It is day three
of the Crossrail Elizabeth line purple train.
We're working our way back down the line
which means after yesterday's video,
which was Paddington,
we're now at, we've skipped Bond Street.
We're at Tottenham Court Road.
There's two entrances.
There's a curved platform.
It's a huge station.
It integrates with the tube.
Let's go for a deep dive explore around TCR.
So yesterday we had Lewis
as my inadvertent random guest to help me out.
It might seem that we're turning this
into a mini series with a whole bunch of guests.
And when transport nerds gather
in town to celebrate a new transport system
sometimes Canadians turn up.
Hey.
How many miles did you travel?
Several thousand.
Several thousand!
Reese, would you like to introduce yourself
to my subscribers on YouTube?
Yes, my name is Reese.
I run a channel called RM transit.
I'm based in Toronto, but I talk about transit everywhere.
A lot, okay.
You've been to London before,
right? Yes.
Why are you excited for London's new Elizabeth line?
Because it's purple.
It is purple, purple line.
No, it's just so big, you know, and it's beautiful.
It is beautiful, all right.
And this is us doing an official collaboration,
right? Finally.
So YouTube is going crazy right now,
Jeff plus Reese.
It's a beautiful thing.
It really is.
Are you ready to explore Tottenham Court road?
Yes. Let's do it.
You know it's a new escalator when you have
the cool light bars, right?
I love these light bars.
What, the red and the green?
No, the light bars!
Oh, on the edge.
Oh, I see, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is a classic feet on the escalator shot, Reese.
(Reese laughs)
You should do this more on your videos.
Oh, God.
I don't wanna know what dark parts
of the internet you're trying to appeal to with that.
No, no feet on escalators is almost as popular
as bin bags in the breeze.
As you would say, it's capacious, right?
It doesn't feel that busy
despite the fact that there's a tonne of people here.
Are you stealing my word capacious?
I mean the English language is a shared thing Jeff.
(Jeff laughs)
We're all allowed to use the word capacious,
but it is very much capacious.
Now do you know about the maps?
Do you know about the little dots on the maps
with the white and the red?
Do you know about this?
I do not, no.
Do you wanna explain?
I've given Reese my camera,
you know how to use a video camera right?
I do. (Jeff laughs)
Actually, yes. That's a joke.
I've filmed a video or two in my day.
(Jeff laughs)
One or two?
You see this symbol here, the roundel?
This is us now, this is Tottenham Court Road.
So this is a map of the local area.
So this is, so this is Oxford Street here.
If you come along, come along, come along, come along.
The diagonal road, is that Shaftesbury Avenue,
that kind of intersects diagonally?
If you keep coming down, you get to the next,
hang on, there's a roundel here and a roundel here.
What's that one?
I thought that was gonna be,
yeah, that's Oxford Circus,
'cause that's then Hanover Square, right?
Which means Bond Street cross around
must be about here somewhere.
It's a map of the local area.
But what's interesting is that this one is white,
over there it's red.
And then at the Dean street entrance down that way,
it's the same map, but it's coloured black,
but we'll get to the other entrance later.
It feels cold.
It is chilly down here, isn't it?
I think it's because we're so deep.
We're close, we're not close to the Earth's mantle,
so we're not warm, but we're like, you know, high enough.
(Jeff laughs)
I don't think we're anywhere near the Earth's mantle.
Well, we're pretty deep, that was a long escalator shaft.
One of the lifts yesterday was minus nine.
Hey, now you know about the lighting, don't you?
Yeah. You heard about the light,
do you know about the lighting thing?
Well, I don't know how, if I'm,
So in these wide cross passage waves and stuff,
They're much colder, yeah.
It's a colder white lights.
You can see right here really well.
And then on the platforms, it's a warmer,
They've even transitioned it, as it gets closer
to the platform, Yeah.
you can see it getting warmer.
Yeah.
All right. It's so massive.
It's like half a kilometre away, it feels like,
to the other end of the platform,
it's really long, like it's amazing.
We don't have anything like this in Canada, unfortunately.
Okay, we're having our first lift moment.
So we're at the eastern end of the westbound platform,
where there's that sign there saying lift.
