Media centre

Tuesday 30 Aug 2016

TIMELAPSE VIDEO: Bank Holiday upgrades deliver better railway for passengers

Region & Route:

| Southern: Wessex

| Southern

Passengers to the south and west of London will benefit from a more reliable and resilient railway thanks to Network Rail’s bank holiday upgrades completed this weekend.

The work, completed on time as part of Network Rail’s Railway Upgrade Plan, delivered a series of track and station upgrades between London Waterloo and Barnes station, including:

• Delivering another £350,000 slice of a £5m upgrade of the points, the equipment which allows trains to move between tracks, at Waterloo station
• Installing signal and communications equipment between Queenstown Road and Clapham Junction station as part of an £800m investment across the Wessex route
• Renewing tracks between Wandsworth Town and Putney station
• Renewing the surface on platforms 2 and 3 at Wandsworth Town station

Timelapse footage from the weekend shows the work at Waterloo station, where a team of engineers worked around the clock to replace three sections of track.

Lee McCarthy, programme manager at Network Rail said, “The work we have delivered this weekend as part of our Railway Upgrade Plan focused on one of the most heavily used sections of the railway in Britain.

“Our work to bring the Waterloo International Terminal back into use is well under way, and by 2018 capacity at the station will have increased by 30% so it’s vital that we continue investing to provide a better railway for the growing number of passengers.

“I’d like to thank passengers for their patience while we carried out our upgrades this weekend.”

The upgrades are designed to improve the reliability and resilience of the railway in one of the most heavily-used stretches of the country’s rail network, which will pave the way for future growth in passenger capacity at Waterloo station from 2018.

ENDS