Help with London Heathrow Airport

[projectadam]

Greetings to my across the pond neighbors. I had a couple of questions about the Heathrow Airport and since I have never been there, I was hoping that you would be able to help me clarify a few things from the picture below.

1. I know that the three circles in read are terminals 1 - 5 (1-3 being in the middle red circle, 4 being the bottom red circle and 5 being the left red circle) but what I have not been able to figure out with my research are the two blue circles. I know that one of them has to be a cargo/shipping area and I did not know if both of the blue circles are and if not, what is the other blue circle?
2. Does Heathrow also serve partially as a military base?
3. I believe that the major passenger rail service is underground and the station is located near terminals 1-3 but I also know that Heathrow ships a lot of cargo and was assuming it had to be connected to some major freight rail line but I was unable to find any freight rail from looking around on Google Earth.

If you can answer any of these questions I would appreciate it, I want to create an airport in SC4 modeled after Heathrow. I am for sure I am forgetting some questions but I will update as I think of them.

[beutelschlurf]

moin projectadam,

... allright here you go: in the upper corner is the airplane maintenance and in the lower circle is the center for airfreight/aircargo ... 

b_schlurf

[projectadam]

moin projectadam,

... allright here you go: in the upper corner is the airplane maintenance and in the lower circle is the center for airfreight/aircargo ... 

b_schlurf

b_schlurf,

Thanks for the speedy reply, much appreciated. I checked out the freight/cargo circle on Google Earth and did not see any rail spur. Is all the freight handled by truck?

[TheTeaCat]

Yes. All freight into and out of LHR is by truck.
the only rail line that goes to the airport is is the London underground tube/public subway.

Its difficult to get pics inside the airport now because of "security stuff" but I hope to be traveling through it next month so may try and grab some pics then if that's any help


TTC

[projectadam]

Yes. All freight into and out of LHR is by truck.
the only rail line that goes to the airport is is the London underground tube/public subway.

Its difficult to get pics inside the airport now because of "security stuff" but I hope to be traveling through it next month so may try and grab some pics then if that's any help


TTC

TTC,

Thanks for the answer on the freight. It must be an amazing system to handle all that cargo by truck (statistics I looked up had Heathrow ranked 16 in terms of cargo). I do not think I will go into enough detail that I would need pictures from inside and would hate for you to have to make any unnecessary stops due to a visit from security but think that any pictures you would take would be interesting.

Thanks again for the quick replies.

[woodb3kmaster]

If I may add something of my own, I may not be a Londoner, but I've been through LHR a couple times, and I can say that there's another rail link to the Terminals 1-3 area besides the Tube. On my last visit to London, in 2006, I took the Heathrow Express, a service that runs nonstop from LHR to Paddington Station via a second tunnel and the Network Rail mainlines. As I recall, another commuter rail service uses the same tunnel and route, but makes stops along the way. I just don't remember its name, but I'm sure that's irrelevant for your purposes.

[projectadam]

woodb3kmaster,

I do not think I will be doing the transportation system. I might try to connect it into the city I am designing but currently I am not making a subway system but who knows. Sounds like what you were describing was the Heathrow Connect from the picture below.


Thanks for joining into the conversation. As I stated, I have never visited London but am quite fascinated with it from a design and cultural aspect. I know that London usually ranks in the top ten on multiple best cities in the world lists. Therefore, any first hand experience in the city, I am very interested in hearing.

I have started designing the airport and just wanted to know what packs people use to make their airports. I believe that many designers use the RMIP packs but they are created to make 32M runways and I noticed that Heathrow's runways were about 48M or 3 tiles wide. Unless there are some packs I do not know about, I think I will shrink them to 2 tiles just because the other pieces in the pack are too crucial not to use. I look forward to any suggestions or more information on the airport or London

[woodb3kmaster]

Yes, I was definitely thinking about Heathrow Connect. The name just escaped my memory.

One thing I remember reading about Heathrow (probably on Wikipedia) is that several of the longer diagonal taxiways are decommissioned runways, dating from the airport's earlier days before intersecting runways became a no-no for major commercial airports. It's something to consider if you want to give your airport a similar history.

Re: runways, I know there's an RMIP-3 in the works which will be entirely devoted to 48m runways, but its developers, the AC Team, have given no indication as to when it will be released. If you want to, you can make do with the old RMIP-1 wide runways, which aren't as polished as the new ones, but at least they're the right width.

Looking forward to seeing your airport!
Zack

[projectadam]

Zack,

You are calling my hand before I was ready to show all of my cards. I think that the diagonal taxiways used to look something like this as runways.



I hope that as the project develops, I will not disappoint

[TheTeaCat]

Yes, I was definitely thinking about Heathrow Connect. The name just escaped my memory.

One thing I remember reading about Heathrow (probably on Wikipedia) is that several of the longer diagonal taxiways are decommissioned runways, dating from the airport's earlier days before intersecting runways became a no-no for major commercial airports. It's something to consider if you want to give your airport a similar history.

Forgot about the Heathrow connect. Pretty quick too to get into central London (only 15 mins)

Those diagonal runways have been used on occasion.

I used to live in Cranford almost where the red dot is


and when the wind was in the wrong direction or there was an emergency these diagonal runways would be used.
The planes flew right over my house probably only 200 feet up, not a nice experience 

The worst was the 747-800 coming in, with the wind gusting so strong that time, you didn't hear the plane 'till it was almost overhead. I looked out the window to see what was happening and saw the 747 "crabbing" very hard indeed. It almost looked as though the plane was going sideways. Very very disconcerting it was.  I moved not long after that , a lot further from the flight paths

Now if it looks like the plane has to crash land these days and cant use the runways for some reason they will if necessary use the reservoirs located to the south west of the airport.

Answering one of your other questions, you asked if it has a military operation attached. No.
They use a smaller airport called RAF Northolt located about 3 miles located to the north. There are two military bases within easy reach of LHR if required but all military operation are usually outside the capitol.

Got any more questions? I'll try to help if I can


By the way you can even see my current workplace in the pic
So I can get pics of the outside if you need

regards
Derry

[Diggis]

Now now, TTC, I always assumed you live in Ireland.... you mean to tell me you have lived in London all this time?

[cameron1991]

Umm TTC, the 747-8 hasn't entered service yet! 

Also as far as I know the crosswind runway has been closed for quite sometime as its use would severely disrupt the operations at LHR. The two parallel runways are barely enough to handle all the current traffic, imagine using only one? LHR would be an ever bigger hell-hole than it is now!
The old crosswind runway is now only in use as a taxiway and as a place to store the Concorde (which I think has been moved now)


I think the taxiways there will be demolished there soon to make way for the new Heathrow East terminal redevelopment which will start construction within the next year or so.
An image of the final airport layout after the redevelopment can be found here (The image is too large to display here)

I hope all of this information is helpful! 

[TheTeaCat]

Now now, TTC, I always assumed you live in Ireland.... you mean to tell me you have lived in London all this time?

I was born in Ireland but have lived here in London for the last 24 years. Currently I live 3 miles north of LHR:)

I use the Irish Flag as I am Irish  a bit like what you do with the kiwi one 
but it has always said living in London in my profile

Umm TTC, the 747-8 hasn't entered service yet! 

Must have been a 747-4 then 
All i know is it looked massive when it was 200 feet above me . sacred the bejeebers outta me and the GF at the time.

Also as far as I know the crosswind runway has been closed for quite sometime as its use would severely disrupt the operations at LHR.

As i said only in extreme circumstances did this happen. I can recall it happening only twice in the 15 years I've lived in this area.

But thanks for the links you posted - had not seen them before


TTC