Bombardier win the rolling stock contract

Regardless of what some may say about the company it's a good day for the people who work for Bombardier in Derby and other associated UK companies. I personally have no complaints about LOROL stock or the recent additions to the underground so provided they're kept away from the signals I think it's excellent news.


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Ilford will presumably be equipped to do all the day to day work on the 345s given they start service out east first. I would not be surprised if there is some clever rotation of the fleet so a lot of them see service on the Shenfield route to accumulate mileage and build reliability. I can't imagine that a service of Crossrail's intensity would have to rely on just one major depot for overnight servicing. The fleet will be stabled at at least 3 locations, possibly more - Ilford, OOC, Plumstead, Shenfield? Major work will probably have to be done at OOC but that should be years down the line barring unforeseen events.

The section of track between the FGW route and the NLL at Acton Wells is due to be wired so that would allow trains to run from the west round to Ilford without being dragged. If the GOBLIN is wired by 2017 then that would offer an alternative wired route round London either via Gospel Oak, South Tottenham and Stratford (as opposed to the NLL through Hackney).

Given the issues with signalling integration between Crossrail and the GW route I would guess that any transfer from OOC to the main Crossrail route via the Westbourne Park portal would have to be under possession and possibly in engineering hours. This assumes that signalling on the CR route had been commissioned and approved for use so trains could run at reasonable speed through the core (before public service has started). This also assumes no work is being done on any Crossrail assets close to the track. I imagine different things will be done depending on the progress of work and the capability of the systems to allow train operation.