Passengers are being thanked for their patience after a 21-day closure of the West Coast Main Line through Staffordshire, Cheshire and Greater Manchester for multiple upgrades to improve future journeys for passengers and freight.
This 50-mile stretch of railway, where improvements to bridges, tracks, overhead lines and lineside structures have been taking place, has been fully reopened to trains.
Those projects all took place while the railway through Stockport was completely closed for a major £20m project to remove and rebuild a 67-year-old railway bridge over five lines to the south of the town’s station.
Network Rail has released footage of the first trains running through Stockport to mark the railway reopening, alongside time-lapse footage of the dismantling and reconstruction of Greek Street railway bridge over 21-days.
The rare three-week railway closure over a wide geography gave the company and its supply chain the perfect opportunity to carry out numerous railway improvement schemes while the routes in and out of Stockport were closed to train traffic, including:
- Track and points renewal in Macclesfield
- Platform reconstruction at Poynton station in Cheshire
- Footbridge renovations at Longport station in Stoke-on-Trent
- River Trent Viaduct waterproofing in Stone
- Track upgrades at Hixon, Stone and Congleton
- Track and points renewal at Stone station
- Level crossing upgrades at Meaford, Church Lane, and Aston-by-Stone crossings in Stone
- Track and drainage improvements near Trentham
Combined with the work at Greek Street, the full portfolio of work carried out by Network Rail and its partners to improve the West Coast Main Line was in excess of £43m.
John Nixon, Network Rail Capital Delivery senior programme manager, said: “We’d like to thank passengers impacted by this significant railway closure of the West Coast Main Line for the last three weeks. It’s allowed us to invest tens of millions of pounds and make wide ranging improvements to provide a safer and more reliable railway, benefiting journeys for passengers and freight in the future.
“While we completed this work all in time as planned for the bank holiday, with services expected to be busy with major events and football matches, railway upgrades on further parts of the network and strike action today by staff at CrossCountry trains, we’d still advise people to check before they travel so they know what to expect from their journey this weekend.”
Image and video credits: Network Rail
