London Olympic Park and Westfield's Stratford City retail projects together cover a 700-acre development, unprecedented since the railway came to Stratford.

The announcement that London would host the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games created a major regeneration opportunity of an industrial hinterland and semi-derelict railway lands. The Games will focus the world's attention on Stratford, bringing with it significant infrastructure improvements that will transform Stratford into one of the best-connected areas in the UK.
It is expected that the Games will contribute £1.3 to £2.2 billion to London's tourism alone, and leave an "Olympic Legacy" extending into the future.

The scale of the work is imposing:

• Over 3,000 construction workers will be based on the Stadium site;


• 33 buildings on the Olympic Stadium site have been demolished;


• Over 800,000 tonnes (over 1million English tons) of soil has been taken away to help create the construction platform for the Stadium - enough to fill the Royal Albert Hall nine times over;


• The Stadium is highly sustainable, containing around 10,000 tonnes of steel - the lightest Olympic Stadium to date;


• The total Stadium island site covers an area of 40 acres - five times the size of the Houses of Parliament;


• The Stadium is 53m high (over 170 feet) - taller than Nelson's Column at 50m;


• The Stadium roof covers an area of 24,500 sq metres (29,278 sq. yds) - equivalent to three and a half football pitches.


• £17 billion to be invested in public transport.


• Approximately 6,500 cubic metres (8,450 cu. yds) of concrete will be recycled from other parts of the site and crushed to form a solid platform to support construction works.


• The first phase of construction involved reinforcing the ground on which the Stadium sits upon, by inserting up to 4,000 concrete columns into the soil to form the permanent foundations for the Stadium structure.


• The creation of the largest urban park in Europe for over 150 years.

In addition there are significant works being undertaken to improve the surrounding waterways and additional landscaping works will be undertaken:

• The River Lea runs through the centre of the Park and is joined in the northern part of the Park by the Channelsea River, Henniker's Ditch and two main areas of wetlands.


• In the south, the waterways include the Waterworks River, City Mill River, Bow Back River and the Old River Lea. The Park's westernmost boundary is the Lea Navigation - a historically important canal that links East London to West London


• A new lock and water control structure will be built on Prescott Channel. This will improve access to the Olympic Park waterways, making them navigable for freight traffic during construction phase.


• About 3.5km (about 2 miles) of riverbanks will be renewed; some lengths of channels widened by 8metres; over 2,000 trees planted.

WESTFIELD STRATFORD CITY

At 1.9 million sq ft Westfield Stratford City will be the largest urban shopping centre in Europe and the prestigious gateway to London's Olympic Park. The development has attracted some of the biggest "names" in retailing.

The retail quarter will be fully pedestrianised, with the grand 24 hour lifestyle street linking the two main stations and an impressive new link bridge that will stretch over Stratford Regional Station's rail tracks to connect with the existing Stratford town centre.

TUNNELS AND TRAINS

There are several significant engineering projects on the former Stratford Rail Lands that are largely unseen.

Electricity supply

The newest is the boring of two tunnels carrying electric cables that remove unsightly pylons from the Olympic Park site The National Grid tunnel has a 4.5 meter diameter tunnel and EDF has a 2.5 meter bore tunnel. Both are six kilometres long running from Canning Town across the Olympic Park site together they carry over 200kms of cabling. They are reached by a 60 foot deep service shaft.

Stratford International Station

Stratford International is important both to the London 2012 Olympics and Westfield's Stratford City.

This huge station, opened in 2009 is built in a sunken "box" on the ex-railway lands just to the north of the current Stratford station (which will be as Stratford Regional). The station is part of the Channel Tunnel High Speed Rail Link which commenced operation to St Pancras in November, 2007.

An extension to the Docklands Light Railway is being constructed to link this with Stratford Regional stations. Part is being constructed along a length of the former North London Line from North Woolwich to Richmond at Stratford low-level station. These trains now terminate in new platforms built to the north of the existing main line platforms, close to the Westfield development.

Temple Mills Eurostar Depot

Stratford retains its long history with railway maintenance (see below). Eurostar constructed its £400million High Speed 1 maintenance depot on the Temple Mills site for the maintenance of the fleet of 27 class 393 trains, used on the Channel Tunnel route. The shed is 435 metres (469 yards) long by 54 metres (177 feet)) wide, covering eight roads in which all types of planned maintenance are carried out. There are also ancillary workshops and carriage-washing facilities adjacent. The depot is designed to house eight full trains, each of which is 400 metres (1,308 feet) long and weighs 800 tonnes (787 English tons).

Northern Outfall Sewer

A much older piece of engineering is Sir Joseph Bazalgette's Northern Outfall Sewer, built for the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1868 to take sewage from the northern half of London. It is about 4.5 miles (7.2 km) in length from Wick Lane in Bow to the treatment works at Beckton. Its innovative design and robust construction means it is still serving the capital today. It was landscaped in recent years to form a public footpath/cycleway called The Greeway.

