Media centre

Thursday 28 Mar 2013

Leicester railway signalling upgrade completed

Region & Route:

Rail passengers in Leicester are travelling on a more efficient and reliable railway after Network Rail completed the second phase of work to replace systems used to control trains on the route.

The project allows 90 miles of railway around Leicester to be controlled from the East Midlands Control Centre at Derby using the most modern systems. The project started in 2010 and has been commissioned in two phases: the first in January 2012 transferred the control of the former Leicester power signal box area to workstations in the East Midlands Control Centre at Derby, after which Croft signal box decommissioned and Leicester PSB was adapted for use as a maintenance depot. The second stage, to commission a new system to control the signalling took place on 23 and 24 March 2013.

Martin Frobisher, route managing director for Network Rail, said: “This is a multi-million pound project which will provide passengers with a more reliable and efficient railway around Leicester. This weekend’s work was completed in freezing conditions but the team successfully completed the work to allow services to run as normal on Monday morning.

“This isn’t the end of the story for Leicester - remodelling of the track layout outside Leicester to allow freight to travel on the route without conflicting with passenger services is also planned.”

Chris Potts, Invensys Rail senior project manager said “This project was completed in an extremely short timescale from start to finish. This was achieved through some excellent teamwork between the Invensys rail team in Birmingham, the Network rail team in Derby, and the signalling design group in York. This achievement was even more remarkable given that it became evident midway through the development of the project that a large design change was necessary due to the complexities of the fringe interlocking arrangements at Syston and Wigston.”