Track and fitout
Stations, tunnels and trains need tracks to join them together and signalling to keep everything in order.
Crossrail packaged some of this work into Contract C610, originally valued at £400 million. It involved laying over 40km (25 miles) of track, overhead conductor rails and walkways, 50 ventilation fans, 60 drainage pumps, and 30km of fire mains. Alstom/TSO/ Costain was awarded the deal in 2013.
Laying track was no simple task. Through most of the 26 miles of tunnels, the track is standard slab track. The exceptions (which total 20%) include Connaught Tunnel with its tight clearances, Farringdon, and the section between Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street. In that case, Crossrail installed floating slab track to cut vibration into Soho’s recording studios and the many hotels in the area. For Farringdon, floating slab track insulated the Barbican theatre.
A small ceremony marked the tightening of the final track clip on September 14 2017.
Traction power supplies came with Contract C644, estimated at £35m and awarded to Alstom/Costain. The deal involved building feeder stations at Pudding Mill Lane and Kensal that take power from the 440kV grid and pass it to transformer sites at Westbourne Park, Stepney Green, Custom House and Plumstead. Non-traction power supplies were in Contract C650, which went to Alstom and Costain.
In autumn 2012, Siemens and Invensys won the deal to design, manufacture, install, test and commission signalling in the central tunnels. The tunnels would use a communications-based train control system (CBTC) with trains running automatically.
Out on Network Rail lines, trains would be working with conventional signalling and AWS/TPWS protection. The Heathrow branch uses ETCS signalling, which Network Rail plans to install on its lines from Paddington to Reading at some future point.
In spring 2013, Siemens won a deal for communication and control systems in the
central tunnels - including CCTV and public address, and the data networks feeding into the control centre.