STRATFORD RAILWAY WORKS.

The Eastern Counties Railways (ECR) first opened a workshop at Stratford in 1839. A large area of marshland and the abundance of water made the land both cheap and attractive to railway usage. In 1847 the North & Eastern Railway had been taken over by the ECR, who moved its works here from Romford. Stratford became a junction for the lines to Cambridge and later lines to the Docks and north London.  Further developments took place over the ensuing years, eventually making it one of the most comprehensive railway complexes in Britain. It was the hub of the suburban railway system and the principle locomotive running depot of the Great Eastern Railway, the largest in the country. The depot was responsible for the day-to-day running of almost 500 engines - 40 percent of the company's entire locomotive stock. 

Every aspect of railway engineering and maintenance were carried out there - from building and repairing locomotives and rolling stock to upholstery and printing tickets. As one example of its scale, the Carriage Repairing Shop was 500 feet long and 96 feet wide, and this was one of several erecting shops on site.

Over 5,500 passenger vehicles and countless goods wagons were built at Stratford Works in its lifetime, together with hundreds of locomotives of different sorts. Perhaps the most famous of these was Decapod an experimental locomotive built to rival growing electric-powered engines, designed by the celebrated Chief Mechanical Engineer, James Holden. Another record held by the works was that of the fastest construction of a locomotive: 16¼ hours, achieved over 10^th and 11^th December, 1891.

In the early days, most goods were carried in trains of small wagons, so a huge marshalling yard for goods wagons was developed at Temple Mills. In the late 1950s a new type of marshalling yard was developed so as to speed up the process of forming trains of the correct wagon stock. The first bi-directional hump yard was built here in 1960. In the late 70s early 80s containerisation began to be introduced and the Stratford Freight Terminal was developed to handle this growing type of load. Other parts of the Temple Mills site were later sold off for the new Spitalfields Market and for business parks.

Stratford also retains its place as a railway hub, with connections between  main-line services to  Essex and East Anglia, London Underground (the Central and Jubilee Lines), London Overground (the North London Line), the Docklands Light Railway and Stratford International to the continent.

ARCHEOLOGY

During the development of the Olympic Aquatics Centre site, four prehistoric skeletons were found buried in graves around an area of Iron Age settlement. One of the skeletons is thought to be 3000 years old, and there is a mix of male and female burials. Other remains show that these early Londoners lived in thatched circular huts. In the Iron Age this would have been a small area of dry land on the edge of the river valley, surrounded by lakes, rivers and marshes. The first Londoners lived by and fished in what is now the River Lea and parts of their cooking pots have also been discovered.

When Temple Mills Depot was being built between 2007 and 2009 the remains of two French Bishops were exhumed. The Bishops had sought refuge in London during the French revolution.

OLYMPIC PARK TIMELINE:

3000BC: wetlands which the early Londoners navigated by timber walkways to fish and hunt. 

50AD: the Roman road 'Ermine Street' from London to Colchester crossed marshes at Old Ford

Late 9th century - King Alfred reputedly dug Channelsea River to divert invading Vikings from the Thames on their way to London 

1110: The first stone arch 'bow' bridge in Britain, gave the area its name 

1135: Cistercian Abbey exploited Lea water power 

Late 12th century: Knights Templar water mill (Temple Mills) 

17th/18th century: UK's first calico printer and Bow porcelain factory.

1839 The Eastern Counties Railway comes to Stratford

1892: UK's first petrol factory. 

1858: The Northern Outfall Sewer constructed 

1860: Plastic invented in the Lea Valley

1876: Dry cleaning introduced to the UK

1904: William Yardley cosmetics, soap and lavender factory.

1927 In July H M King George & Queen Mary visit Stratford Railway Works

1930s Extensive flood relief and protection works to Bow Back Rivers and cutting Prescott Channel. Also, Stratford High Street widened and new bridges built across the Lea, including Groves Bridge.

1940s The Second World War brings extensive destruction from German air-raids.

1960s Extensive programme of tower-block building: Holden Point and Lund Points built on the fringes of the rail lands.

1970s Stratford Town Centre redeveloped and the Mall shopping centre built.

1980s Docklands Light Railway proposals start to become a reality.

1999 Jubilee Line extended to Stratford

2000 The rebuilding of Stratford Station is completed

2005 London's bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games is successful. Newham is "host" borough and DLR Stratford extension construction commenced.

Sources: Olympic Delivery Authority official website;Westfield's website; London Travelwatch press release & Times article, 12 Sep 06; Eurostar:Introducing Temple Mills Depot; Newham Heritage & Archives.