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Wednesday 21 Mar 2018

Reliability boost for Brighton Main Line passengers as Network Rail completes railway upgrade between Redhill and Gatwick

Region & Route:

| Southern

The hundreds of thousands of passengers using the Brighton Main Line every weekday can look forward to more reliable journeys after Network Rail completed an upgrade of the railway between Redhill and Gatwick.

More than 200 Network Rail engineers were working every night and round-the-clock at weekends from 24 February until 18 March to renew Earlswood Junction – one of the busiest in the country with almost 800 trains passing over it each day – and upgrade the track, power supply and signalling. 

Steve Kilby, programme manager, Network Rail, said: “The last major upgrade on this stretch of the Brighton Main Line took place in 1983, so the assets were becoming more and more unreliable, leading to delays for passengers.

“The work we’ve completed over these past weeks will keep hundreds of trains and thousands of people moving for decades to come.

“I’d really like to thank passengers for their patience while we completed this work and also our staff who worked in some incredibly challenging weather conditions to get the job done.”

The work was a key element of the Brighton Main Line Improvement Project which will see major work to renew, replace and upgrade the railway over the next 12 months. Further work in the Gatwick area will take place over the early May bank holiday (5-7 May), while a major upgrade of the southern end of the Brighton Main Line between Three Bridges and Brighton is planned for the October 2018 and February 2019 half terms.

Notes:

The work between Redhill and Gatwick is partly funded by a £300m government-funded programme to tackle delay hotspots and improve reliability. The funding will also allow:

• Additional staff to be employed to maintain the railway as passenger numbers and service frequencies grow
• Digital Railway technology such as incident management, traffic management and automatic route setting to be introduced in the most congested areas such as on the approaches to London Victoria and London Bridge
• Data-driven asset interventions at delay hotspots such as the Balcombe, Clayton and Patcham tunnels, between Gatwick and Redhill and the Sevenoaks tunnel in Kent
• As part of the £300m programme, major work will take place on the Brighton Main Line over the early May bank holiday (5-7 May 2018) in the Gatwick area, and between Three Bridges and Brighton from 20-28 October 2018 and 16-24 February 2019.
• More information can be found at www.brightonmainline.co.uk