The station is located beneath and within the West India North Dock on an artificial island. The station will extend from east of the Docklands Light Railway bridge to the east end of the dock. It stands within a long concrete box with a long island platform. It is fitted out to with the potential for extension should the need to operate longer trains arise. A long scissor crossover at the western end of the station will enable trains to either terminate at Canary Wharf and turn back towards central London, or to continue to the terminus at.
Original design
The main access point for the Crossrail station was to be the rebuilt Great Wharf Bridge. From this entrance there would have been a set of escalators to the concourse level, which will be located underwater. Another bank of escalators would take passengers to the platforms. Construction of the station was to predominantly take place on Hertsmere Road, which runs parallel to the West India North Dock. This would have involved digging a wide shaft to the station depth of below the dock water-level to enable crew and equipment to begin boring the box that would form the station. The construction including fit-out and commissioning of the Hertsmere Road shaft was expected to take approximately four years whilst the same would take five years for the station.
Redesign and construction
In December 2008 an extra £150 million of funding from the Canary Wharf Group was announced for the station. Work was due to commence in January 2009. As part of the deal Canary Wharf Group substantially redesigned the station, incorporating a large shopping centre and a park above the platforms situated in the middle of the dock. A groundbreaking ceremony for the station was held on 15 May 2009. Throughout 2009 the main focus was on installing 293 interlocking steel piles high and wide into the dock floor using ten-storey high piling cranes and Giken piling machines to form a cofferdam. As part of this, deep reinforced concrete piles were placed through each of the 293 tubes. On 11 February 2010 Sadiq Khan, then Transport Minister, activated pumps designed to drain nearly 100 million litres from the work site over the following six weeks. The pumps transferred water from inside the site's specially constructed cofferdam to the North Dock at a maximum rate of per minute. A station 'box' was constructed in a dry environment in a similar technique to that used in the construction of the nearby Canary Wharf Underground station. Crossrail Place is the structure above the platforms and was partly opened on 1 May 2015. In September 2015, the station construction was completed and the focus has shifted to fitting the station screen doors, ticket machines and other things before the station is scheduled for opening.
