Media centre

Thursday 26 Jan 2006

RAIL IMPROVEMENT WORK TO START IN ARMITAGE WITH HANDSACRE

Region & Route:

Work to improve the railway in the Armitage with Handsacre area will gather pace this month as Network Rail continues to make progress on the Trent Valley Four Tracking (TV4) project. Work to widen the railway to allow two extra railway tracks to be added will take place between late January 2006 and December 2007. It will include the replacement of a number of bridges and the introduction of traffic management systems to ensure traffic and pedestrians can travel across the railway. Senior Programme Manager for the TV4 project, Keith Riley, said: “This project will deliver a major improvement to the railway through Armitage with Handsacre and will see some intensive work in the community. We are committed to keeping disruption to an absolute minimum and will keep residents informed of work throughout the project.” Excavation work to widen the track cuttings and embankment will start early February 2006. This has to be carried out at the weekend when there are no trains running, and will run from 3 February 2006 until mid June 2006, and will involve overnight work to remove excavated material. Every effort will be made to ensure that excavation work adjacent to residential properties is carried out in daylight hours. To help keep construction traffic on public roads to a minimum, excavated material will be taken from the site area by engineering train. The bridges at New Road and Lichfield Road will need to be demolished and replaced with wider bridges that will span the new four track railway. A temporary road bridge will be installed at Lichfield Road to ensure traffic and pedestrian flow over the railway is maintained through the works. A construction compound for contractor Galliford Try Construction North will be installed at land adjacent to Armitage Shanks factory off Old Road. Temporary site offices will be delivered to site week commencing 30 January 2006. There will be some minor work to prepare the site before this date. Due to the nature of the work, it will be necessary to install traffic management at the following locations: · The rail bridge over the A513 New Road. This will involve temporary traffic lights restricting traffic to single lane flow. These will be installed week commencing 6 February 2006 · The road bridge over the railway on the B5014 Lichfield Road. This will involve a temporary road bridge being installed next to the existing bridge to the east side.. The temporary road bridge will be open to two way traffic in April 2006 · The works to the rail bridge over Old Road will require some short term road closures. Road diversions will be put in place and signposted. Further details will be publicised in due course · There will also be minor localised traffic management in place for Station Drive later in the works. Details are yet to be confirmed and will be publicised in due course