Media centre

Tuesday 21 Oct 2003

PRECAUTIONARY SPEED RESTRICTIONS - COLWICH TO CHEADLE HUME

Region & Route:

National

Following the closure of the West Coast Main Line from Colwich Junction near Stafford to Cheadle Hulme, engineers carried out an immense amount of work – some 70 miles of new track covering both directions – in a four month period. Despite the closures and the extra week taken to complete the project, additional stressing of some small sections of rail (this is where rail is stretched to ‘weatherproof’ it against very low and very high temperatures) have been required, with work taking place now and scheduled for completion at the end of next week. As the rail has not been properly ‘weatherproofed’, precautionary speed restrictions are imposed in very low temperatures (minus 2 to minus 4 experienced last night) to guard against the possibility of rails’ breaking. Tonight we estimate this will result in just nine speed restrictions being applied at specific locations along this 50 mile stretch, from around 1800hrs until 0700hrs when temperatures are at their lowest.  This is likely to add around 15 minutes to some London to Manchester journey times. As works continue, these figures will reduce.