please empty your brain below

Proof positive that Nathan Barley walks among us. Looking forward to the forthcoming Meades film on jargon which will undoubtedly cut a critical swathe through such nonsense. Happy New Year, DG.
Those words about the purple ring really means "purple is one of the few shades left that we haven't used'. Flowery BS is the de facto language of designers
Happy New Year everyone.

The similarity of Crossrail Purple to TfL Blue is clear from the CMYK - 70.80.0.0 versus 100.88.0.5

The first sentence - this is the unique Crossrail colour - is fine, but "bold and assurant" is just designer bullshit, like "reassurance and integration" and indeed "focus" and "balance". You could add that white is needed to contrast with the dark blue/purple tones, otherwise the text would be illegible.
300,000 litres of Concrete? Are they trying to make the the job look bigger than it really is with an impressive 300,000 litres? Concrete is supplied in cubic metres, 300 Cubic metres is only 40 to 50 loads depending on the size of lorry used and gives a cube with sides of 6.7 metres if all in one lump.
I think that particular purple is more like mauve.
300 cu m concrete will form a slab 100 mm thick (suitable as a floor for people to walk on) by 3 m wide by 1 km long. So 2 platforms slightly longer than 2 Crossrail trains.
Thanks for lots of interesting pieces DG and Happy New Year to all.
I've driven past Custom House a couple of times. The station looks an horrendous concrete overkill and not very attractive.
May I be the first pedant of 2018 both to wish you a happy new year, and also to point out that "pallette" should be spelt "palette".

dg writes: I have merely copied how TfL's branding team misspelt it.
Palette is correctly spelt on page 6. However, I haven't checked the whole document, so there could be a proof-reading error elsewhere!

dg writes: Ah, I was referring to the original version of the document. TfL have since been through and corrected 18 spellings.
(they've still missed the two consecutive 'and's on p6, the 'can not' on p4 and the 'is applies is' on p3)

I went through Friday evening. Talking to staff on the train, there had been no work over Christmas, and he had asked when it would open, but unable to get a date.

We concluded between ourselves end of January. Time will tell!
>>dg writes: I have merely copied how TfL's branding team misspelt it.

That's a cracker - their compentence is so poor that they can't even do a thorough spelling check before publishing something. How to look professional!
Unfortunately they have forgotten to update the 'improvements and projects' page, which still states late December 2017. Bizarrely the headline is:

"This is part of our work to support local housing and employment growth."

Who made that one up?
https://artybollocks.com/
I found the purple / mauve (I learnt this word from a British computer game) and blue contrast each other better on my mobile screen than on my computer monitor. I suspect the real thing would be easily seen as having only one colour (like TfL Rail stations).
People may mock but (proof-reading aside) isn't this the sort of thing that led to Frank Pick being recognised for his work in making the Underground distinctive?

In 2017 when visiting Custom House DLR I have been staggered by the lack of anything seeming to happen for most of the year. I am not at all surprised it hasn't re-opened yet.

However, there is a nagging feeling that this may have something to do with a delay to the power supply on Crossrail being turned on.

I note it is "closed until mid-January 2018 due to Crossrail works". That is either a lie (more likely) or it really is/was Crossrail that is holding them up.

dg writes: See last link in penultimate paragraph.
Is crossrail opening on 9 Dec or 19 Dec this year? I keep seeing different dates. Unless 19 Dec is the official date and 9 Dec is the "soft opening"?

Tfl seem to say "one year away" - [press release]

as does Geoff in his video description - [youtube]
9th Dec presumably as that is the country-wide timetable-change day.

19th is but an insignificant wednesday.

Mind you, there are another 55 to 60 of the new trains to be delivered yet - and the extra carriages to be added to those here already.
I can't make those percentages "manifested in the Roundel" work either.

White plus blue just doesn't make as much as 60%, no matter how you calculate it.
Indeed - I was surprised there was said to be substantially more white than blue. And the blue used in the images in the Design Idiot seem to be much darker than the blue panels displayed elsewhere in it.
Histogram analysis suggests 46.5% purple, 23.5% blue, 30% white IF you include the blank area within the roundel circle as white. Otherwise it's 61% purple, 31% blue and 8% white.
Agreed.
Geometry suggests 45% purple, 24% blue, 31% white IF you include the blank area within the roundel circle as white. Otherwise it's 60% purple, 32% blue and 8% white.
Actually quite rare for TfL, as they have developed a habit of under promising and over delivering recently, so usually things get finished before they say they will.
The moment I saw that purple, I thought, "Gosh, that is bold and assurant."

Not.

