Media centre

Wednesday 6 May 2009

NEW CROSSING FOR FRINTON AS PART OF £104M RAIL UPGRADE

Region & Route:

Southern: Wessex

| Southern

Network Rail’s £104m upgrade of the line from Colchester to Clacton and Walton-on-the-Naze moved a step closer to completion over the bank holiday weekend with the installation of new signals, track circuits and upgraded level crossings.

With stage one of the project successfully completed in March, stage two was carried out during a 72-hour closure of the railway this May day bank holiday. This involved the resignalling of the railway from east of Alresford village through to Walton-on Sea and to the outskirts of Clacton-on-Sea, replacing obsolete semaphore signals with 41 new LED signals and upgrading five level crossings, including the crossing at Frinton-on-Sea.

Control of this section of railway has now been transferred from Thorpe-le-Soken signal box to the newly extended and modernised signalling control centre at Colchester, where Network Rail signallers will control the railway using state-of-the-art visual display units.

Garry England, Network Rail senior project manager, said: “The signalling infrastructure on this part of the railway was like a classic car – unique, but becoming unreliable and expensive to maintain. Thanks to our £104m investment, passengers in this part of Essex will be among the first to benefit from Network Rail’s nationwide programme to upgrade signalling equipment and make the railway safer and more reliable.”

The new, modern system will be more reliable for passengers, reducing the likelihood of train delays. Once the project is completed in the summer, control of all signals and level crossings on the line will be transferred to the newly refurbished, state-of-the-art signal box at Colchester.

In addition, new bi-directional signalling is being installed on the main line between Colchester and Marks Tey. This allows trains to travel in either direction on all four tracks, vastly improving flexibility and helping to reduce delays.