Reading Station improvements

[whole diary]

[Red Squirrel]

There's a 6-page article on the Reading upgrade in the June 2013 issue of the Railway Magazine, for those who're interested!

Other periodicals are also available.

[John R]

...with the excellent headline " Reading: Between the lines."

[JayMac]

...with the excellent headline " Reading: Between the lines."

Brilliant! 

[Red Squirrel]

...with the excellent headline " Reading: Between the lines."

Blimey, I completely missed the pun!

[paul7575]

Did anyone notice that in the Alan Williams pages of the May edition of Modern Railways there's a real caption howler?

A picture of Reading looking east with 'the new overbridge in view'.  Unfortunately it's taken from the new bridge and actually shows that massive signal gantry... 

Paul

[IndustryInsider]

The installation of OLE^▸ (Overhead Line Equipment, more often "OHLE") equipment continues in the depot with contact wire now being installed in the east end sidings and also through one of the roads of the new maintenance shed.

[paul7575]

The redundant centre road (the old up main) has now been lifted through the station area.  I presume they did that overnight Sat/Sun?

PS Just noticed on the webcams that a couple of the contractor's portakabins (the upper pair of the dark blue) have recently been removed. 

PPS The rest of the portakabins including the station management ones are now being removed as of pm 1st May.

Paul

[Gordon the Blue Engine]

Mrs GTBE caught the 0834 from Pangbourne this morning to change at Reading on to an HST^▸ (High Speed Train) for Paddington.  She and many others were not allowed down on to P10 because it was too crowded.  So of course lots of people missed the next train (there is of course lots of waiting space on the footbridge!). 

Hopefully they can reduce the fenced-off area on P10/P11 soon and give more space for passengers - I think someone previously has referred to the problems caused by the (temporary) narrow platform on P10.

[lbraine]

A small aside - but Reading related :

Does anyone know what is going on at Tilehurst wrt the new footbridge.

There was minimal work over the Easter shutdown - and now nothing for weeks and weeks. Is there a problem ?

[aleph_0]

I passed through Reading the other day, Platform 10 does currently seem awfully narrow at the moment, hopefully things will be better when it closes and platform 11 opens?

I see paul7755 has already mentioned it as a PPS, but the portakabins at the front of the station have now been cleared. One can see them being removed on lobstervision nrreading02, camera 2. It looks as if they've now opened up the direct route from the new station to the Three Guineas pub as a result.

(I should introduce myself - longtime lurker, I've been travelling through Reading about once a week for the last year, shortly to come to an end)

[Red Squirrel]

Can you tell me a bit more about lobstervision?

[aleph_0]

Can you tell me a bit more about lobstervision?

Yes, I should have just provided the link. They have webcams documenting the changes. There are 4 URLs, each url has between 1-4 tabs for different cameras:

http://www.lobstervision.tv/nrreading01
http://www.lobstervision.tv/nrreading02
http://www.lobstervision.tv/nrreading03
http://www.lobstervision.tv/nrreading04

[Red Squirrel]

Coo. Brilliant. Thanks

[paul7575]

I see paul7755 has already mentioned it as a PPS, but the portakabins at the front of the station have now been cleared. One can see them being removed on lobstervision nrreading02, camera 2. It looks as if they've now opened up the direct route from the new station to the Three Guineas pub as a result.

When I was through the station earlier this afternoon it looked as though they were almost ready to open a route through at the front, but there was a patch of newly laid concrete drying.  So I'd expect that the hoardings will probably be re-arranged over the weekend to allow demolition to continue eastwards on Reading BC's worksite.

Welcome to the forum BTW^▸ (by the way) aleph_0

Paul

[CheekyPaul]

Looking at the latest pictures of the new entrance on lobstervision/nrreading02 cam, I was thinking its nice to see some people having a drink outside the pub in what is a gorgeous weather and then it occurred me, wouldn't it be good if they could replace WHSmiths (next to the pub) with some kind of a food venue (ie caf^) so that you can sit outside too, enjoy the space, have a bite before catching a train and it'll give Reading station a new feel to it - a busy station with all sorts of thing happening and to make the most of the public space instead of it becoming a space you walk through to get from A to Z.

Just something I thought of