On 3 Jun, 18:27, "Paul Scott" wrote:

Roland Perry wrote:

In message
, at
11:58:08 on Mon, 2 Jun 2008, Mizter T remarked:
Can anyone say exactly how long this station took to be built - i.e.
from the start the proper construction phase? It's certainly been
fairly rapid - well under a year.

It would be interesting to know. East Midlands Parkway, which is
supposed to be open in December, is currently just a load of mud. It
may have some foundations, or it may not, it's difficult to see,
through the mud.

Mr Thant's blog reckons about 5 months for the build phase?

http://londonconnections.blogspot.co...-from-tulse-hi...


OK, let's have a bash at this.

An August '07 press release from LB Merton states that the council's
"Planning Applications Committee [...] agreed the application [for
Eastfields station] on 22 August"
http://tinyurl.com/5fy249

In August Local councillor Martin Whelton said "work has commenced on
the station already" on the comments on this blog entry...
http://whelton.blogspot.com/2007/08/...head-from.html

It would seem that this was preliminary work as on the 5th of October
a uk.railway contributor posts that he noticed "a lot of clearance
work going on" when driving past recently:
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk....ff2c98ee22755/

In November Councillor Whelton passes on information from a Transport
Briefing article on his blog...
http://whelton.blogspot.com/2007/11/...struction.html

....which includes this paragraph:
"Civil engineering firm Dean Dyball is close to completing preliminary
works for the new Eastfields station near Mitcham in the London
borough of Merton. The station kit - which includes platform and
canopy modules - will then be assembled on site to allow the station
to open early in the New Year."

The predicted opening date was obviously a bit out!

Mr Thant picks up the story at the end of December (scroll down to the
bottom for the first post about Eastfields):
http://londonconnections.blogspot.co...bel/Eastfields

An early January press release from LB Merton...
http://tinyurl.com/6zv8bq
....states that "progress continues" on the new station before going on
to say that "The 170m (eight coaches) long platforms were constructed
in the traditional way, but the station building has been constructed
off-site and is being lifted into place in ready-constructed
sections."
Mr Thant's photos from the end of December do show the platforms were
partially in existence by this time, but they weren't yet finished
(they weren't long enough apart from anything else!).

So the 'build phase' would appear to have begun sometime in November
or December and hence took something like 6 or 7 months. Preliminary
works had apparently already started in late August but were
definitely up and running by early October.