The Elizabeth line: more pictures

Of course, I haven’t been able to resist some more rides on the Elizabeth line in its first week of operation.  On Friday I ventured to Liverpool Street station, whose new platforms are so long that at their western end there is a direct connection to Moorgate station.  Similarly, the eastern end of Farringdon has a connection with Barbican on the Metropolitan line.  That gives an idea of the colossal scale of this project — as do, I hope, the pictures below.  All show the Moorgate exit at Liverpool Street.

Perhaps, too, I will withdraw my previous comment about the trains feeling narrow and dull... on subsequent trips they have seemed much more spacious than I first thought.  The lighting is subtle, rather than dull.  And they are British-built (by Bombardier in Derby) too.

The Elizabeth Line is Open

London’s long-awaited new railway, the Elizabeth line, or Crossrail, is open at last.  Three colleagues and I could not resist going down yesterday lunchtime for a ride on its first day, and found our newest underground railway just as impressive as I had hoped.  The first impression — conveyed mainly by the ambience of the stations — is extraordinary.  They are immensely spacious — goodness knows how much earth they have brought up out of them — and the arches and vaults are of cathedralline proportions.  Their gentle contours, combined with the clever up-lighting of the arched ceilings, produce a remarkably soft, calming effect.  The acoustics, too, are soft, almost homely; neither echoing nor claustrophobic.  There were plenty of people around, but they were being absorbed effortlessly into the space.  There is a clear intelligibility and straightforwardness to the layout, and therefore to navigation.  There seems to be far less of the disorientation that one can find in the narrow corridors of the old Tube.

Farringdon station

The platforms are similarly wide and generous.  As on the Jubilee line extension (a different line for a different Jubilee!), a long row of glass doors protects waiting passengers from arriving trains —  and it is along this structure, not the ceilings or walls, that the departure boards are mounted.  This is another factor in the remarkably clean, uncluttered atmosphere — there is a clear line of sight right down the long, dead-straight platforms.

At Paddington

The class 345 trains, too, are excellent.  By comparison to the stations they feel a little narrow and less brightly-lit, and the platform barriers add to a slight sense of stepping into the unknown, but I think this was bound to be the case by comparison, and it should not take long to get used to.  Beyond question, though, they are very sleek, very fast, very smooth, and very quiet.  The line speed must be something like 40–50mph, but it would be hard to tell this either by the noise or the vibration; indeed, the ride quality is superior to that of some inter-city trains!

Farringdon

‘Space-age’ is YouTube personality Geoff Marshall’s verdict, and I think he is quite right: not only in its architecture and atmosphere, but also in the way it warps space and time.  I had expected the excitement of seeing the new line, but I did not anticipate another, deeper, sensation that came on gradually during the first journey, and which still has not fully subsided: a kind of semi-euphoric vertigo, a disbelieving wonder at the change; not just at the new infrastructure in itself but the change it has brought to London as a whole.  To see the name ‘Tottenham Court Road’ appearing through the window when I had only just got on at Farringdon seemed impossible, as if some rule of physics had been broken; it was a little like seeing water flowing uphill.  My known city has been remoulded and remade, its entire east-west dimension shrunk or tightened by an elastic belt.  Back on the surface I found myself struggling slightly to believe that it had all been real, and not some cheese-sandwich-induced lunchtime daydream.  It was a feeling exactly opposite to my disbelieving horror at the fire at Notre-Dame in Paris: a struggle to comprehend to a new reality, though in this case the change is altogether welcome.  

Farringdon

This sensation has probably been intensified by its rarity.  One way and another, I am used to bracing myself against dismay at most major events or developments in today’s Britain, including most construction projects.  Yet in contrast to so many dispiriting new developments, with their chunky and plasticky intrusions into our city-scape, this line is, as Mary Harrington points out in a new article, beyond question ‘something London wants and London needs’.  It is an unambiguous and unequivocal contribution towards our common good.  What is more, down underground, with no well-weathered or hand-made surroundings to clash with, its modernist and futuristic architecture not only makes sense but works in practice.  Here, then, for once, is something new that still corresponds to my Britain as I imagine it.  A new 50-mph underground line named after the Queen is something I myself might have dreamt of, something I would have had built if I were in charge!  Somehow, in spite of everything that has gone wrong in our poor country, we have got this right.  The air of excited discovery among the first-day passengers, our delight at the transfigured city — even the smiles, a rare sight indeed on the Underground! —  is surely testament to this.

