Media centre

Wednesday 18 May 2016

Investment in bigger, better railway continues over spring bank holiday weekend

Region & Route:

| Southern: Wessex

| Southern

Rail passengers can look forward to better journeys as Network Rail’s work to improve and upgrade the railway continues over the spring bank holiday weekend (28-30 May).

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

In the south, the vast majority of the rail network will remain open over the Spring Bank Holiday, though overnight upgrade works will result in changes to services in the Bournemouth area until around 9:30am on Sunday. However, passengers travelling across the country may be impacted by upgrades in other regions.

John Halsall, Route Managing Director at Network Rail said, “Most of our upgrade work this bank holiday won’t cause any disruption, so the overwhelming majority of passengers will be able to use their trains without interruption. However, there will be major work taking place elsewhere in the country so I’d still urge everyone to check before they travel.”

A total of £30m will be invested over three days to renew track, upgrade signalling systems and help boost the capacity of the network up and down the country so more trains can run in future. The work has been planned to minimise disruption, as passenger numbers are typically fewer than half during a bank holiday.

Around 97% of the national network will be unaffected, meaning the overwhelming majority of journeys will run as normal.

ENDS

Notes to editors:

The Railway Upgrade Plan is Network Rail’s investment programme for Britain’s railways and is part of our £40bn spending programme 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

Although the vast majority of the network will be unaffected by planned improvement work, passengers are advised to check their journeys if travelling over the bank holiday at nationalrail.co.uk.

Twitter #SpringBHWorks

The biggest parts of the spring bank holiday rail investment programme are:

• Continuation of Network Rail’s work to transform the existing tracks, infrastructure and stations in outer London, Berkshire and Essex as part of the Crossrail project.
• Completion of the £250m Stafford area improvement programme, removing one of the last major bottlenecks on the West Coast Main Line.
• New track being laid at London Bridge as part of the Thameslink Programme, ready for the opening of the first half of the station’s huge new concourse in August.
• The penultimate stage of a major signalling upgrade in Bristol, part of a project to re-signal the entire Great Western route to improve reliability for passengers.

Changes to airport services:

• London Heathrow Airport: Crossrail work on the line into London Paddington will mean Heathrow Express and Heathrow Connect will both run half-hourly services on Saturday 28 and Monday 30 May, with hourly services on Sunday 29 May.
• London Luton Airport: Govia Thameslink Railway services from Luton to Sutton will run between Luton and St Pancras International only on Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 May.

All other UK airports are unaffected.