Thursday 6 Feb 2003

STATEMENT TO ANGLIA TV ON BLAXHALL CROSSING

Region & Route:
| Eastern: Anglia
| Eastern
| Southern
Safety is Network Rail’s first priority, without question.  Level crossings have a hundred percent safety record when used correctly.  It is only when the ‘green cross code’ of level crossings is abused that incidents happen. The crossing at Blaxhall, near Wickham Market was extensively damaged in the incident on 15 April 2002.  Since then a Network Rail attendant has been manually operating the crossing, which has had temporary gates installed. This crossing is made to measure and involves many components, including signalling, lighting and power equipment.  The new crossing will be reinstalled in a few months time.

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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.

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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