8 March (Part 3) - Abbey Wood. Built on mud
It was a
noisy week in Abbey Wood as Crossrail bashed on relentlessly, although this
weekend has seen two more days with no trains and no obvious work in progress.
The men in orange say that the remaining piece of the public footbridge will come down in
two weeks time and the station building a week later. What’s left of it.
The piling operation continued all week in the old station car park but by
Saturday morning the pile driver had gone. North of the railway in Felixstowe Road
the excavation that has been disrupting traffic for most of the year continues.
The trench is big enough for a major sewer. Presumably we can discover
what it is for on Tuesday.
The piling operation can be an amazing sight. The concrete columns must be more
like 40 feet long than 30 and are blunt ended. Nevertheless the time difference
between the first and last of the moving images is just 26 seconds. Note how the
clouds do not move.
The attendant said that beneath a firm surface there is a sea of mud before the
pile hits something firmer. No one seems to know what supports the existing
tracks on an area soon to bear the weight of Crossrail trains. Another question for Tuesday.
