Wednesday 26 Oct 2005
RAIL EMBANKMENT WORK HERALDS FASTER TRAINS
- Region & Route:
A £1 million project to strengthen part of the main west coast railway embankment in Cumbria ahead of an upgrade to the track is expected to be completed by the end of November.
The embankment work is needed because Network Rail is going to install a new crossover into Harrisons Sidings, just north of Shap village, which will give freight trains faster access to the sidings and so get them clear of the main line more quickly when high speed passenger trains approach.
Territory civil engineer for Network Rail Tony Wilcock said: “This has proved to be a difficult project because of the unusual ground conditions. However, close co-operation between the contractor, the project team in Manchester and the track maintenance teams in Preston and Carlisle has meant a solution has been found that causes minimum disruption to train services while the work goes on and will ultimately lead to fewer delays once the track renewals are completed.”
The six metre high embankment sits on extremely wet ground which contains a layer of peat up to a metre thick, and during heavy rainfall the area becomes saturated. This had to be taken into consideration when designing the stabilisation project and contractors Birse Rail undertook a period of ground investigation consisting of trial pits and bore holes.
As a result, Network Rail’s territory earthwork and drainage engineer decided the best solution would be to dig a trench at the toe of the embankment and fill it with large stone to provide a sound base. Network Rail also had to purchase an additional strip of land approximately 100 metres long by six metres wide to allow the steepness of the embankment slope to be reduced.
The current line speed has been reduced to 60 mph while the work is going on and there is a track gang on 24 hr standby to deal with any track issues that may arise during the work. This is to ensure that the project has minimal impact on both passenger and freight trains on the busy west coast route.
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We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.
Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.
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