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Thursday 7 Jan 2021

Successful completion of £16m investment in Scotland’s Railway

Region & Route:

Scotland’s Railway: Scotland

Passengers and freight customers will benefit from more reliable services after the successful delivery of £16m of enhancements on Scotland’s Railway.

Engineers worked around-the-clock over Christmas and New Year at dozens of locations to carry out vital projects to renew key pieces of infrastructure.

From Christmas Eve until the early hours of Saturday, January 2, engineers were working at Cadder to the north of Glasgow to replace over 1km of track and renew or refurbish 12 sets of points (rails that move to allow trains to switch from one track to another).

The team also renewed signalling and overhead power equipment and upgraded points heaters, which will help stop rails from freezing up during winter.

At Greenhill Junction, also to the north of the city, work took place over Christmas to upgrade signalling systems to make the railway more resilient and reduce delays for passengers.

To the south of Glasgow city centre, engineers worked from New Year’s Day until the early hours of January 4 to renew junctions and life-expired tracks at Pollokshields East and on the approaches to Glasgow Central station.

Elsewhere across the country, engineers were relaying track near Inverness station and in Edinburgh and upgrading track, signalling and level crossing equipment in Stirling.

Kris Kinnear, Network Rail Scotland’s capital delivery director, said: “The projects delivered over the festive period will help make Scotland’s Railway more resilient and more reliable and are part of a £4bn investment being made in our network between now and 2024.

“Our engineers worked around-the-clock in very challenging weather conditions – including freezing temperatures and snow – to complete these vital enhancements which will provide long-term benefits for our passengers and freight customers.”