A view of the double tracking work taken from Willow Lane Bridge. (Photo: Ian Buck)
In Pictures: Mitcham Double tracking
In Pictures: Mitcham Double tracking
A view of the double tracking work taken from Willow Lane Bridge. (Photo: Ian Buck)
Does anyone know whether the track will be doubled tracked underneath the Carshalton Road bridge, as it doesn’t look like there is enough space for two tracks to run underneath it from the photo, or will they be doing works to the bridge to allow it to be double tracked underneath there? It would seem a bit strange if they were to leave this as there will still be a short single track section between Mitcham & Mitcham Junction (albeit for only a few metres). Thanks
Those Merton council lot are a hard-working bunch, still tionilg away at midnight on a Friday! Unless of course either Mr Thant or another visitor to the blog copied the above text from the publicity officer Abby from an email, which is perhaps a more likely explanation!FWIW I took a bit if a detour and went past the station on Friday just after midnight, where I saw a good number of hi-vis jacketed gents (though no sign of the diligent Abby) tionilg away putting the finishing touches on the station, which appeared to be fundamentally finished.Mwmbwls makes a good point about the pedestrian crossing, or more to the point the lack of one. The station is dissected by Eastfields Road – the location of the station can be seen in the middle square of – it’s to the left of the roundabout (the road actually crosses the railway by means of a level crossing).The up platform with the ticket office is to the north of Eastfields Road (on the west side of the line), the down platform is to the south of Eastfields Road (on the east side of the line).The bridge leads to the down platform from an entrance to the south side of the road on the west side of the line – I’m unclear as to whether the bridge will be the only way of getting to the down platform, or whether passengers will be able to just walk across the level crossing (if it is open) and get direct access to the down platform from street level.Regardless of whether passengers will have to use the bridge or not, they will still have to cross the busy Eastfields Road. AFAICS no specific provision has been made for this (not even any traffic islands) – there is a zebra crossing some distance to the west along Eastfields Rd, but I can’t see many people making a detour to use it. However I can certainly see the difficultly in trying to place a pedestrian crossing over this road, given the proximity to the level crossing.Maybe the bridge should have led diagonally across the level crossing, directly linking one platform to the other? Of course that would have been a substantially more complex undertaking for a station that’s supposed to be an exemplar of the new way of building such things fairly rapidly and without great expense.