At 6.33am this morning (24 May), the first ever Elizabeth line service from Paddington left the station packed with excited passengers.

Heading towards Abbey Wood, the journey marked the culmination of a mammoth 13-year construction project, and many more years of planning. Delays and budget issues have been well-documented, but the line now promises to transform journeys through Central London.

Many of the project’s most significant challenges have been civil engineering-related, but innovations elsewhere promise to make journeys as smooth, quick and reliable as possible. To mark the occasion, we looked back through the Professional Engineering archives at some of the novel approaches and engineering advances made during the Crossrail project.

Reading articles from the last decade reveals a constantly shifting deadline for the opening – this 2018 piece said we were “less than a year away”, for example. But now it is here, one key aspect of the project should help prevent delays to services.

Adapting an Internet of Things (IoT) approach – instead of the fractured control systems of the past – the Crossrail Data Network includes “pretty much every component” on the same fibre ‘backbone’, from ventilation control and office PCs to voice traffic and CCTV.

“The upshot of this modern approach is simple – all of the data collected can easily be fed to a central network management centre, where data from the entire network is displayed together on a dashboard so the railway can be managed more effectively, and data analysed more easily,” wrote James O’Malley.

“The most immediate upshot of all of this data-wrangling is that it transforms the way that maintenance happens – it could see the industry shift from calendar- or kilometre-based maintenance to only intervening when systems say a given component (or ‘asset’) requires it… By using data collected on the component previously, and other components like it, systems can actively predict when work is needed.”

In 2017, we walked down a Crossrail tunnel deep beneath Liverpool Street, inspecting the rails and assessing the structure of the tunnel. The visit was carried out in virtual reality (VR), in a program developed by Manchester firm Clicks and Links.

Accurate down to a few millimetres and containing 100m unique points, the virtual model was based on tripod-mounted laser scans and photographs and point-mapping from an autonomous drone.

The aim of the system was to allow engineers access to areas that are unsafe or difficult to access, said Clicks and Links CEO Vin Sumner, enabling them to add annotations and take ‘photographs’ to make decisions about possible structural problems, without accessing the real tunnels.

“Nothing works better than visiting a real project site together with a colleague, so that is the interaction we are striving to deliver through our immersive platform,” said the company.

“Access to the real tunnel is expensive, so if you want to look for snags and problems and things like that, it is much better in VR as you can save money,” said Sumner.

After lagging behind a huge increase in passenger numbers for years, train operators including Transport for London (TfL) were well underway with large new train orders by 2019, including for Crossrail. Maximised doorway passenger flow should reduce station ‘dwell times’ and improve facilities for passengers with reduced mobility, wrote David Shirres.

“Being laden with sensors, [the trains] should also be more reliable,” he added. “This, together with condition monitoring stations at depots, provides remote condition monitoring to detect potential faults and unexpected wear rates. This also facilitates a more cost-effective condition-based maintenance regime.”

Based on Bombardier’s Aventra design and built by Alstom at its Derby factory, the Elizabeth line’s Class 345 trains are packed with features aimed at boosting energy efficiency. Lightweight materials were used, and regenerative braking could cut energy use by 30% compared to similar trains.  

“Alstom UK has been a key delivery partner in the Elizabeth line and played a major part making it possible to open this transformational railway,” said London transport commissioner Andy Byford today. “Providing trains, technology, infrastructure and maintenance, they will help ensure Londoners and visitors benefit from reliable and more accessible journeys across the capital.”

As with any major modern engineering project, simulation played an important role in planning. Research by the University of Huddersfield’s Institute of Railway Research aimed to minimise any potential disruption to passenger journeys by developing a maintenance planning tool for the line, capable of simulating a wide variety of scenarios to identify the best maintenance strategy.

Working with the Crossrail team for 10 years, the researchers also investigated the use of premium rail steels, studied vehicle dynamics, and analysed where flange lubrication would be most required, as well as investigating cant reduction to share force more evenly between train axles.

The research aimed to keep parts working for as long as possible, minimise maintenance costs, and ensure safe and reliable operation of the tracks.  

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