After three years of turmoil the end is almost in sight for the Crossrail project
Having missed its original 2018 opening date, the project now looks set to meet its revised "first half of 2022" opening window.
It has been three years of twists and turns which began in August 2018 - just four months before the line had been scheduled to open - when project bosses announced that Elizabeth line services between Paddington in central London and its Abbey Wood in the south east of the capital would not open until autumn 2019.
Fast forward to January 2019 and newly-installed Crossrail chief executive Mark Wild would detail the full scale of problems with the project.
He told the London Assembly that there remained "thousands of hours” of construction to be done, while announcing that none of the line’s central stations were yet been completed and crucial dynamic testing of trains and signalling systems had yet to begin in earnest.
It was also announced that funding earmarked for Crossrail 2 would be diverted to complete the original project and, after months of investigations, in April 2019 Crossrail bosses announced a revised six month window for the opening date of the Elizabeth line.
In the best case scenario the project would open in October 2020, while in the worst case scenario the project wouldn't open until March 2021. By November 2019 Wild had ruled out the possibility of opening the central section of the Elizabeth line during 2020.
Read more here