A few weeks back, I was lucky enough to get a sneak preview of Crossrail, travelling from Paddington to Liverpool Street through the new tunnel. What I saw left me in no doubt Londoners will be blown away. The project is an engineering marvel. Burrowing two huge tunnels from east to west through the centre of a crowded city like London, avoiding other Tube lines, utilities, basements, Roman remains and plague pits along the way is a hell of an achievement.
Cathedral-like stations and cavernous platforms — twice as long as a normal Tube station — reveal the scale of the project. There will be no stooping on the trains for tall people like me at 6ft — carriages are the size of normal trains, air conditioned and kitted out with unique moquette-patterned seats.
