Passenger and freight services on the Marches Line between Hereford and Newport have resumed today following emergency repairs to an isolated track washout near Abergavenny.
Teams from Network Rail Wales and Borders worked intensively, day and night, to reinstate the railway after the most severe flooding event ever recorded in the area. The line is a critical corridor for both passenger and freight traffic, and its swift reopening has been hailed as a major achievement.
Floodwater completely washed away the ballast – the stones that support the track – near Pandy level crossing, leaving a two-metre void and rails suspended. Despite widespread local road flooding, engineers managed to transport specialist equipment and materials to the site quickly, including:
- 600 tonnes of ballast, delivered by 30 articulated lorries
- 4 rail-road cranes
- 2 tamping machines
- Over 100 staff working across multiple shifts
Thanks to a resilience project completed in 2021 – which saw 8,000 tonnes of rock armour installed along this vulnerable section – the wider route avoided far more severe damage. Historically, an incident like this could have closed the line for three to four weeks. This time, repairs were completed in under three days.
While several eight-tonne rock armour boulders were displaced by the sheer force of the floodwater, the £4m investment four years ago significantly limited the impact, preventing damage from spreading hundreds of metres along the railway.
In 2019, an unnamed storm dropped 80mm of rain and caused 15 washouts on this line. In comparison, Storm Claudia dropped 120mm, but the rock armour meant the line suffered just one washout – at a level crossing where it couldn’t be installed.
“Our teams have worked methodically and safely to fix the damage caused by the flooding near Pandy level crossing in just 60 hours,” said Nick Millington, Route Director for Network Rail Wales and Borders.
“Before our resilience work and the rock armour being placed, this would have taken potentially four weeks to complete.
We’ve used 600 tonnes of ballast and around 100 people in this recovery operation.
A number of our people weren’t rostered to work this weekend but came in voluntarily to help, and I’m proud of their efforts and what we’ve managed to achieve.
I would like to thank our passengers and freight customers for their patience during this time.”
Marie Daly, Chief Operating Officer at TfW, added:
“We're pleased to confirm the railway line between Hereford and Newport has re-opened with services resuming on Tuesday morning, 18th November.
We appreciate our customers' patience while we worked with Network Rail to reopen the affected line.
We strongly advise all fans heading to Cardiff for the World Cup qualifier to check their journey details before travelling, as services are expected to be exceptionally busy while we work to get our trains back into their normal scheduled locations.”
Image credit: Network Rail
