VIDEO: State-of-the-art machinery delivers £29million railway upgrade between Basingstoke and Eastleigh in record time: High output ballast cleaner

Monday 11 Apr 2016

VIDEO: State-of-the-art machinery delivers £29million railway upgrade between Basingstoke and Eastleigh in record time

Region & Route:
| Southern: Wessex
| Southern

As part of its £40bn Railway Upgrade Plan, Network Rail has completed a £29million upgrade to the track and foundation of the railway between Basingstoke and Eastleigh in half the usual time by using state-of-the-art track renewal and ballast cleaning machines.

  • 25km of track replaced
  • 64,000 tonnes of ballast replaced
  • 38,000 new railway sleepers laid

The renewal project has replaced 25km of track and over 64,000 tonnes of ballast, the stone foundation to the railway, requiring a total of nearly 38,000 new railway sleepers. The High Output Ballast Cleaner, which replaces the ballast beneath the track to improve the drainage, has been working five nights a week since the end of September 2015, while the two pieces of kit have been used together overnight for the first time since January.

This is also the first time the High Output Ballast Cleaner has been used on a railway powered by a ‘third rail’, whereby the electrical current to power the trains is on the floor (as opposed to overhead as it is on many other lines). The Alliance between Network Rail and South West Trains also meant more work could be carried out in the available time, as the two organisations worked together to get engineers the access to the railway needed while keeping passengers and freight moving.

John Halsall, Route Managing Director at Network Rail, said: “We’re delighted to deliver this fantastic upgrade, not only in record time but with minimal disruption to passengers. The machinery that we have used represents superb value, both in the cost of completing the works and the speed at which we can work, particularly the fact that we can operate overnight rather than closing the line at weekends.

“The number of passengers using the railway is now at its highest point ever and continues to grow. This stretch of railway is also intensively used for freight movements in and out of Southampton docks, so it is vital that we keep upgrading the infrastructure in the most efficient way possible. I’d like to thank our lineside neighbours for bearing with us during this vital work.”

The two renewal systems are operated by teams of around 40 of Network Rail’s ‘orange army’, five nights a week. The teams were able to renew twice as much track and ballast as would have been possible in the same time using traditional methods.

Christian Roth, Managing Director for South West Trains, said: “This part of our railway is one of the busiest and most intensively used in the country and therefore carrying out regular maintenance is vital to ensuring safe and reliable journeys for millions of passengers every year.

“This is also a first for the railway as it is the first time this equipment has been used on a ‘third rail’ railway, whereby the electrical current to power the trains is on the floor. As a result it has taken a tremendous amount of teamwork to show the equipment can work here and we’re delighted with the end result.”

The work is carried out by two machines, one designed to renew the track and one designed to replace the ballast foundations. The ballast cleaner alone stretches for approximately half a mile, weighs around 3,000 tonnes, and is able to renew around 400 yards of ballast every night, approximately twice the distance that conventional methods would achieve.

The two machines will now be taken in for scheduled maintenance before moving around the country to continue the national track upgrade scheme.

Contact information

Passengers / community members
Network Rail national helpline
03457 11 41 41

Latest travel advice
Please visit National Rail Enquiries

Journalists
Network Rail press office - Owen Johns
Media relations manager (Wessex route)
07710 959476
Owen.Johns@networkrail.co.uk

About Network Rail

We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.

Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.

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