What drivel.
I tried visiting the station as well and was also surprised when the train sped through. Going back towards canning town however, I was at the front and so got a good view of the new platforms. They've chosen a warm light colour to light up the station which gives it a welcoming feel (even thought it's not open yet), it looks quite posh indeed. I have to say the roundel looked quite 'upmarket' compared to other 2d roundels you see often on the tube but the purple looks too similar to the blue in my opinion.
Here's the view at dusk from the overbridge.


when we went to the 19th December press-shingdig, they were telling us "One year to go today!". it was only after the video went out that i realised this was bobbins, and it should - indeed - be Sunday 9th for public services.

there'll be press/management trips before then, for sure. and Liz herself will no doubt go for a ride/open it officially, so that she can wear her purple dress again.
i just has an evil thought..

what if the Queen passes away this year? (or.. more likely Phillip)

what if that happened right at the end of November, and the funeral coincided with the opening of Crossrail. that'd really bugger up all purple plans!
A very Happy New Year!

That's my comment, which must at least be entered.
@Geoff - if that sequence of events were to occur I’d still be calling it Crossrail
Happy New Year DG - thanks for everything - Eve St was lovely !

Not sure I agree on the various criticisms of the jargon in elizabeth-line-design-idiom.pdf

The document is for Crossrail, and organisations supplying stuff to CrossRail, and it seems to me that it is not unreasonable to assume readers would understand the jargon used in signage, colours, wayfinding, etc

My interpretation of '40% purple, 25% blue' was that it would apply, for example, to rolling stock

(but not, I hope, to staff uniforms)

I think organisations should be encouraged to be transparent, and make available geeky documentation like this.
This is turning into real brand confusion.

A line is a sub-component of a railway system. If a railway system has just one service bundle, it has no lines. What network is the 'Elizabeth Line' a sub-component of? Presumably there is intended to be a Harry Line some time in the furture, but then will that receive its own colour branding? In which case the overall branding of the Crossrail franchise will fragment, or else it will inherit Elizabeth line branding colours, and the branding will be diluted.

Contrast with Overground, which has strong overall network branding, but awful line sub-branding, and the Underground, which gets it as right as it can considering the complexity of the sub-surface lines.

TfL needs to stop hijacking and bastardising the historic London Underground roundel and think some more about what the organisation is and how it is organised.
Maybe 9th December is the start down to the timetable change. 19th is the day Liz makes it official.
But then again as the actual Crossrail section will be separate from any other National Rail service for a while, a midweek random date - the 19th - is possible. They will for a start get much better publicity than early on a Sunday morning.
9th December 2018 was stated in a Crossrail consultation document a couple of years ago as the date for operations to begin.

But one thing's for sure - TfL aren't going to publicly announce a specific opening date until they're damned sure they can meet it.
To be fair, yes, the date should be the 9th, but I wonder if they feel it needs a few days running on the service without passengers where they can test out things like going to/from manual control in the middle of a normal service pattern. So it could be that 9th-19th are actually going to be a "severe disruption on TfL Rail" period.
They are still testing the new trains and very few are in proper service unless they are testing them in sequence and putting the ones that are fit for traffic into the queue for launch day? Its rare to see more than one or two in traffic at the same time AFAIK.
Is it possible that they come down, get brought into service for driver training, and then get sent away again to have the extra carriages put in? Although I assumed the extra carriages were arriving after they were in fleet service...
@ Kirk - the core section from Paddington to Abbey Wood will run in full ATO mode from the start. No switching modes involved - that comes later.

All the trains for the western section (Padd - Heathrow) will be 9 cars long. Many of the trains for the tunnel service from Dec 2018 will be stabled at Old Oak Common and will be 9 cars from the start. Conversion of the trains at the east end from 7 to 9 cars will run through 2019 although some new trains will be delivered as 9 cars but will only be used for training purposes until May 2019 when the through service from the core to Shenfield starts. I went through the Crossrail train supply contract to see how this was all managed.

At this time work will be done to extend 2 platforms (and remove one) at Liv St mainline to allow 9 car trains to run there for the special peak only service. MTR Crossrail are retaining a small number of the old class 315s into 2019 to run the peaks only service post May 2019 and also avoids TfL having too many 7 car class 345s to lengthen. Once the entire fleet is 9 cars long the 315s can be dispensed with.

@ Agent X - there are countless examples of TfL documents which are riddled with punctuation, spelling and grammar errors. This includes the Commissioner's Report and TfL Board papers. It's excrutiating to see such mistakes in public documents. I used to write LU Board papers and was told on pain of death that such errors would not be tolerated. A lot of effort was made to ensure documents were produced to the required standard. Things have clearly slipped.
Tweet from the TfL DLR account suggesting 8 January is the new opening date: https://twitter.com/LondonDLR/status/948507008327651328
@Ollie. Looking at it - no chance
http://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/news/custom-house-dlr-station-to-reopen-after-a-year-1-5342777
Three weeks later, in a TfL press release:

"The new Elizabeth line roundels will remain under wraps - and will not be visible to the public - until the opening of the new railway in December."

Bit late...













TridentScan | Privacy Policy