Major railway upgrade work completed in Kent, Sussex and Wessex over the Late May Bank Holiday

Tuesday 26 May 2020

Major railway upgrade work completed in Kent, Sussex and Wessex over the Late May Bank Holiday

Region & Route:: Southern; | Southern: Wessex; | Southern: Kent; | Southern: Sussex

Network Rail engineers worked around the clock over the Late May Bank Holiday to deliver vital rail upgrades across Kent, Sussex and Wessex.

Supported by a large fleet of engineering trains, road-rail vehicles and specialist machinery, teams completed essential upgrades to track and improvements to stations.

This programme of work across the Network Rail Southern Region will deliver a more reliable and safer railway with improved facilities for people who have to travel by rail and for freight services.

John Halsall, managing director for Network Rail Southern region, said:

“I would like to thank all of our staff who worked tirelessly over the late bank holiday. I’m also delighted that there has been no overrunning engineering works, meaning lines were ready for passengers who needed to travel this morning.

“We need to continue with these upgrades as they are critical to keeping people and freight supplies moving and once again ask passengers to only travel if absolutely necessary.”

The work carried out between Saturday 23 May and Monday 25 May included:

Sussex route:

Tunnel maintenance at Oxted, Edenbridge and Riddlesdown
Switches and crossings upgraded at Lingfield and Woldingham along with track renewal at Oxted

Kent route:

Maintenance and renewals work between Ashford to Rye and Hastings with more work also taking place between Dartford and Maidstone, and Bromley North branch
At Brixton Junction where trains switch track on the approaches to London Victoria, we replaced old and worn switches, crossings, points, track, sleepers and ballast with new kit, helping to reduce faults and make the railway more reliable for passengers

Wessex route:

Track renewal between Eastleigh and Fareham with nearly a mile of track replaced. As planned, work on this part of the railway completes on Friday 29 May

In line with Government advice, Network Rail will continue with engineering work that is required to maintain a safe and operational railway. These upgrades and repairs will help keep passengers who must travel, moving on a safe and reliable railway.

Notes to Editors

Safety is our priority so at a local level, we are prioritising inspections and patrols, and the work that comes up as a result of those patrols. Where we have to renew track because it is life-expired (too old to continue), we are doing that too. As kit gets older, it needs more work to keep it going, which will be harder to achieve with COVID-19.

The Government has classed Network Rail as a critical service so our engineers and suppliers will still be working and travelling to work. However, we are looking after our people - we’ve hired extra vans so people can be socially distant, and we’re asking teams on site to keep their distance too. We’re also following rules on social isolation and home working where possible.

There are jobs where it is not possible to keep two metres distance and we are working with our teams to see if we can either stop those jobs or come up with ways to do those jobs safely (including minimising time and proximity).

The most important thing is that we keep the railway running for critical workers and that when this crisis is over, it’s in good shape to play a massive role in rebuilding our economy.

Contact information

Passengers / community members
Network Rail national helpline
03457 11 41 41

Latest travel advice
Please visit National Rail Enquiries

Journalists
Leonard Bennett
Leonard.Bennett@networkrail.co.uk

About Network Rail

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.

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