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Monday 3 Aug 2020

VIDEO: Better journeys for South East London and Kent rail passengers as £81m signalling system at Hither Green comes into use

Region & Route:

Southern: Kent

Following two years of work and a nine-day closure of routes across South East London, new, more reliable signalling on the Sidcup, Grove Park and Bromley North lines through Hither Green has come into use.

Passengers have been thanked for their patience during the disruption:

The old system, which controlled the movement of trains on the lines through Hither Green, had been in place since the 1970s. It had become unreliable, difficult to maintain, and spare parts were hard to find.

The new system, now controlled from a modern state-of-the-art operations centre at Three Bridges, will mean fewer faults, fewer delays and better journeys for passengers travelling between Kent, Hither Green, Lewisham and into Central London.

What improvements were delivered?

• Providing turnback capability at Hither Green, Grove Park and Lee – this means that more trains can run when there are unplanned delays or engineering works.
• Signalling control of the area will be transferred to the to the state-of-the-art Three Bridges route control centre, helping to recover the service more quickly when there is an incident.
• Track circuits - the train detection system, replaced with 254 more reliable axle counters.
• 92 new signal heads, 58 new signals and nine new, easier maintained signal gantries built.
• 24km of new power cable and 19km of new fibre cable installed.
• 86 set of points enhanced to improving reliability of junctions.
• Power supply upgraded and made more resilient.
• Better signalling at Grove Park station to allow 12-car trains to stop at platform 3 during unplanned disruption – making it easier to keep passengers moving
• Deep cleaning, painting, platform and canopy repairs at Chislehurst, Elmstead Woods, Grove Park, Sundridge Park, Bromley North, Lee, Mottingham and New Eltham stations.

Work to improve Hither Green and Chislehurst stations will continue over the next few months along with the removal of the old signalling kit.