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Monday 5 Jan 2015

Network Rail completes £200m festive upgrade programme

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National

Network Rail completed its huge £200m investment programme this morning as major projects at Reading and London Bridge were completed and services restored for this morning's commuters.

Over the past 12 days over 11,000 railway people have been working tirelessly to deliver some £200m worth of improvements at over 2,000 locations nationwide.

The company's investigation into engineering overruns at King's Cross and Paddington on 27 December continues and its initial findings will be made public within the next week.

Major projects completed during the programme include:

• London Bridge: As part of the £6.5bn Thameslink programme, London Bridge saw two new platforms opened and new track laid as the project moves to the next stage of the biggest station redevelopment that London has ever seen, which will transform the travel experience for the station’s 220,000 daily users. New signalling has successfully been installed on the New Cross Gate to Sydenham corridor and also in South London near Bermondsey allowing resumption of planned Southern and London Overground passenger services. Work to replace tracks at the entrance to the Hornsey Depot in North London has also been completed. This means that GoVia Thameslink can resume operation of their planned service on the Great Northern route

• Reading: One of the last pieces of the jigsaw to unblock the notorious train bottleneck around Reading station has been finished with the completion of a newly-built viaduct to the west of the station, leading to smoother, more reliable services

• West Coast Main Line: The latest phase of upgrade work at Watford, Norton Bridge and Stafford has completed. Work took place at Watford to replace and install new sections of railway and bring into use a new, modern, state-of-the-art signalling system meaning passengers will enjoy a more reliable and resilient service. A major bottleneck at Stafford and Norton Bridge has been unblocked, enabling faster, more frequent and reliable services for passengers; engineers carried out essential bridge and track work at Norton Bridge, and renewed the signals and overhead lines at Stafford, forming a key part of the overall £250m project

• East Coast Main Line: Between London King’s Cross and Peterborough more than 1000 people worked to complete 13 different projects to deliver significant improvements to the rail network at key points; Peterborough, Holloway, Harringay and Canal Tunnels just outside King’s Cross. Further north, projects included bridge improvements in Dewsbury and Newcastle and track improvements near York and on the Doncaster to Leeds line

• Midland Main Line: On the route serving St Pancras hundreds of people completed projects including signalling alterations for the Thameslink project; the demolition and partial reconstruction of two bridges for the Midland Main Line electrification project and track improvements between Kettering and Corby and at Toton

• Scotland: The Edinburgh to Glasgow Improvement Project team demolished the roof of CarmuirsTunnel, near Falkirk, and installed a new tunnel over the New Year break. Signalling was renewed between Haymarket and Inverkeithing and track work was undertaken in Queen Street Tunnel, Glasgow

• Anglia: Track renewals have been carried out between Stratford and Shenfield and upgrades to the overhead line equipment on the Great Eastern Main Line has been completed. Two bridges on the Gospel Oak to Barking line have been replaced. At Chadwell Heath work is underway on the eastern section of Crossrail

• Wales: A bridge was replaced over the River Teme on the line between Hereford and Shrewsbury. Bridge demolition work was also successfully completed on the South Wales Main Line between Newport and Cardiff as part of electrification works