size of the building site.

That often worries me when going on a building site – that people are giving up a lot of time to show you around, and yet it’s a really difficult site to photograph so they might be disappointed when you publish a final article.

Photos from inside Crossrail’s Paddington Station

17] December 2015

Near Acton, a tunnel was dug underneath the existing railways to allow freight trains to get from one side to the other. This was necessary as very long slow freight trains would otherwise block the Elizabeth line several times a day. A bad thing. It’s another of those hidden bits of infrastructure that will never really be seen by anyone, but was critical to ensuring the line can run a regular service.

I like the photo for the atmospheric appearance as we stand just inside the tunnel lookout out to the ramp up. There’s a weird optical effect that makes the workman in the distance look absolutely tiny, as the tunnel really isn’t as big as it looks.

A look at Crossrail’s critical Acton dive under

18] April 2016

This shows tracks being laid out for measuring as they are being prepared for installation at Tottenham Court Road, and I’ve always liked this visit as it allowed me to use an anecdote about the 1990 football world cup and how the recording of Nessun Dorma by Pavarotti was made in London, and on a good hi-fi, it’s possible to hear the Piccadilly Line trains rumbling past in the quiet parts.

But here at Tottenham Court Road they have installed a sound buffering system to prevent that from happening again in the recording studios under Soho.

In a way, the photo is nice, but for me, the story is nicer.

Photos from inside Crossrail’s tunnels

19] July 2016

A visit to Derby to see the new Class 345 trains that would form the Elizabeth line fleet.

Inside the trains, the seats had been fitted with a temporary fabric to protect them during tests. However, as I have long sighed about, people look at pictures and react without reading the text, so I tweeted a photo with the notice that this wasn’t the final fabric design, and was flooded with people complaining about the fabric design.

Then again, a roll of that orange fabric is probably now a valued collector’s item.

20 photos of the new Crossrail / Elizabeth line trains

20] June 2017

This was the launch of the first of the Class 345 trains running under the TfL Rail brand between Shenfield and Liverpool Street. I am sure the Crossrail team long wished they hadn’t splashed that sign on the side of the trains though – and for me, it was a useful photo to use in later articles about delays on the line.

First Elizabeth line trains enter passenger service

21] June 2018

This was a public open day where people were able to go down and see the nearly finished Farringdon station, and why I like this photo is it shows the back-of-house parts of the station people used on that day. The public so rarely get to see these hidden worlds, and yet in many of the new stations, there’s more back-of-house infrastructure than there are public spaces. A truly hidden world.

See inside Crossrail’s Farringdon Station

22] July 2018

This is Tottenham Court Road and shows the long corridors with their soon to be memorable totem lighting poles and signs.  Normally the poles uplight the ceiling, but here they are in fire-escape mode with the side panels lit up. I think they look really atmospheric like this, but just hope you never see them doing this for real though.

Sneak preview of Crossrail’s new Tottenham Court Road station

23] February 2019

I had permission to visit the Elizabeth line depot in Old Oak Common to see how the trains will be maintained and serviced there. In a way, this is a photo that shouldn’t be possible to take as there should never be that many trains not in service at the same time, but we all know why they were here waiting, and it does make for a good photo.

Taking a look at the Elizabeth line’s new Old Oak Common depot

24] March 2020

I like this shabby photo as it shows something that won’t appear on the tube map and is a perfect pub quiz moment.

The Farringdon station reaches almost to the Barbican tube station, but in the end, they decided not the link the two. However, there was a need during construction for a shaft to be dug down, so afterwards, they put in a lift. It’s only on the westbound platform on the Barbican and will not appear on a map, but it’s there for you to say you’ve used it at least once.

Taking a look inside Crossrail’s Farringdon station

25] June 2021

A visit to Woolwich for the formal handover to TfL, and although I had been here several times, this was the first time we went down on the escalators, and I have to confess it fair took my breath away as the huge long cavern opened up for the first time.

The effect is not unlike a visit to the Jubilee line at Canary Wharf, and considering this station was an afterthought for the project, that’s even more impressive. Pay a visit, but if arriving by Lizzie line, try not to look around until you get to the top of the escalators, then turn around and come back down into the station for the wow moment.

Crossrail hands Woolwich station over to TfL

And a final bonus…

This is from August 2015, and was one of my favourite site visits, as it was so unexpected and so rare that photography is allowed here — a salt mine not far from Crewe in Cheshire. It was here that the core samples taken before Crossrail started are stored for future researchers to use, and it’s a remarkable place to visit, deeper than any Crossrail tunnel and vast in scale.

The salt mine uses some of the caverns for storage as the temperature and humidity are perfect, and being deep underground, it’s very secure. It’s very Indiana Jones in the storage vaults, but for me, the experience of driving in a mini-van through miles of huge dimly lit tunnels was remarkable.

After the visit, we were running late to catch trains home, so the taxi driver drove fast, in very winding country lanes, and by the time we got to the station I was suffering bad travel sickness, which did not abate on the train home. I suffered so much for that story!

The bit of Crossrail that is 3-times deeper than a tube train

NEWSLETTER

Be the first to know what's on in London, and the latest news published on ianVisits.

You can unsubscribe at any time from my weekly emails.

Tagged with:
SUPPORT THIS WEBSITE

This website has been running now for over a decade, and while advertising revenue contributes to funding the website, it doesn't cover the costs. That is why I have set up a facility with DonorBox where you can contribute to the costs of the website and time invested in writing and research for the news articles.

It's very similar to the way The Guardian and many smaller websites are now seeking to generate an income in the face of rising costs and declining advertising.

Whether it's a one-off donation or a regular giver, every additional support goes a long way to covering the running costs of this website, and keeping you regularly topped up doses of Londony news and facts.

If you like what you read on here, then please support the website here.

Thank you

14 comments
  1. George Hoad says:

    so fantastic almost untrue

  2. Andrew says:

    Thank you for taking us on the journey from before the first works began. What an amazing project and so soon to be up and running, even if not quite finished.

  3. ChrisC says:

    Some fantastic pictures Ian

    And it’stime for the BBC to repeat their documentaries about buildind the line and hopefully they have been filming updates.

    I specifically remmeber the episode that featured the Connaught Tunnel and the stict time frame they had to block off the dock for a year before it needed to be opend to allow a naval ship to get to excel for an exhibition

  4. Chris says:

    Fantastic article, really enjoyed it.

  5. Jon says:

    Thank you so much. Fascinating article and fully appreciated.

  6. Bones of jones says:

    Great article, thanks for everything.

  7. MikeK says:

    Brilliant!

  8. JP says:

    Ian, I think you can die a happy man.
    Thank you so very much.

  9. Paul says:

    Excellent look back at the project. Great photos and love your reporting style, much better than some of the vloggers out there, you always seem to realise the privelige of seeing these places. Thank you.

  10. Liam says:

    Thanks Ian. I really enjoyed this article.

  11. Peter G says:

    Fascinating article and brilliant photos, thank you

  12. Dave Griffiths says:

    Great article, although I live almost 260 miles from London, I can’t wait to take a trip down to “the smoke”to ride the route. Loved the pictures and envious of you being able to get a visit to the various sites.

  13. Clunking Fist says:

    11] March 2013 – Your photo of the two tunnelers: magic shot.

  14. Jennifer says:

    Belatedly catching up on some IanVisits. Love this photojournalism! I’m lucky to live on the Elizabeth Line and I use it as much as possible, sometimes even using it when maybe the Piccadilly would suffice. I just so enjoy the trains and particularly the central London stations which are so wide, airy and never crowded!

Home >> News >> Transport News