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Monday 30 Dec 2024

Network Rail completes festive engineering work in the Thames Valley

Region & Route:

Wales & Western

| Wales & Western: Western

Network Rail is thanking passengers for their patience and understanding over the Christmas period as train services resumed this morning after engineering work was completed between Reading and London Paddington.

No services called at London Paddington between Tuesday 24 and Sunday 29 December while Network Rail carried out a vast range of improvement and enhancement works, including new signalling, drainage, and track equipment; upgraded track and overhead power cables; as well as other maintenance activities and preparatory work that will improve the reliability of all train services that use London Paddington station.

Much of this programme of work is needed to bring trains in the future to HS2’s Old Oak Common station in west London, which will be the UK’s largest new station built in the past 100 years and will provide unrivalled connectivity for passengers, forming an interchange between GWR, the Elizabeth line, Heathrow Express and high-speed services to the West Midlands and beyond.

Elsewhere, engineers are still working on the railway through Westbury in Wiltshire, which remains closed. The team has been working 24/7 since Christmas Eve and will remain on site until the early hours of Friday 24 January, when train services are due to resume. The work involves fully replacing the track and ballast stone to update worn components. The team is also fine-tuning signalling in the area and making adjustments to the platform edge stones at the station. Trains are being diverted while some are replaced by buses.

Marcus Jones, route director for Network Rail’s Western region, said: “The essential work our engineers completed over the festive period will help us to continue to run a safe and more reliable railway for years to come and will eventually enable trains to serve Old Oak Common, connecting Britain’s busiest cities via high-speed rail.

“Undertaking this work when there are fewer people travelling helps to keep disruption for passengers to a minimum. However, we are grateful to passengers and local residents living near to our worksites for their patience and understanding as we worked around the clock while trains were not running.

“The festive period is a really critical time for us to make vital upgrades to the railway and completing this volume of engineering work is no mean feat, so I’d also like to thank the many colleagues from Network Rail who gave up Christmas with their friends and families so we could complete these upgrades for the benefit of our passengers.”