Farringdon

The new line has summoned up the spice of excitement, the thrilling realisation that bold things really are possible; that it is possible to change a city — to change the fabric of the world! — for the better.  It is a rare taste of the Victorian age, or alternatively of what it is like to be French.  But the overall impression of sleekness and effortlessness belies how hard-won this triumph has been.  It has been a gigantic and complicated task, completed against considerable odds.  

This is a historic day for London and indeed the whole country.  The Elizabeth line may have suffered severe delays to its opening, but it has worked out all right as it now constitutes a magnificent Jubilee present for us all.  It is a superb addition to Britain’s railways, and worthy of the name it bears.

Farewell to the 455s

Through Mitcham Eastfields on a Horsham train, 10 August 2011

This coming Saturday, 14th May, sees the withdrawal from the suburban routes of the South Central Division — the tangle of railways running out of Victoria and London Bridge into south London — of the class 455 electric multiple units that have held sway in these parts for nearly forty years.  Their siblings on the South Western lines out of Waterloo will apparently follow in the next few months.

Basking in the sun at Victoria, 28 August 2013

Few ordinary passengers are likely to mourn them.  They are not glamorous, nor were they built to be, though I think better care could still have been taken of their interiors in recent years.  They were designed for mass short-distance transport, to lug commuters around the Hills and Commons of the southern boroughs; to venture to climes no more exotic than Crystal Palace, Epsom Downs, Caterham or Dorking.  I doubt they have averaged more than around twenty miles per hour over the course of their working lives.  But they have worked solidly, clocking up thousands upon thousands of rush-hours since the early 1980s.

Rumbling across the South Circular overbridge into Tulse Hill, bound for the Wimbledon loop, 11 April 2019

I am among those who will miss them.  It was against the backdrop of these faithful workhorses, plying their way up to London or down to Dorking, their acceleration distantly, enticingly audible over the suburban rooftops, that my rail enthusiasm was first contracted and swiftly found to be incurable.  The aforementioned South Western sister-class ran right past my grandmother’s garden, and I used a 455 as my subject for the centre-piece of a school art project (because I knew I could draw trains and buildings, but not people!).  More recently — until the pandemic in fact — my train into work was reliably formed by one of these units.

A Victoria-bound semi-fast accelerating through Mitcham Eastfields, 4 January 2011

Like the slightly younger 319s (themselves a familiar sight around South London until a few years ago) and their cousins the recently-scrapped two-car 456s, the 455s were built at York by British Rail Engineering Limited, as lettering on the step-plates proudly declared.  However, in contrast to the 319s — which were more souped-up trains, designed for Luton and Gatwick routes, for people with flights to catch, always seeming cramped by the chords and spurs of suburban south London, itching for the open stretches of the Brighton or Midland main lines — the 455s seemed gentler and more sedate, more suited to the way we do things here, south of the river, in the land of the electrified third rail.  To a 455, with its seldom-attained top speed of 75 mph, it did not seem to matter if we got to Ewell East now or some time next week.  They trundled their way around, taking their time about everything.  No point rushing this curve or that junction; there’ll only be something else to brake for around the next bend.  

Through the window onto dawn-lit commuterland, 1 October 2018

Adding to the dreamy aura of these trains were the various reassuring sounds they made: the chirruping of the brakes and the soft sigh on their release, the warble-piping of the original door alarms, the clunk of the camshaft on departure, and the leisurely thrumming of the brake compressors, this last being the sound I will miss the most.  Then there were the motors, matching the register of a cello, rising from a growl from a standstill to the very top of the tenor range if given the chance to stretch their legs.  The only alarming sound was the occasional crunch of electricity arcing from the third rail. 

Arriving at Streatham Hill on the 1617 to London Bridge, the once-daily parliamentary service via the Leigham Spur and Tulse Hill, 25 April 2019

The motors themselves are worth remarking on, for they are actually recycled.  Incredible as it may sound, they are over eighty years old, and more than twice the age the trains they have been powering.  The early Eighties, when these units were built, were not an easy time for British Rail, which, struggling under persistent inadequacies in government subsidy, had constantly to make do and mend with their scarce resources.  Their solution in this case was to fit the new trains with not only second- but third-hand motors built originally by the Southern Railway for its electric units in the 1930s.  Though now into their ninth decade and effectively dating from the electrification itself, the motors still seem perfectly sound to my ear.  Whatever the reason is for the withdrawal of these trains, I doubt it has anything to do with the traction equipment.

