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Tuesday 29 Mar 2016

TIMELAPSE and PICTURES: Railway passengers and neighbours thanked for their patience after Easter engineering work in London and Sussex

Region & Route:

| Southern

After a long weekend of heavy engineering work – and some dreadful weather - across Sussex and London, the railway network is up and running again.

As part of its £40bn Railway Upgrade Plan, providing a bigger and better railway, engineers from Network Rail and its contractors were out at locations across the railway over all four days of the Bank Holiday, most notably at Battersea Park and also near Pulborough.

A complete junction was replaced at Battersea, with track and eight sets of points – which allow trains to move from one track to another – taken up and renewed. The work was completed on time despite having to temporarily stop working when storm Katie landed debris on the track on Monday morning.

Meanwhile, vital work took place to strengthen a wrought iron bridge over the River Arun, near Pulborough

Trains were diverted from London Victoria to London Blackfriars and London Bridge, while buses replaced trains on the Horsham to Arundel route.

Network Rail route managing director Alasdair Coates said: “I would like to thank passengers for their patience, and also our lineside neighbours – including the staff, dogs and cats of Battersea - who will have seen and heard our work going on.

“In two years we’ve replaced worn-out junctions at Keymer, Haywards Heath, Gatwick, Purley and now Battersea, which will improve passengers’ comfort and also reliability. We run more than 6,000 trains very weekday in Kent and Sussex and it is this constant cycle of improvements that will keep our very busy railway running reliably well into the future.”

A Southern spokesperson said: "We'd like to thank our passengers for their patience and understanding while these critical improvements were made. Network Rail has replaced a part of the infrastructure which was in need of renewal and, like the new section at Purley, we fully expect this important junction to be more reliable, reducing the risk of failures and delays."

Nationally, more than 15,000 people worked on 450 different projects, in some difficult weather conditions. On Monday, over 100 trees had to be removed from tracks as additional staff were called upon to reopen blocked lines and help project teams clear sites of debris blown onto the railway from adjacent land. 

NOTES:

Other Network Rail projects in the South East this Easter, included the Thameslink Programme work at Cannon Street, a new signalling scheme around the Medway Towns and Crossrail work to build a new station at Abbey Wood.

The Railway Upgrade Plan is Network Rail’s £40bn spending plan for Britain’s railways for the five year period up to 31 March 2019. The plan is designed to provide more capacity, relieve crowding and respond to tremendous growth the railways have seen – a doubling of passengers in the past twenty years. The plan will deliver a bigger, better railway with more trains, longer trains, faster trains with more infrastructure, more reliable infrastructure and better facilities for passengers, especially at stations.