Thursday 30 Oct 2014
VIDEO: Vast new gantry in the shadow of the Shard will improve reliability on one of Europe’s busiest routes
- Region & Route:
- | Southern
Stunning night time footage at the foot of the Shard shows the installation of a 30m signal gantry on the approach to London Bridge station.
As the clocks went back last weekend, over a hundred Network Rail engineers took advantage of the extra hour to install a huge new signal gantry that spans 10 of the 11 tracks on the approach to London Bridge station.
Network Rail is completely rebuilding London Bridge station over the next three years as part of the £6.5bn Thameslink Programme.
This Christmas and into the New Year period, when passenger numbers are at their lowest, parts of the station will be closed for 16 days to allow engineers to return to the site to finish the job by attaching new state-of-the-art signalling equipment. Replacing the current system, which has been in use since the 1970s, will dramatically improve reliability on one of the most congested railway lines in Europe and allow more trains to run through to central London and beyond.
Find out more at ThameslinkProgramme.co.uk
Notes to editors
Footage was taken overnight on Saturday 25 and into the morning of Sunday 26 October 2014.
About the Thameslink Programme:
The government-sponsored £6.5bn Thameslink Programme will transform north-south travel through London. When complete in 2018 it will give passengers:
- New, spacious trains running every 2 to 3 minutes through central London in the peak
- Improved connections and better options to more destinations on an expanded Thameslink network including Cambridge and Peterborough
- Robust new track and signalling systems offer more reliable journeys
- A completely rebuilt London Bridge station with more space and great facilities
Find out more at ThameslinkProgramme.co.uk
Follow @TLProgramme
London Bridge facts:
- Over 117 million people a year go to London Bridge or through it to Cannon Street and Charing Cross – 54 million start or end their at London Bridge itself
- Platform 6 is the busiest in Europe serving 18 trains per hour
- The new concourse at London Bridge will be bigger than the pitch at Wembley, increasing passenger capacity by 65%
- London Bridge will be longer than the Shard is tall
- Up to 24 trains per hour will run in each direction, during the peak, between St Pancras and Blackfriars
- Up to 18 Thameslink trains an hour will run in each direction, during the peak, between London Bridge and St Pancras – currently there are none between 7.30 and 9am
- 178 years old – London Bridge is London’s oldest surviving rail terminus, first opened in Dec 1836
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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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