A down train draws into Wandsworth Common, 9 December 2018

I am not the only one sad to see them go.  ‘South London is [going to] feel weird without them,’ said one contributor to the ever-perusable Rail Forums.  Another chap, a driver who also films the modern railway scene and has a presence on YouTube, told me in an exchange in the comments, ‘These were the trains I grew up on, the trains that took me on all sorts of adventures and when I passed out [i.e. qualified] as a driver became my core traction.’

Epsom train rounding the curve south of Mitcham Junction, 4 February 2022

There is always a pang to see the clearing out of the furniture of our beginnings, however ordinary these things may be.  Perhaps, in fact, the more ordinary and the more constant they have seemed, the sharper the pang.  Bit by bit, the railscape of my childhood is disappearing (the analogue signals, the bell at Eastfields level crossing, the late Phil Sayer’s voice over the speakers...), and by the end of this weekend another major part of it will have crumbled completely away.  I will certainly miss the familiar presence of these old units, with the many associations they hold for me.

A final farewell, Mitcham Common, 4 February 2022

But let us end with the nearest a 455 ever came to attaining railway glory.  Under the pre-2018 timetable, one single passenger service each weekday was booked to run non-stop down the fourteen-mile line from Dorking to Horsham, and this was generally allocated to a 455 unit.  So, just before that timetable was abolished, I took one of the last opportunities to experience this run, and filmed the journey from just beyond Betchworth Tunnel to just short of Horsham.  As I have said, 455s hardly ever had the chance of a clear non-stop flat-out run like this, and certainly in their latter years Horsham was the furthest south they ever ventured in regular service.  So it was a rare treat to see this humble suburban unit reliving the glory days of the old Bognor expresses, accelerating to the full line speed of 75 mph along probably my favourite stretch of railway in south-east England.  (We really begin to pick up speed after Holmwood, five minutes in, and after Ockley, at six minutes, there is the added bonus of some jointed track, which we hammer over at full tilt.)  The date was the 14th May, 2018 — four years to the day, as it turns out, before the final withdrawal of the class.

Gipps’ Fifth to receive its U.S. première

Now this is very exciting news: on the 15th April 2023, the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra will give the United States première of Ruth Gipps’ Fifth Symphony.  Of her four ‘mature’ symphonies, this is the only one yet to have an outing in the ongoing Gipps Revival, yet it is a work as beautiful as, if not even finer than, any of the others.

In the past few years the Seattle Philharmonic, under its director Adam Stern, have excelled themselves in their dedication to Gipps’ music, putting the American premières of both the Second and Fourth Symphonies to their name.  It is no small risk to perform such large-scale works by a composer whose name until recently has, however unjustly, been so little-known to audiences.  Yet this orchestra has now proven itself bold enough to do so three times — each time bringing the music to new and appreciative listeners — and they surely deserve to be known as Gipps’ foremost champions in America.

The story of the Fifth Symphony offers a perfect example of the frustration and injustice that dogged Gipps’ career.  Completed in 1982, when atonalism still reigned triumphant, its persistence in clear melodies and unveiled romanticism were the final proof, if any were needed, of her refusal to compromise her artistic convictions for the sake of the Zeitgeist.  The symphony’s intricate craftsmanship, imaginative sonority and varied palette of moods counted for nothing, it seemed, against the tide of fashion.  Gipps’ previous symphonies had received at least one broadcast on BBC radio, but this time the composer fought in vain even for that.  In the end, a sole performance was given by the London Repertoire Orchestra, the ensemble founded by Gipps herself for newly-trained musicians.  A scratchy but complete recording of this rendition can be heard on YouTube.

Next year’s concert in Seattle will, then, incredibly, be only the second time that this symphony has ever been heard in the forty years since it was written.  And yet, as I hope can be heard in the extract below, this neglect is no reflection of the quality of the music.  It is, as I have said so often before, intricate, distinctive, at turns characteristically spiky and mellifluous, full-throated and beautifully-crafted music.  Many thanks to all involved in the decision to perform this symphony, and very best wishes for its success.  I have only one question — might there please be the chance of streaming the concert online, or of releasing a recording of it, for those of us who find ourselves on the wrong side of ‘the pond’?

Full information here: 

https://seattlephil.org/concerts-and-tickets/concert/gipps-fifth/

https://visitseattle.org/events/seattle-philharmonic-orchestra-presents-a-major-u-s-premiere-ruth-gipps-fifth/

This article has been updated to reflect a change in the scheduling of this concert from an initial date of September 4th, 2022.

The first movement of the fifth symphony, in which one of the most beautiful clarinet solos ever written develops eventually into a majestic anthem-like summit.  The London Repertoire Orchestra is conducted by the composer.