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Tuesday 26 Aug 2025

Redhill to Tonbridge line reopens following 10-day closure for upgrade works

Region & Route:

Southern

| Southern: Kent

| Southern: Sussex

Track linking Kent with East Sussex reopened to trains this morning, as part of a number of engineering projects across the south east over the August Bank Holiday weekend.

The Redhill to Tonbridge line reopened this morning, concluding a major 10-day programme of work to replace 13 miles of high voltage power cables between Nutfield and Leigh, protect the track from landslips, replace worn-out rails near Edenbridge and undertake maintenance works to improve the resilience of railway structures and equipment.  

The railway embankment along this route has been strengthened with a 360-metre-long steel wall either side of the track, and further strengthened with 226 soil nails, each 9-metres-long and driven into the ground.

Along the line, 11 bridges have undergone detailed structural inspections, and 200 metres of rail has been replaced at Godstone. 

Elsewhere in Kent and Sussex this Bank Holiday weekend, engineers worked for two days at Parks Bridge, just outside Lewisham, where two new relocatable equipment buildings (REBs) were installed as part of the new signalling system – the railway’s traffic lights – for the area.

The £90m scheme is replacing older 1970s signalling equipment with modern and more reliable signalling technology over a two year period, and will be brought into use over Christmas 2026.

Teams also worked on Sunday to resurface a level crossing in Horsham, ensuring the continued safe and smooth operation of the crossing for many more years.

Louise Greaves, infrastructure director for Network Rail’s Sussex route, said: “I would like to thank passengers for their patience over the last ten days especially while the Redhill to Tonbridge line has been closed for vital repair work. There’s never an ideal time to do work like this, and we know how important the route is, but doing the work over a longer period during a slightly quieter time of year meant that we were able to complete more work in a shorter space of time than we would have done over multiple weekends.”

Bob Coulson, infrastructure director for the South Eastern Railway, said: “Between a third and half of all Southeastern trains pass through the Lewisham area every day, and so passengers travelling to and from central London know how frustrating delays caused by the signalling system can be. Following the work we have undertaken over the bank holiday weekend, we are a step closer to realising the benefits of the brand new signalling system, ready to be switched on at the end of next year, and I want to thank passengers for their understanding while we had to close parts of the railway in this area at the weekend so that we could safely carry out the work.”