Network Rail completes revitalisation of historic bridges in Wandsworth

Wednesday 17 Oct 2018

Network Rail completes revitalisation of historic bridges in Wandsworth

Region & Route:: Southern: Wessex; | Southern

The Victorian railway bridges at Earlsfield station in Wandsworth have been given major facelifts to restore them to their former glory.

Network Rail’s ‘team orange’ engineers worked for 36 nights on the bridge upgrades, removing rust, defective paintwork and accumulated pigeon waste.

The steel bridges were then adorned with a ‘railway green’ colour with the station name written across them, in a nod to the Victorian heritage of the structures.

Network Rail worked with Wandsworth Council, who contributed £100,000 towards the overall cost of the scheme, to complete the work.

Simon Hubbard, project manager for Network Rail, said:

“The new-look bridges have done a lot to improve the overall appearance of the local area and I’m delighted we’ve been able to give the structures a new lease of life.

“The local community have been passionately behind the revival of these bridges, so I’m delighted we’ve been able to deliver this upgrade for them.”

New pigeon-proofing measures will now be added to the bridges in the form mesh and spikes, helping to protect cyclists and pedestrians from fouling birds.

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.

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.