Elizabeth line

Today the central section of the Elizabeth line, the London Crossrail line which will eventually link  Heathrow and Reading in the west to Woolwich and Shenfield in the east via the city centre, opened to the public for the first time.  Despite huge cost overruns and significant delays, this major engineering project is set to transform journey times across London and provide a massive increase in passenger capacity and is set to be a proud part of London's transport infrastructure.

We avoided the early morning rush to be among the first on the line, but visited from mid morning on.  By that time, the trains were less crowded.  We stopped at every open station on the line, looking at each from platform level to street level.  In many cases the station buildings at street level have been heavily modified or completely rebuilt and the immediate areas redeveloped.

There were a large number of Transport for London staff - including volulnteer "ambassadors" - to welcome passengers and guide them to the new platforms.  I had the impression that, although some of the passengers were genuinely using the trains as a better way to get to their destination, most of the passengers today were there, like us, just to see and experience this new and impressive transport link.

I have a lot more photographs on Flickr (which I will try and sort and caption tomorrow).