As someone who has an amateur interest in how modern British railways operate I found this a thoroughly enjoyable read.

If you like this kinda thing then I can recommend RAIL Magazine [0], comes out fortnightly (I have a regular order at my local paper shop) and is packed with all sorts of technical goodies about rail ops in the UK and has nice pictures as well :)

http://www.railmagazine.com/

Thanks for the tip, I love rail magazines. In Switzerland, I subscribe to Railway Update [0] which is produced every two months and covers Swiss rails news as well as Europe and Asia (as related to European trains). They have great analysis of new planning, recent accidents, and deep tech discussions.

[0] http://www.minirex.ch/railway-update.aspx

"...the problem of no toilet on board..."

That really surprised me. They're running a service from Reading out to Shenfield with no loo. I'd have thought things could get quite urgent under those circumstances.

The Underground out to Amersham doesn't have toilets; nor do the Northern City Line trains out to Hertford and Welwyn. Crossrail is a metro service; very few people will be travelling all the way through (most will be going to or from central london), and people going from London to Reading or Shenfield are more likely to get the fast long-distance trains.

London Overground doesn't have toilets on train. Better this than just dumping it straight onto the track like a lot of the existing stock still does. A vacuum system would be better but then they have to empty them. Less space to fit people in too.

The trains on South Eastern in from Kent all have vacuum toilets. It's only a few train lines that dump waste on to the tracks.

Educational video of what the Crossrail project is with a lot of details on the Tunnel Boring Machines.

http://www.crossrail.co.uk/construction/tunnelling/meet-our-...

Nice article. I thought they missed a trick by not putting a Crossrail station at London City Airport. See how it goes in 3 years when it opens.

...Or a spur to the West Anglia mainline at Liverpool St/Thameslink at Farringdon. With those in place there'd be the possibility of direct rail connectivity between all of Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted & Luton airports. The link should already be possible to Southend via Stratford.

That's genius - I wonder why not?

(Presumably we don't want too many flights landing)

Thanks, that was a rather detailed read.