There’s something new on the Crossrail website, a virtual tour of the completed Farringdon station. There are twenty-one zones to explore in the online tour, which behaves very much like a Google Street View function, letting you virtually walk around the station.
Each zone also has pop-up facts and figures, and more detailed information about some of the features of the station, such as the totem lights that stand in the middle of the corridors and the art at the top of the escalators.
Some of the information panels show off the design, but quite a few of them also include photos of the tunnels when they were under construction, so a good way of comparing them before and after completion.
A tip, it seems to me to be a bit easier to use the previous/next buttons on the sides of the screen than the arrows on the floor if you want to follow the recommended route around the tour. It’s quite a good way of not just seeing the station, but also reading up on a number of the details that will eventually become a common sight when the Elizabeth line opens.
There are sound effects as well, if you have your speakers on.
You can find the tour here.
It’s a pleasant 10-minute coffee break diversion.
A couple of questions, if someone is able to help?
The eastern (Barbican) concourse currently has no signage to indicate an interchange with Barbican station. I believe there is a lift here, meant to provide step-free access to the westbound Barbican platform, but is there a staircase too and will this be a publicly accessible interchange?
Second question, has there ever been talk of the cost of connecting those central platform-level concourses to create an east-west through route- perhaps with travellators? This would be particularly helpful for passengers headed for Thameslink or the underground who mistakenly enter Farringdon at the new eastern entry hall without realising it’s only an entrance for one line. I suppose in principle I’m against the idea of a station entrance that doesn’t access every line of a station, like the Pentonville Rd entrance at KXSP or the two independent entrances at Elephant and Castle. Both of those get away with it as old stations with a complex history, but there’s no excuse, in my view, for such a complex arrangement at Farringdon. At least connecting the lower central concourse will provide some kind of route from the east entrance to the rest of the station.
a) There’s no eastern platform connection to the Elizabeth line at Barbican – just a lift on the western platform.
b) No idea, but there’s certainly no money to pay for such an upgrade at the moment.