Spring bank holiday signals finishing touches for £250m railway upgrade between Stafford and Crewe: Opened: £250m Norton Bridge flyover – March 2016

Tuesday 24 May 2016

Spring bank holiday signals finishing touches for £250m railway upgrade between Stafford and Crewe

Region & Route:
| North West & Central

Passengers heading through the Stafford area over the spring bank holiday are being urged to check before they travel as work takes place to complete the £250m railway upgrade between Stafford and Crewe.

Network Rail, as part of its Railway Upgrade Plan, will be working to remove one of the last major bottlenecks on the West Coast main line which will help create capacity for additional passenger and freight services in future between Birmingham and Manchester, London and the north west. It will also improve reliability and journey times.

The railway between Stafford and Crewe will be affected from start of service on Saturday 28 May until the start of service on Tuesday 31 May.

CrossCountry and Virgin Trains long-distance services are being diverted, adding up to 25 minutes to journey times, and some London Midland services are being replaced with buses during the work.

Martin Frobisher, route managing director at Network Rail, said: “We’d like to thank passengers for their patience as we put the finishing touches to a scheme which will remove one of the last major bottlenecks on the route and improve the reliability of the railway and speed of trains though the area.

“Building this new railway to improve services for passengers is part of our wider Railway Upgrade Plan which will help meet the demands of an increasing number of passengers for many years to come. Our investment also helps the railway support economic growth, job creation and house building around Britain.”

Andy Cooper, managing director of CrossCountry, said: “Completion of these works over the bank holiday will ensure we will be able to take full advantage of the extra capacity the new flyover provides, delivering faster journeys and more reliable services.

“Regrettably these works require our trains to be diverted and we are asking anyone travelling over the bank holiday to check their journey details carefully, as some customers journeys may take slightly longer.”

Phil Bearpark, executive director of operations and projects at Virgin Trains, said: “We have worked closely with Network Rail to keep disruption to a minimum, whilst this important work is carried out. We advise customers to check before they travel and thank them once again for their patience and understanding. The final touches to the work at Stafford will improve the rail network and offer increased reliability in the future.”

Steve Fisher, head of regional services at London Midland, said: “The new track layout at Norton Bridge is all about making passenger journeys easier and simpler through Staffordshire. It will allow local and long distance services to pass through the county more easily, making better journeys for everyone.”

Andy Cooper, managing director of CrossCountry, said: “Completion of these works will ensure we will be able to take full advantage of the extra capacity the new flyover provides, delivering faster journeys and more reliable services.

“Regrettably these works require our trains to be diverted and we are asking anyone travelling over the bank holiday to check their journey details carefully, as some customers journeys may take slightly longer.”

The new section of track and a key flyover opened to trains at Norton Bridge following the Easter bank holiday, allowing trains travelling to Manchester from the south and West Midlands to travel over, rather than across, the existing tracks.

As well as paving the way for more services in future, the Stafford scheme has involved installing more reliable signalling and improvements between Stafford and Crewe to allow trains to travel at faster speeds.

This project has taken four years to complete and has been delivered on budget and 18 months early.

Nationally over 9,000 members of Network Rail’s orange army will be working round-the-clock over the bank holiday weekend to deliver vital elements of the company’s Railway Upgrade Plan. The investment will provide a bigger, better, more reliable railway for passengers and businesses across Britain.

A total of £30m will be invested over three days to renew track, upgrade signalling systems and help boost the capacity of the network so more trains can run in future. The work has been planned to minimise disruption, as passenger numbers typically drop by more than half during a bank holiday. The overwhelming majority of journeys will run as normal
Passengers are being advised to check before they travel at www.nationalrail.co.uk

ENDS

Notes to editors:

The Railway Upgrade Plan is Network Rail’s £40bn spending plan for Britain’s railways for the five year period up to 31 March 2019. The plan is designed to provide more capacity, relieve crowding and respond to tremendous growth the railways have seen – a doubling of passengers in the past twenty years. The plan will deliver a bigger, better railway with more trains, longer trains, faster trains with more infrastructure, more reliable infrastructure and better facilities for passengers, especially at stations.

Stafford Area Improvements Programme:

With unprecedented levels of passenger and freight growth on the rail network and the West Coast main line full to capacity within the next five years, the Staffordshire Area Improvements Programme seeks to remove a major bottleneck through the Stafford area.

The £250m programme will facilitate the introduction of new timetables between 2015 and 2017 and create the capability to deliver:
Two extra trains per hour (off peak, each direction) between London and the north west of England
One extra train per hour (each direction) between Manchester and Birmingham
One extra freight train per hour (each direction) through Stafford
The programme was delivered through the following three key projects:

Phase 1 – Linespeed improvements between Crewe and Norton Bridge, increasing the line speed on the ‘slow’ lines from 75mph to 100mph. Completed in March 2014, these works included modifications to the overhead line equipment and installation of four new signals.

Phase 2 – Stafford resignalling. The installation of a new freight loop and the replacement of life expired signalling, telecoms and power supplies, with the signalling control transferred from the existing Stafford No4 and No5 signal boxes to Rugby, plus the installation of bi-directional signalling for all platforms and an increase in the ‘slow’ line speeds (predominantly used by local passenger/freight services) from 75mph to 100mph between Great Bridgeford (near Norton Bridge) and Stafford. Running from spring 2014 to late 2015 (with an August 2015 commissioning), the majority of these works were delivered during weekends and midweek nights.

Phase 3 – Norton Bridge remodelling. The construction of a grade-separated junction (flyover) at Norton Bridge, including six miles of new 100mph railway, 11 new structures, four river diversions, major environmental mitigation works, pipeline, road and footpath diversions and the construction of temporary haul roads. The key commissioning of the flyover happened in March 2016 with the project being completed – including track upgrades on the main West Coast main line – later this year. As a project of national significance, the Norton Bridge project has been the subject of a Development Consent Order application which was approved by the Secretary of State for Transport following a consultation process dating back to 2010.

Project in numbers:
Six miles of new railway
Four rivers diverted
11 new structures
1,000 000 tonnes of earth moved on site
200 engineering trains involved on the project – delivering aggregate and installing the new infrastructure
5,200 truck journeys removed around from the local road network by using trains
210 new overhead line structures
7.5 miles of new overhead line
3.5 miles of renewed track on the existing railway
More than 4,000 men and women involved in the project
Installed 16 new switches and crossings (which allows trains to change tracks)
Two of switches and crossings are the joint biggest on the rail network
70 new signal posts and gantries installed
250,000m of signal cable used

Staffordshire Alliance - The Stafford Area Improvements Programme is being delivered by the Staffordshire Alliance – a partnership of Atkins, Laing O’Rourke, Network Rail and VolkerRail, working as part of a new collaborative contract that will help to transform the delivery of rail infrastructure projects in the UK.

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About Network Rail

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.

Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.

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