Crossrail is running late. The opening of London’s £15bn new railway, also known, horribly, as the Elizabeth line, has been delayed by the better part of a year, to autumn 2019.

This came as a bit of a surprise – but, given the horrible tendency of mega-projects like this to run both overtime and over-budget, should it have done?

To find out, I decided to walk the length of the new section of track, from Woolwich in the east to Paddington in the west, to see, basically, whether or not the new line looked ready. To keep me company, and give me someone to talk at, I took the Guardian’s Jim Waterson along for the ride.

Along the way, we recorded this podcast, describing the state of the infrastructure we say, chatting about the Woolwich tunnel, arguing about the appropriate names for stations, and generally nerding out. It was quite fun using a podcast as an excuse for a day out - so if you enjoy this one, please do let me know to give me an excuse to do it again.

Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge.

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