South Gloucestershire residents invited to learn more about railway electrification

Monday 21 Aug 2017

South Gloucestershire residents invited to learn more about railway electrification

Region & Route:: Wales & Western: Western; | Wales & Western

Residents living in South Gloucestershire have been invited to an event this week to find out more about ongoing upgrades of the Great Western mainline.

Network Rail will host a drop-in session in Tormarton near Acton Turville this Wednesday regarding the four-week programme of work taking place from Swindon through to Bristol Parkway, which began on Saturday and will continue until Friday, 15 September.

The upgrade work will pave the way for the arrival of GWRs fleet of brand new trains later this year, which will deliver over a fifth more seats per train, more frequent services and reduced journey times for passengers. These trains will run on electric from December 2018, once the electrification project from London Paddington to Cardiff is complete.

The upgrade includes the installation of the Overhead Line Equipment (OLE) used to hold the wires for electrification, platform upgrades at Bristol Parkway station and the introduction of a flood resilience scheme at Chipping Sodbury to make the railway more reliable.

A spokesman for Network Rail, Dean Shaw, said: “The upgrade will transform this section of the railway as we deliver electrification as part of our Railway Upgrade Plan. It is a major programme of work and we would like to invite all residents living near the railway to one of our sessions where they can find out more.”

The drop-in event will take place on Wednesday, 23 September at Tormarton Village Hall, High Street, GL9 1HU from 7pm until 8.30pm.

ENDS

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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.

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