Latest Rail News

03.01.14

£100m upgrades complete over Christmas break

Network Rail engineers conducted the equivalent of 600,000 hours of upgrades over the festive period, working across the network to improve the railway.

Investment of over £100m was planned in conjunction with train operators to minimise the impact of passenger disruption over Christmas and the New Year.

Work included a new platform, track and signalling equipment at Gatwick Airport station, commissioning of new signalling equipment at Peterborough, electrification work at Manchester Victoria, the installation of a new rail bridge in Ipswich and a major upgrade of Gravesend station.

A Network Rail spokesperson said: “Passengers and businesses are really seeing the benefits of sustained investment in the railway, with new and longer platforms, better stations and more capacity for extra passenger and freight services. The work carried out this Christmas and New Year period is part of our plan for a bigger, better railway and means the industry can cater for the continuing growth in demand for rail travel.”

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Comments

Ian Mcdonald   03/01/2014 at 14:44

The platform lengthening at Gravesend to 12-car lengths, and indeed elsewhere in the south east, is welcome, but would be more impressive if the TOCs operated more than just a handful of full length trains now in the peaks on some routes, and particularly their continued operation of inadequate 4-car trains through the more crowded off-peak hours, especially after 22.00 in the evenings, on Saturdays to shopping centres and sporting events, and on Sundays too as passengers return from weekend breaks, holidays, and other entertainments. Their leisure enjoyment can often be ruined by having to stand or compete for narrow seats in crowded trains, unable to reach locked or unserviced toilets, while seeing plenty of idle rolling stock sitting in sidings. Many such passengers might become more frequent train users if their journeys were more comparable to the comfort of their own cars.

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