Reminder for passengers that finishing touches will be made to the £250m railway upgrade between Stafford and Crewe over May bank holiday: Opened: £250m Norton Bridge flyover – March 2016

Monday 25 Apr 2016

Reminder for passengers that finishing touches will be made to the £250m railway upgrade between Stafford and Crewe over May bank holiday

Region & Route:
| North West & Central

Train passengers heading through the Stafford area are being reminded to check before they travel over the May bank holiday weekends.

Network Rail engineers, as part of the organisation’s £40bn Railway Upgrade Plan, will be working at Stafford to remove one of the last major bottlenecks on the West Coast main line. This will create capacity for additional passenger and freight services in future between Birmingham and Manchester, London and the North West, as well as improve reliability and journey times.

Lines between Stafford and Crewe will be partially closed for works from Saturday 30 April – Saturday 7 May and Saturday 28 May – start of service Tuesday 31 May so engineers can consolidate the £250m upgrade work to the railway. 

Cross Country and Virgin Trains long-distance services are being diverted, adding up to 25 minutes to journey times and some local London Midland services are being replaced with buses during the work.

Martin Frobisher, route director at Network Rail, said: “We thank passengers once again for their patience as we put the finishing touches to a scheme which will remove one of the last major bottlenecks on the route and improve the reliability of the railway and speed of trains though the area. The work will also enable more freight and passenger services to run through the area and on the entire West Coast main line in future.

“The opening of the new flyover and railway in the Norton Bridge area at Easter marked the culmination of four years’ work which will help provide passengers with a more reliable and better performing railway though the Stafford area on the West Coast main line, one of the busiest rail routes in Europe.

“Building this new railway to improve services for passengers is part of our wider £40bn Railway Upgrade Plan, which will help meet the demands of an increasing number of passengers for many years to come. Our investment also helps the railway support economic growth, job creation and house building around Britain.”

Andy Cooper, managing director of CrossCountry, said: “Completion of these works over the May bank holidays will ensure we will be able to take full advantage of the extra capacity the new flyover provides, delivering faster journeys and more reliable services.

“Regrettably these works require our trains to be diverted and we are asking anyone travelling over the May bank holidays to check their journey details carefully, as some customers journeys may take slightly longer.”

Phil Bearpark, Executive Director of Operations and Projects at Virgin Trains, said: “We have worked closely with Network Rail to keep disruption to a minimum, whilst this important work is carried out. We advise customers to check before they travel and thank them once again for their patience and understanding. The final touches to the work at Stafford will improve the rail network and offer increased reliability in the future.”

Steve Fisher, head of regional services at London Midland, said: “The new track layout at Norton Bridge is a major game changer of trains serving or travelling through Staffordshire. It will allow local and long distance services to pass through the county more easily making better journeys for everyone.”

Over 11,000 members of Network Rail’s orange army will be working across the country over the long weekend (30 April-2 May) to deliver vital elements of the company’s £40bn Railway Upgrade Plan, which will provide a bigger, better, and more reliable railway for passengers and businesses across Britain.

A total of £33m will be invested over the May Day weekend, with the work planned to minimise disruption to passengers – when passenger numbers are typically fewer than half.  Compared with the recent Easter programme, there will be significantly less disruption on major routes with the overwhelming majority of journeys unaffected.

The new section of track and a key flyover opened to trains at Norton Bridge following the Easter bank holiday, allowing trains travelling to Manchester from the south and West Midlands to travel over, rather than across, the existing tracks.

As well as paving the way for more services in future, the Stafford scheme has involved installing more reliable signalling and improvements between Stafford and Crewe to allow trains to travel at faster speeds.

This project has taken four years to complete and has been delivered on budget and 18 months early.

Passengers are being advised to check before they travel at www.nationalrail.co.uk

ENDS

Notes to editors:

The Railway Upgrade Plan is Network Rail’s £40bn spending plan for Britain’s railways for the five year period up to 31 March 2019. The plan is designed to provide more capacity, relieve crowding and respond to tremendous growth the railways have seen – a doubling of passengers in the past twenty years. The plan will deliver a bigger, better railway with more trains, longer trains, faster trains with more infrastructure, more reliable infrastructure and better facilities for passengers, especially at stations.

Stafford Area Improvements Programme:

With unprecedented levels of passenger and freight growth on the rail network and the West Coast main line full to capacity within the next five years, the Staffordshire Area Improvements Programme seeks to remove a major bottleneck through the Stafford area.

The £250m programme will facilitate the introduction of new timetables between 2015 and 2017 and create the capability to deliver:

  • Two extra trains per hour (off peak, each direction) between London and the north west of England
  • One extra train per hour (each direction) between Manchester and Birmingham
  • One extra freight train per hour (each direction) through Stafford

The programme was delivered through the following three key projects:

Phase 1 – Linespeed improvements between Crewe and Norton Bridge, increasing the line speed on the ‘slow’ lines from 75mph to 100mph. Completed in March 2014, these works included modifications to the overhead line equipment and installation of four new signals.

Phase 2 – Stafford resignalling. The installation of a new freight loop and the replacement of life expired signalling, telecoms and power supplies, with the signalling control transferred from the existing Stafford No4 and No5 signal boxes to Rugby, plus the installation of bi-directional signalling for all platforms and an increase in the ‘slow’ line speeds (predominantly used by local passenger/freight services) from 75mph to 100mph between Great Bridgeford (near Norton Bridge) and Stafford. Running from spring 2014 to late 2015 (with an August 2015 commissioning), the majority of these works were delivered during weekends and midweek nights.

Phase 3 – Norton Bridge remodelling. The construction of a grade-separated junction (flyover) at Norton Bridge, including six miles of new 100mph railway, 11 new structures, four river diversions, major environmental mitigation works, pipeline, road and footpath diversions and the construction of temporary haul roads. The key commissioning of the flyover happened in March 2016 with the project being completed – including track upgrades on the main West Coast main line – later this year. As a project of national significance, the Norton Bridge project has been the subject of a Development Consent Order application which was approved by the Secretary of State for Transport following a consultation process dating back to 2010.

Project in numbers

  • Six miles of new railway
  • Four rivers diverted
  • 11 new structures
  • 1,000 000 tonnes of earth moved on site
  • 200 engineering trains involved on the project – delivering aggregate and installing the new infrastructure
  • 5,200 truck journeys removed around from the local road network by using trains
  • 210 new overhead line structures
  • 7.5 miles of new overhead line
  • 3.5 miles of renewed track on the existing railway
  • More than 4,000 men and women involved in the project
  • Installed 16 new switches and crossings (which allows trains to change tracks)
  • Two of switches and crossings are the joint biggest on the rail network
  • 70 new signal posts and gantries installed
  • 250,000m of signal cable used

Staffordshire Alliance - The Stafford Area Improvements Programme is being delivered by the Staffordshire Alliance – a partnership of Atkins, Laing O’Rourke, Network Rail and VolkerRail, working as part of a new collaborative contract that will help to transform the delivery of rail infrastructure projects in the UK.

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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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