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Monday 19 Feb 2018

Scotland's railway to benefit from £23m of upgrades this Easter

Region & Route:

Scotland’s Railway: Scotland

Network Rail engineers will work around-the-clock this Easter to deliver more than £23m of infrastructure improvements across Scotland’s railway.

Over 2,500 staff will work around 40,000 hours on projects across the central belt, in the south west and in the north east of Scotland.

In the central belt major investments will include rebuilding Livingston South Station and continuing work on electrifying the Edinburgh-Glasgow via Shotts line.

More than a kilometre of new track will be laid on the West Coast Main Line at Carstairs and further progress will be made on a £100m signalling system renewal around the south of Glasgow.

In the south west, engineers will be laying new tracks and working on improvements to drainage systems underneath the West Coast Main Line at Lockerbie and in the north east, engineers will be altering five bridges between Aberdeen and Inverurie as they prepare  to double-track the railway.

Across Britain, more than 15,000 railway staff will be out delivering £118m-worth of investment at more than 400 locations as part of Network Rail’s long-term plan to create more reliable infrastructure and improved facilities for passengers.

Mark Carne, chief executive at Network Rail, said: “This Easter, thousands of rail workers will be working round the clock to deliver crucial upgrades to the rail network as part of the £50bn Railway Upgrade Plan.

“This huge investment programme will provide faster, better services and help relieve over-crowding to respond to the huge growth on Britain’s railways.

“While most of the network is open for business as usual, some routes are heavily affected and so we strongly advise passengers to plan ahead this Easter.”

A breakdown of how some journeys will be affected can be found by visiting nationalrail.co.uk/Easter and following #EasterBHWorks on Twitter.