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Wednesday 10 Dec 2014

Army of 11,000 railway engineers to work on record-breaking Christmas investment programme to deliver a bigger, better railway

Region & Route:

Millions of passengers and freight users are set to benefit from the biggest Christmas and New Year investment programme ever carried out on Britain’s rail network.

New station facilities, new platforms, new flyovers, new junctions and thousands of pieces of new, more reliable equipment will be installed and delivered in a £200m national investment programme that will begin late on Christmas Eve once the last trains have run.

An army of over 11,000 engineers will be spending their Christmas Day, and the days that follow, working on the railway across Britain to deliver improvements for passengers, with new facilities and new equipment designed to reduce delays, improve train performance and build a bigger, better railway for the 4.5m people who travel on the network every day.

The work is timed to take advantage of a relatively quieter time of the year when, on average, less than half the number of people are using the railway each day (2m compared to 4.5m).

Two of the biggest pieces of work are taking on the West Coast main line which runs from London Euston to Scotland via the West Midlands and north west of England.

In the Watford area a new state-of-the-art signalling system will be brought into use which will help to provide a more reliable and resilient service. Work will begin after the last trains on Christmas Eve until Monday 29 December.

In the Stafford area the last remaining bottleneck on the West Coast main line is being unblocked, enabling faster, more frequent and reliable services for passengers.

From the last trains on Christmas Eve to Sunday 28 December, engineers will be carrying out essential bridge and track work at Norton Bridge while signalling and overhead lines will be renewed at Stafford. The £250m project has already delivered line speed improvements between Stafford and Crewe which will help to reduce journey times.

Work will also take place at Bromsgrove station from late Christmas Eve until the start of normal service on 27 December as Network Rail makes use of the railway being closed to carry out track work and make excavations ahead of further work taking place through 2015.

Jim Syddall, route managing director for Network Rail, said: “Making the railway better is what we aim to do everyday and our investment programme this Christmas, the biggest yet, is fully focussed on delivering a better service for passengers.

“Passenger numbers have doubled since 1997 and this Christmas investment programme forms a key part of the record £25bn being invested in our railway over the next five years to meet growing demand and improve and expand our congested railway network.

“With an 11,000-strong army we will deliver a huge amount of work during a quieter time for train travel. New technology and working practices mean we can keep lines open while our people work safely alongside, causing much less disruption than would otherwise be the case.”

Other major investment schemes taking place around the network this Christmas include:

London Bridge:
As part of the £6.5bn Thameslink programme, London Bridge will see two new platforms opened and new track laid as the project moves to the next stage of the biggest station redevelopment the capital has ever seen, which will transform the travel experience for the station’s 220,000 daily users.

Reading:
One of the last pieces of the jigsaw to unblock the notorious train bottleneck around Reading station will be completed with the completion of a newly-built viaduct to the west of the station, leading to smoother, more reliable services.

East Coast main line:
The line into London King's Cross will see a number of engineering projects delivering significant improvements to the rail network at key points – Peterborough, Holloway, Harringay and Canal Tunnels just outside King’s Cross.

While these are the biggest schemes being carried out over this very busy period, there are a further 300 projects being undertaken across 2,000 worksites across the country by Network Rail and its contractors between Christmas and New Year.

The majority will have little or no planned impact on passengers, with a significant portion of this work to be completed before services resume on Saturday 27 December (no services run on Christmas Day with very limited services running on Boxing Day). Passengers travelling on the West Coast main line (Watford, Stafford, Norton Bridge) should check before they travel with National Rail Enquiries as the work is disruptive and will affect services until 29 December.

Mr Syddall concluded: "We are acutely conscious that many people want to use the railway during the festive season to reunite with their friends and families. The vast majority of the network will be running normally over the holiday period with only small sections impacted by our work. I recognise and apologise for the fact that some of our essential improvement work will disrupt people’s travel plans. I know that passengers can be frustrated by disruption to their travel plans but people appreciate that carrying out this work at a time when the railway is less busy reduces overall disruption.”

The army of engineers will use materials delivered by over 200 engineering trains hauling over 750 wagons. Joined end-to-end the engineering trains in use over the Christmas investment programme would be 15 miles long.

Around the network the investment programme will see some 55 kilometres of rail installed, 120,000 tonnes of ballast used and 28,000 railway sleepers replaced.