Reading Station improvements

[whole diary]

[Andrew1939 from West Oxon]

Travellers arriving and departing on an HST^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units)) at Penzance can have a very long walk in the rain as I have discpovered in a torrential downpour but I did not think it a cause for complaint. Afterall you can walk along the train in the dry until you reach a coach under the canopy but that might be difficult at Reading if the train only stops a few minutes.

[paul7575]

I've attached three 'phone pics' of the progress with the track laying at the east end.

They seem to have put the crossover for the P13/P14 lines in position, and in the distance you can see that the junction where the P15 and P14 lines merge is sited on Vastern Rd Bridge, so presumably the junction towards the 'Southern' underpass must be beyond the bridge, and anyone who travels in that direction can possibly confirm that is the case.

Hope these are of interest - they give a good idea of how far away from their existing position the relief lines will be.

Paul

[Jonty]

Anyone know why there is access to emergency subway only  for platforms 12/13 and 14/15?

[paul7575]

It is a recently altered design standard requirement for a new build platform, or for a major alteration, but the requirement is not retrospective for existing platforms that are only being improved in situ.

Hence 4-6 and 12-15 all get escape routes, but not the others.

Paul

[Jonty]

Cheers Paul, watching the them being built and the huge effort involved must have added greatly to the cost.

Arguably 10/11 is as much an alteration as 5/6?

But difficult to see why they are truly needed - seems to be H&S^▸ (Health and Safety) gone mad...

[IndustryInsider]

They seem to have put the crossover for the P13/P14 lines in position, and in the distance you can see that the junction where the P15 and P14 lines merge is sited on Vastern Rd Bridge, so presumably the junction towards the 'Southern' underpass must be beyond the bridge, and anyone who travels in that direction can possibly confirm that is the case.

I think you can see the start of it just beyond where the P14/15 lines merge, just before the big gang of track workers by the BMW sign.  According to the labels on the track diagrams I posted the two crossovers are much closer together than they look on the schematic, with one finishing at 61 chains and the other starting at 62 chains.

[broadgage]

Cheers Paul, watching the them being built and the huge effort involved must have added greatly to the cost.

Arguably 10/11 is as much an alteration as 5/6?

But difficult to see why they are truly needed - seems to be H&S^▸ (Health and Safety) gone mad...

Agreed.
Most railway platforms are very low risk enviroments as regards needing means of escape. They built of substantialy non combustible materials, with few sources of ignition.

In the most unlikely event of say a terrorist bomb explosion, evacuation to a tunnel or overhead walkway might not be the best option due to the risks of a second bomb.


In the event of fire or other emergency in the ticket office or on the concourse, it is often best to close the station to arriving passengers, but to evacuate those on the platforms by train.
And as a last resort, there is always evacuation to track level after stopping the trains.

[paul7575]

I suppose 'buildability' comes into it as well.  As they were working away from the operational railway, those new subways were relatively straightforward to build from the surface, but equivalents for P8-P11 would have needed tunnelling under the live railway, presumably a different set of costs entirely.   

Having said that, the emergency access to the extended 'Southern' P5/P6 must have been done from beneath, but of course there was only one track to cross when they started, rather than four tracks in two locations over in the area being discussed.

Paul

[mjones]

...
Having said that, the emergency access to the extended 'Southern' P5/P6 must have been done from beneath, but of course there was only one track to cross when they started, rather than four tracks in two locations over in the area being discussed.

Paul

From memory, watching the work being done at the time, I'm pretty sure that the P5/P6 subway is mostly under the newly constructed embankment, so didn't require any tunneling. When they started work on extending P5/P6 they excavated straight down to the (buried) P5 end of the subway 'tube', and built the entrance  steps down to it, but didn't need to do any digging from below, or sideways underneath any existing structure.

[paul7575]

Back in posts 921-923 I asked about the supports for the tower crane that was removed from the new entrance, I see that the piles have been uncovered this afternoon, and are being nibbled away down to new ground level as we thought. 

(As showing on webcam 2 around about 1500.)

The entrance to the future public subway is also now almost fully visible.  They also appear (from what I have seen on the webcams over the last couple of days) to have demolished another subway like structure immediately in front of the new - did the previous subway extend far out under the road surface although unused?

Paul 

[ellendune]

The road was raised on a concrete structure rather than filling.

[Jonty]

Paul - in the days when the old subway was 'open', as was the station, it had 2 exits at ground level - firstly by the old taxi rank, and then across the far side of the road  near the entrance to the old Foster Wheeler tower.

Off the subway there were also a few exit routes into the subterranean car-parks 'under' station hill road....

[BBM]

Paul - in the days when the old subway was 'open', as was the station, it had 2 exits at ground level - firstly by the old taxi rank, and then across the far side of the road  near the entrance to the old Foster Wheeler tower.

Off the subway there were also a few exit routes into the subterranean car-parks 'under' station hill road....

And one route used to continue right through to the old bus station!

[paul7575]

Thanks chaps - back in the day I never left the station at all, only used it for interchange when passing through on what is now the XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) route...

Paul

[IndustryInsider]

Meanwhile in the new depot building fitting out work has now progressed to a stage where rails have now been laid within the building.