Wednesday 16 Apr 2008
PLANS FOR RAIL CENTRE IN SHEFFIELD WITHDRAWN
- Region & Route:
Network Rail has withdrawn plans to build a £40 million National Fleet Engineering Centre (NFEC) on operational railway land at Woodhouse Junction, near Beighton.
The centre would have brought 160 skilled engineering jobs to the area and included state of the art environmental features. It would have allowed Network Rail to bring the maintenance of its engineering fleet in-house, located on a single site.
Woodhouse Junction was identified for the centre because it is operational railway land, it is close to the skilled workforce in Sheffield, the Railway Engineering degree course at Sheffield Hallam University and it has excellent links to the rest of the rail network.
Peter Henderson, Projects and Engineering Director for Network Rail said: "We have withdrawn our proposal to build the engineering centre and bring high quality jobs to the area because the business case has become uneconomic following further investigation and taking into account changes proposed during planning discussions.
“We would like to thank everyone who has supported our plans for the centre. The site remains operational railway land which may be brought back into active use in the future and we will work closely with everyone in the local community if this happens.”
Notes to editors
In 2007 56% percent of those in the local community who attended Network Rail’s public consultation on the proposals supported the scheme, while only 26% opposed the plans. Network Rail has taken all the concerns expressed with the NFEC proposals seriously and will factor these in to any future proposals on the site.Contact information
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