Continuing on the Crossrail theme from the recent thread regarding a
Woolwich Crossrail station, I have some queies regarding Crossrail and
Silvertown.

To set the scene briefly, Crossrail is going to take over the North
London Line alignment between Custom House and North Woolwich - for
full information on this see the Crossrail project page on Dave
Arquati's superb website 'alwaystouchout' [1] - the relevant bit is
under the 'Route' section, specifically 'East: Abbey Wood'.

This is the bit that has me flummoxed...

-----
"Provision is being made in the plans for a future station at
Silvertown, should this ever be required. This would not be on the
current station site, but instead would be further to the west. A DLR
City Airport branch station has been safeguarded very close to here to
provide possible interchange."
-----

I took a detour on a cycle journey I made yesterday to have a look
around, and I just couldn't see how this possible future station would
work out on the ground. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera with me so
there's no pictures to illustrate things.

Multimap of the area - http://tinyurl.com/z4fv9

It's easy to see the location of the possible future DLR station - it'd
be on the diagonal alignment between North Woolwich Rd and Connaught
Rd. It's sandwiched between an older warehouse and a new Travelodge,
but on the ground it's pretty obvious it has been safeguarded.

What I do not understand whatsoever is the possible future Silvertown
Crossrail station. If the new station were to be to the west of the
existing station that'd place it (at least partially) underground - the
line starts a steady incline down into the Connaught tunnel just west
of Silvertown station. The tunnel mouth is just south of Hart Rd.

I guess there could be an underground station on the westernmost part
of the airport, adjacent to Connaught Bridge, but this would involve
completely rebuilding the tunnel to accomodate a 12 car platform and
would be difficult given the proximity of the dock - i.e. it'd be very
expensive.

Or will the Connaught tunnel be rebuilt somewhat when (if) Crossrail
comes - it does have a rather restrictive loading gauge (probably the
wrong terminology - basically it's a tight fit).

The other possible option for a Silvertown Crossrail station would be
to use the existing station site. Problem is whether 12 car platforms
could be fitted it - to the east the alignment is tightly sandwiched
between two roads (Albert Rd and Factory Rd), neither of which have
pavements on the railway side, and I'm not sure if there'd be enough
extra space either side of two running lines to accomodate platforms.

I see the question of Silvertown and Crossrail has come up on here
before - see the last few posts of this 2004 utl thread [2]. There
would be some benefit to a station at Silvertown, but perhaps the
practical problems make it bit of a non-starter.

So can anyone enlighten me as to whether the supposed "Provision [...]
being made [...] for a future station at Silvertown" is just nonsense,
included so as to pacify possible objections, or is it for real - in
which case how would such a station be work out on the ground?


[1] alwaystouchout - Crossrail page
http://www.alwaystouchout.com/project/1

[2] Google Groups archive - Crossrail at Silvertown discussion
http://tinyurl.com/p54ml