Old Oak Common

Yesterday I went to Wormwood Scrubs to see the proposed design for Old Oak Common station, one of the four stations planned for the initial phase of High Speed 2. Planned to open in 2026, the station could become one of the most important rail interchanges in London, and it's being built completely from scratch.

Model of Old Oak Common station (blue, centre) and the
surrounding areas planned for development (red and white)

The station will sit between Paddington and Acton on the Great Western Main Line, on a site currently occupied by railway depots. The HS2 tunnels are planned to run southwest from Euston to Old Oak Common before heading north.

There are 14 platforms planned, putting the station in the same league as King's Cross (13 platforms), Paddington (14) and London Bridge (15). Six of these platforms, underground, will be for HS2. Four will be (predominantly) for Crossrail. Four will be for Great Western Railway services to and from Paddington, including Heathrow Express.

(Very!) simplified diagram of platforms at Old Oak Common

Sidings west of Old Oak Common allow certain Crossrail trains to turn around rather than continue west to Reading and Heathrow. A typical Crossrail train from Shenfield will arrive at platform 6, drop off passengers, enter one of the sidings (where the driver will walk to the other end of the train), reverse direction and pick up passengers from platform 7 before heading back towards Shenfield.
In earlier versions of the station plans, these sidings curved towards Wembley, allowing for a possible future Crossrail extension to Wembley and Tring (depicted on my "Three Crossrails" map). The latest versions of the plans put the sidings in a new orientation which simplifies the operation of the station but renders a Tring extension much less likely.

Although it is not easy to predict how many will use the station, it is planned with a capacity of 250,000 passengers per day. If it achieved these numbers every day, the station would have 91 million passengers annually, more than every National Rail station in Britain in 2017-18 except Waterloo.

HS2 platforms at Old Oak Common

Building such a large station from scratch presents a unique opportunity. Old Oak Common is not the familiar story of a station which opened Victorian times and was subsequently forced to grow. Instead, the station can incorporate some of the best insights from modern station design, and learn from past lessons in how not to design a busy London station.

For example, the overbridge connecting the HS2 platforms with the other platforms is not rectangular, as you might expect, but instead is wider in the middle and narrower at each end. This is in anticipation of the different levels of passenger flow in different sections of the overbridge. I was also told that the station was designed to be especially versatile in the event of disruption: parts of the station can easily be closed off without affecting other sections.

Providing further connections in the Old Oak Common area, TfL is planning to build new London Overground stations. Two of these stations, Old Oak Common Lane and Hythe Road, were consulted on in 2017. Proposals for a West London Orbital line, repurposing a little-used freight line between Acton and Cricklewood, include a new station on Victoria Road.

Old Oak Common and Crossrail/Overground connections
Proposed West London Orbital is shown as dotted orange line

You can check out the proposals yourself and give feedback at the HS2 website here. The online questionnaire is open until 3 March 2019.