Westbound, it's so strange. Westbound.
It's on the wrong side.
Platform B yeah.
(Reese laughs)
And this brings you around to, wow.
I didn't know this was here.
I don't know where we're going, to another long corridor,
which presumably takes you to a lift.
It's quite unique because you usually don't see
that this kind of panelling and stuff from Crossrail,
Elizabeth line purple train, in a rectangular hallway.
Oh no, that's the connection!
Okay, that's the connection out to the Northern line.
Oh, that's where you go down.
Right, okay, that takes you there.
This is the hallway we were in before.
And we were there a second ago,
at the bottom of the escalators.
But there is a connection there through,
I can hear the Northern line trains from here,
and here are the lifts.
So there's a single lift here.
This is lift number,
'cause they would have letters,
G. This is lift G.
And we're going down to the Northern line
which is interesting, 'cause it's actually deeper than this.
Welcome to the Northern line.
Wow, it's hot down here.
(Jeff laughs)
It's much cooler in the Elizabeth Line platform.
(train roars)
Now in a minute we're gonna see a unique feature
of Tottenham Court road, which is:
its one of the few, or maybe the only platform,
that is slightly curved.
And we're by the escalators here, which come down,
which you know and love to take you to the Northern line.
Reese has got the fact on why the platform's curved.
Why is it curved?
So, actually, when they were constructing the tunnels
for the Elizabeth line,
they had to punch under these escalators here,
but above the Northern line platforms and tunnels,
which are beneath us.
And they did it with only like less than a metre
of clearance on both the top and the bottom,
which is really cool and impressive.
(footsteps thudding)
(hands clapping)
Okay, this is a bit weird,
about four years ago in 2018,
I was in this exact spot with my friend,
David. (static crackling)
We're having a heat wave in Britain right now.
I can confirm that the purple line platforms are chilly,
which is nice.
Just come and rest your cheek, David against the,
(Jeff laughs)
What?
Now we both look like idiots.
(static crackling) Who isn't here.
We were on the press preview day.
Oh hey, Reese.
(Jeff laughs) Hey.
And so, can you be David?
Yeah. 'Cause David's not here,
but we commented on how cold the floor was.
And I sort of touched my cheek to the,
it is cold, isn't it? Oh, wow.
Yeah. Amazing.
Is that colder,
is that colder than a Vancouver's winter's day?
Yes. Okay.
(Jeff laughs) Absolutely.
How cold is a Vancouver's winter's day?
Not that cold. Not that cold, okay.
Yeah.
It's kind of like a London winter's day.
Yeah, did you pack warm weather,
warm clothes weather for London this this week or cold?
Yeah, warm.
Yeah. It wasn't.
Okay, yeah, please don't take home that thing that
"It only ever rains in London."
Yeah.
It was sunny yesterday, right?
It was raining as well.
All right, but also cold.
Very cold.
Yeah, welcome to Elizabeth line station,
this is Tottenham Court Road station.
The next service is stopping the train at Paddington,
Paddington station only.
(footsteps thudding)
Bin bag.
Reese, where does this passage go to?
This goes to the other platform,
as well as to the concourse and stuff.
But the place we came through down there,
that was like blocked off, so unlike Liverpool street,
it hasn't got like a central passageway all the way down.
No, but I think that's like the only one that does.
Oh, is it?
I think it may be, yeah.
This is very much that end, middle cross passage,
And then, and then that end only.
Yeah. Yeah, so it's very important
to be at the right end at Tottenham Court,
Absolutely. Tottenham Court Road, okay.
Otherwise you're gonna be in for very long walk.
Very long walk, I think it takes about three minutes
to walk the length of one of these platforms.
And it's very, it's the same.
It's kind of a monotonous walk,
compared to on the surface.
Monotonous. So it feels long.
You'll upset, TFL.
It's beautiful, but a little monotonous,
(Jeff laughs) the art, the art,
TFL, I didn't say that the Canadian did.
(Jeff laughs) Yeah.
They'll never invite you back.
It's beautiful though, it really is beautiful.
(train roars)
(train jingles)
As passengers are getting out,
they're going down to the eastern end,
because the transfer to the tube is
at the Tottenham Court Road end.
