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Tuesday 5 May 2015

Better journeys for passengers after successful May Day bank holiday rail upgrade work

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National

Hundreds of thousands of passengers and freight users are benefitting today after more than £50m of investment and improvement work was completed successfully across Britain’s railway over the May Day bank holiday weekend.

New track and junctions have been built with bridges lifted into place and thousands of pieces of new, more reliable equipment have been installed and brought into use. More than 14,000 men and women worked round-the-clock across hundreds of locations over the weekend.

Mark Carne, Network Rail chief executive, said: “Our 14,000-strong army were determined to make sure everything went to plan this weekend and I’m proud to say it did. I’d like to thank people for their patience as I know our work caused some planned disruption.

“The improvements made this weekend are a vital part of our £38bn investment programme which will deliver a better railway in the weeks, months and years ahead.

“That job is far from over. Our orange army will be out tonight and every night carrying out work that’s essential to improving our increasingly congested network and providing better journeys for the four and a half million people who rely on our network each day.”

The major investment schemes over the May Day bank holiday included:

• Crossrail:  Some substantial new track and junctions were installed at Slough for future Crossrail services.
• London Liverpool Street: The Great Eastern main line from Liverpool Street to Ingatestone saw some significant investment work as a new bridge was built at Pudding Mill Lane (nr Stratford) for future Crossrail services and new overhead lines and track installed near Chadwell Heath leading to more reliable services.
• London Waterloo: A vital junction outside Waterloo station was replaced that will see improvements to service reliability as a result.
• Thameslink programme:The £6.5bn investment programme to run many more, faster, better services, north-south, through the heart of London continued over the bank holiday weekend. While not on the scale of the Easter work, there was investment in track and signalling over the three days.
• West Coast main line (WCML) to Scotland – work around Wolverhampton, Stafford and Crewe:Investment in Europe’s busiest mixed-use long distance main line continued over the weekend in three main areas. A new, more reliable signalling system was installed between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. As part of the £250m investment programme to remove a major bottleneck on the WCML leading to more reliable potentially faster and more frequent services, new track and overhead lines were installed in and around Stafford. New track was also installed between Crewe and Wigan on the WCML leading to more reliable services.
• Major work around Glasgow: Our investment schemes saw a new footbridge installed near Motherwell and new track and junctions replaced near Carstairs