Media centre

Friday 1 Jul 2005

UPDATE ON TESCO TUNNEL COLLAPSE AT GERRARDS CROSS

Region & Route:

National

Background information

• At 19:34 on Thursday 30 June, the driver of the 17:40 Stratford-upon-Avon to London Marylebone (Chiltern Trains service), making its regular station stop at Gerrards Cross, reported that part of the ‘Tesco Tunnel’ appeared to have collapsed.

 

• No one was injured in the incident and no trains were involved.

 

• The tunnel is of recent ‘cut and cover’ construction, being built on behalf of Tesco to facilitate the erection of a new superstore above the two track Chiltern line that runs from London Marylebone to Beaconsfield, Banbury and Birmingham.

 

• Engineers from Network Rail and Tesco’s construction company were quickly on site and reported that approximately 30m of the 320m concrete tunnel had collapsed onto the track around 80m from the south entrance.   Several thousand tonnes of spoil, up to six metres deep has fallen onto the railway.

 

• Network Rail, supported by Tesco and its engineers, has launched a full investigation into the causes of the tunnel collapse. 

  Service recovery

• A full engineering assessment of the recovery timescale is now underway, which will take at least two days. Only once this is complete will it be possible to give a detailed assessment of the timetable for the restoration of services.

 

• Network Rail is fully focused on reopening the railway as quickly as possible, but the task is huge, and the line is likely to be closed for a number of weeks.

 

• Chiltern Railways are making every effort to provide alternative services for their passengers and details can be found on their website (www.chilternrailways.co.uk) or by calling National Rail Enquiries on 08457 48 49 50.).

  Speaking about the efforts to restore services, Network Rail Director of Operations & Customer Services Robin Gisby said: “Our engineers have an enormous task in front of them to restore services on the line. We have now taken charge of the site and will be working night and day on the task, with several thousand tonnes of spoil to be cleared. We regret that is likely that services will be disrupted for a number of weeks.”