READING RAIL BRIDGE REMOVAL PREPARES GROUND FOR CHRISTMAS WORKS

Monday 20 Sep 2010

READING RAIL BRIDGE REMOVAL PREPARES GROUND FOR CHRISTMAS WORKS

Region & Route:: Wales & Western: Western; | Wales & Western

Work to improve Reading’s railway took another step forward this weekend as Network Rail engineers completed work to remove two spans of the rail bridge over Caversham Road.

Work on Caversham Road bridge will be finished this Christmas when a new, wider span will be installed to make space for new platforms to the north of Reading station. Engineers worked overnight to minimise disruption to local residents and businesses.

The work is part of Network Rail’s improvement programme for Reading station and the surrounding railway which will provide new platforms and entrances for the station, as well as an improved track layout to cut delays.

Network Rail project director Bill Henry said: “Our work has gone really well, over the past two weekends we’ve successfully removed two bridge decks over Caversham Road. Getting this work done now gives us a good head start as we prepare to complete the job over Christmas and New Year.”

The rail bridge over Caversham Road needs to be widened to make space for extra track to serve the new platforms at the station. One further closure of Caversham Road will be required over the New Year 2010-11 period while a new bridge deck is lifted into place.

For more information on improvements to Reading’s railway, visit networkrail.co.uk/reading.

Notes to editors

Network Rail is building a bigger, more modern station for Reading with two new entrances, new platforms and a new passenger footbridge.

This investment will also unblock the rail bottleneck at Reading, with a viaduct to the west of the station to improve capacity and cut delays.

Widening Caversham Road bridge is an important first step towards improving Reading’s railway. The work will be completed over the Christmas and New Year period, requiring one further road closure over the New Year weekend.

Network Rail’s work this Christmas will have an impact on train services between 27 December and 3 January. The railway remains open but passengers should check how their journey is affected before they travel.

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About Network Rail

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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