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Friday 26 Jul 2013

Rebuilding Nottingham’s railway: significant progress made in first seven days

Region & Route:

The first week of the work to rebuild the railway around Nottingham is coming to an end, with the project running well on time and significant progress made.

One of the most important milestones was achieved on Monday morning, when the new signalling system controlling trains in the Beeston area was wired in and switched on.

This allowed trains to begin to run into Beeston, including Network Rail’s own engineering trains being used in the relaying of track outside the station.

Network Rail’s senior scheme sponsor, Kevin Newman, said: “We may only be a week into the project but already we have seen some important milestones and work taking place.

“People passing by the station will have seen some of the really big work going on, including the new platform, which is progressing well, and new track to the west of Carrington Street.

“This work will have a major impact on the reliability of the railway and we all really appreciate the patience passengers have shown while it is going on.”

Engineers are currently relaying the track near the station, working from south to north across the four lines, replacing infrastructure that was installed in the 1960s.

Equipment for constructing the new platform and doing other work at the station was carried over the tracks on temporary bridges built from expanded polystyrene blocks. These structures were then removed to allow Skegness trains to run.

Meanwhile, redundant equipment was (and is) being recovered, including miles of signalling cable and signals themselves.

Network Rail chief executive David Higgins and director of network operations Robin Gisby visited the project yesterday (Thursday), arriving on the bus service from East Midlands Parkway.

After the first few weeks of the project, there will be less heavy engineering, and more technical work, as the signalling aspect takes shape.