Old Strand Becomes Stable

 

A lot of work is being done around The Strand as you go past in the train.

Besides the creation of a new city stabling yard, an emergency station is being created for the RWC 2011, just in case…

Most of the old platforms will be removed around Christmas.

The old platforms are going to be demolished

The new stop will be in case there is an “emergency” during the RWC match nights - read in case some idiot creates some bomb threat and Britomart has to be cleared just as fans and trains are about to head off to Kingsland.


The Henderson stabling yard has worked out well when trains have run into difficulties on the Western Line and a another needed.

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11 Comments

 
  1. karl says:

    Shame about the shelters, I thought they looked reasonably elegant in their simplicity. But I guess you can’t preserve everything, and they probably aren’t easily transplanted to other train stations.

  2. Geoff B says:

    The Henderson DSF has worked out the opposite! No spares are kept there, so when they can’t start one up in the morning, they cancel all its services through to midday. Previously if they couldn’t start a train at Westfield in the morning, they could take out a spare instead. Cancellations of Western trains have increased since the Henderson yard opened.

  3. Kurt says:

    I would have thought the old platforms would be historic and protected or are they in a bad way?

  4. Matt says:

    Kurt, they’re pretty nasty. They’d need a lot of work to get them up to a standard where you’d want international visitors to see them.

    As far as emergencies go, it’s also a contingency against a switching/signalling boo-boo that results in the closure of the Britomart tunnel, or an incident between Newmarket and Britomart that leads to having to de-train large numbers of passengers without being able to then clear the platforms at Britomart so that additional trains can enter. There are a number of possibilities that would make an extra set of platforms useful.

  5. Jon C says:

    @Matt Mike Lee said that originally about the Queens sheds LOL. The Strand ones are certainly not worth saving, no more than the horrible ones that graced Mt Albert and Morningside stations. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing but one can take it too far.

  6. Nick R says:

    The original platform canopies are(were) very early examples of cast pre-stressed concrete, contemporary to Grafton Bridge. They may be nothing much to look at today, but they have historic value from an engineering perspective.

  7. Luke says:

    I understood they were protected as well. Unfortunately the location of the site means that they are unlikely to be integrated into any new development that occurs.

  8. Nick R says:

    I assume their status means that one example must remain intact, but the rest can be demolished.

  9. karl says:

    Jon C - I am not proposing to retain them, especially not on teh site. Maybe I am a bit nostalgic in fact, but they can look nice, in a scruffy, historic way:

    http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TheStrandStationAuckland.jpg

    All I was saying is that I’d rather have such nice long old shelters than those rabbit hutches some of our other stations have…

  10. Jon C says:

    @Karl i know what you are saying. I spent an afternoon taking photos of them. They are certainly better weather protectors and have character.

  11. bob says:

    Be good to retain the old Stand platforms and shelters (for historic and practical reasons).

    But noone has said how this all helps if Britobungle gets jammed up (whether due to bomb scare or points jam). Do passengers at Britomart get told ‘Oi, you lot, clear off 1km up the road, sneak round the back of some arena or apartment block, and grab a train there’?

    And how does this new plan get heralded to the punters? (esp. given current dire inability to transmit service changes in coherent or timely fashion)…

    Apart from that, Strand platforms are now isolated by 3 triangular faces of track - the old Strand platform tracks, the South and East tracks. The old subway to Alten Rd may still exist, but access to Beach Rd and Quay St is problematic/expensive.

    And faults/pranks/terrorism could equally derail services if they happened at Newmarket junction/station. Or Westfield.

    Frankly, they are better to use ‘rail’ buses to replace services canned in the RWC for any reason. Flexible and fast way to bridge closed stations or track sections.

 

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