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Friday 6 Aug 2010

PLAQUE UNVEILING MARKS LATEST PHASE OF STATION WORK

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A plaque was unveiled on the island platform at Chester railway station today (Friday 6 August 2010) to mark the completion of the latest phase of work to renovate the station.

The £1.1m project was largely paid for by Network Rail, with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Railway Heritage Trust and Cheshire West and Chester Council.

Network Rail route director Jo Kaye said: “The station is an important gateway to the city, used by nearly 3.5m people a year, who rely on rail. Much has been done in recent years to improve the station frontage, with a new road layout, architectural lighting and structural repairs. The main concourse has been transformed with a new ticket office, coffee shop and ticket barriers and the roofing renewed.

“Now we have been concentrating on the island platform, used by Merseyrail passengers on the line to Liverpool.”

Work started in February to refurbish platform 7 and part of the station buildings on the platform known as the West Pavilion. Being a listed building, special permission had to be obtained to carry out the work and any new material used had to replicate the existing fixtures and fittings as closely as possible.

Two unused out buildings that had previously been add but were out of character with the original structure, were demolished.

Platform paving was taken up so that the material it was embedded in could be renewed, any old slabs that were serviceable were reused and new slabs matched to the old.

Uneven coping stones that line the platform edge were levelled.

The stone and brickwork of the West Pavilion was repaired and cleaned, and new cast iron guttering and rainwater pipes were installed.

Six doors and five windows were replaced, all matching the style of the originals, and all the external windows, doors and pipe work was painted.

At roof level, the sheeting that covered the gable ends of the canopies over platforms four and seven was removed so that steelwork could be repaired and painted before new glazing was fixed in place.

Work is continuing on a new waiting room, customer services office and café to serve the island platform, and in a completely separate scheme, negotiations are ongoing to build multi storey car park