So, Central line and Northern line, you want that way.
The Dean Street entrance, we're heading for.
But, Reese seeing as you were so good at being my friend
David a minute ago, Mhm.
Would you like to be a girl called Emily,
Oh I would love to. in this next recreation?
In the 2018 video, she was amazing, she was this engineer,
she took us around, Emily, and we stood about this spot.
and she came up with the greatest phrase,
that I like to describe Crossrail.
She said- (static crackling)
The scale of it is intercity sized trains,
in a Metro environment.
Oh, I like that, say that again.
Intercity sized trains,
In a Metro environment. (static crackling)
Reese, if you could just say that for me,
that would make my day.
It's intercity trains in a Metro environment.
It's a good quote, right?
Yeah, it is.
It is, what it is. It's beautiful,
It's not the tube, right?
No, it is.
Oh, don't even get me started.
[Intercom Speaker] The train approaching
platform B is the service to Paddington,
not stopping at: Bond street.
So we can go down this passage here, that is Dean street.
We'll go there in a second.
Look at that, that is just huge.
But we're gonna go see the curved, the only curved,
Only curved platform. the only curved platform.
All right. On the core.
On the core section, sure.
Look it, it's so curved!
You said it was only a little curved,
but it's really curved.
This is a big curve, a serious curve.
It's nice, it's really nice.
I'm starting to really like Tottenham Court Road
a lot more than I thought I would, yeah.
It's the pièce de résistance of the,
Are you saying that TCI is the pièce de résistance?
Yes. Wow.
Can you speak French?
I'm not that Canadian, Jeff.
(Jeff laughs)
Okay, Reese,
seeing as you did the lift thing earlier,
I think we need to do it again.
So if I get the escalator,
You better run.
Do you wanna, This is a challenge.
you take the lift, we'll see who gets there first.
All right, go for the lift, go.
It's already there, that's unfair!
(footsteps thudding)
Escalator, look at the roof!
(footsteps thudding)
Lift's there.
Oh, I think, no, I think I might have,
I think I might have beaten him.
It's split midway. So when you-
What, what happened?
You could see right down here actually
but there's this split.
You have to walk from one lift to the other lift,
and I wasn't ready to run, I didn't know I had to run, so.
There are two lifts?
Yes, exactly.
There's one way down there, and one here.
You had, to do like a lift transfer?
Yeah, it was a very unusual experience,
that I did not expect.
Okay, I'm, at this point in the video,
I am totally inserting a flashback cutaway
of that transfer happening, is that all right?
Yeah.
So I think we're at street level now,
because I just pressed the street level Dean Street button.
That's the escalators that I think
we're taking up from the platform level.
Hmm?
That is a long escalator shaft.
Wow, this is gigantic.
I guess this is a strange,
okay, we have to get on another lift.
Oh, there you go.
There's a negative one level.
It has no label, but I really want to.
(button clicks)
Okay, that's strange.
(machine beeps)
And that is it, that is your deep dive, look around,
escalators, passageways, and lifts,
where are we again, Reese?
Tottenham Court Road. Tottenham Court Road.
What line are we riding?
The purple line.
Which you are gonna call?
Crossrail.
Will it always be Crossrail for you?
It'll always be Crossrail.
You'll never call it the E-word.
They'll never let you back in the country.
No.
TFL will.
Well, it's a good trip, I've taken a good trip.
I've seen what I need to see, this thing is beautiful.
If I don't get let back in, it's okay.
This is where you totally plug your YouTube channel.
Yes.
For those who don't know about your channel.
Yes, I have a channel where I talk about transit,
transport projects around the world called RM Transit,
you should check it out.
So not just at home in Canada, but other,
Everywhere. Everywhere.
London, Where else?
Tokyo. All right.
China,
Australia.
Okay, if you,
if I say "link the description" and you go "smash the bell."
Yes. That's what we'll do.
Link to Reese in the description.
Also make sure you smash the bell,
both of our bells, smash them.
(Jeff laughs)
You know, (imitates bell ringing)
That just sounds rude, now.
No, you need, you need to.
Bye.