Friday 30 Dec 2016
Hampshire passengers to benefit from Christmas railway upgrade
- Region & Route:
- | Southern: Wessex
- | Southern
While most people were tucking into their turkey Christmas dinner, Network Rail’s orange army spent this Christmas renewing a railway bridge in Bramley, Hampshire, as part of its multimillion pound Christmas upgrade programme.
The old bridge, which sat in 900 acres of Ministry of Defence (MoD) land, was around 150 years old and had reached the end of its serviceable life. The new £1.9 millon bridge, supporting the lines between Basingstoke and Reading, will improve the reliability for passengers and will reduce the amount of disruption caused by maintenance of the structure.
Becky Lumlock, route managing director for Network Rail, said: “Christmas provides us with a great chance to deliver vital aspects of our Railway Upgrade Plan while causing the least amount of disruption to passengers. Starting late on Christmas Eve, and working around the clock through Christmas Day and Boxing Day, our orange army have done a fantastic job of providing a better railway for our growing number of passengers.
“They can now look forward to a more reliable railway through Bramley, and I’d like to thank all those who gave up their Christmases in order to deliver these upgrades.”
Across the country, Network Rail is continuing its Christmas and New Year upgrades, investing £103 million on nearly 200 projects as part of its Railway Upgrade Plan. As a result, Great Western Railway passengers will have a reduced service into Paddington until 3 January.
ENDS
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We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.
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