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Wednesday 15 Mar 2017

£5m investment for Scotland’s railway this Easter

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Scotland’s Railway: Scotland

Our engineers will be working around-the-clock this Easter weekend to deliver more than £5m of infrastructure enhancements for Scotland’s railway.

1,500 engineers will work nearly 30,000 staff-hours over the four days from Friday, April 14, to Tuesday, April 18, to replace and upgrade signalling systems and tracks on the West Coast main line.

New tracks and points (pieces of track that move to transfer trains from one line to another) will be installed at Carstairs in South Lanarkshire and at Polmadie, in Glasgow,  while at Motherwell new, modern signalling systems will be commissioned.

Engineers will also be working to refurbish and maintain bridges, level crossings and tracks elsewhere across Scotland during the holiday weekend.

All of these works are part of a UK-wide railway upgrade plan to improve reliability and increase capacity across the country’s rail network.

David Dickson, ScotRail Alliance infrastructure director, said: “This is the latest phase of our investment programme for Scotland’s railways and it is vital to maintaining a reliable service on the West Coast main line – one of Europe’s busiest rail routes.

“The work we are undertaking this Easter weekend will help to provide a more modern and more reliable railway for the millions of passengers who use local services in, and cross-border services through, Lanarkshire each year.

“We understand these works may inconvenience some passengers, but such a significant investment cannot be delivered without a little temporary disruption, and every effort has been made to reduce the impact of our activities as much as possible.”

Over the Easter weekend, CrossCountry and Virgin Trains East Coast will not run between Edinburgh and Glasgow Central.  Customers are advised to use alternative lines between Edinburgh and Glasgow and buses will be in place between Motherwell and Glasgow Central.

A bus service will be in place for TransPennine Express and Virgin Trains West Coast passengers between Carlisle and Glasgow Central.

The majority of ScotRail trains will be diverted between Motherwell and Glasgow Central, but buses will be in place on certain routes.

Across Britain, Network Rail will deliver 200 projects and a £70m investment over the holiday period. More than 13,000 workers will be out in force working on some of the country’s largest infrastructure projects.