Apology to passengers on Midland Main Line

Wednesday 27 Dec 2023

Apology to passengers on Midland Main Line

Region & Route:
Eastern ^[1]
| Eastern: East Midlands ^[2]

Network Rail is sorry that there is a reduced service for passengers at the southern end of the Midland Main Line today. This is because of problems with part of the signalling control system following essential upgrade work over Christmas.

Thameslink is running reduced services.

EMR is already affected by work to electrify the Midland Main Line which is not scheduled to complete until tomorrow (28 December) so services are terminating at Wellingborough with road transport to Bedford for onward travel to London.

Passengers are advised that services are expected to be very busy.

Gary Walsh, route director for Network Rail, said “I am very sorry that our engineering work is affecting passengers today. There is a fault with part of the signalling control system which means we need to reduce the number of trains which are able to run.

“Siemens signalling engineers are working to restore a reliable system as soon as possible.”

The work over Christmas involved Siemens installing a new system to control signals on the Midland Main Line from Bedford to St Pancras.

About Network Rail

We own, operate and develop Britain’s railway infrastructure; that’s 20,000 miles of track ^[3], 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts ^[4] and the thousands of signals ^[5], level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK’s largest stations ^[6] while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country’s train operating companies ^[7].

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 ^[8], so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan ^[9], 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.

References

^{^} Eastern (www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk)
^{^} Eastern: East Midlands (www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk)
^{^} track (www.networkrail.co.uk)
^{^} bridges, tunnels and viaducts (www.networkrail.co.uk)
^{^} signals (www.networkrail.co.uk)
^{^} stations (www.networkrail.co.uk)
^{^} train operating companies (www.networkrail.co.uk)
^{^} a safe and reliable railway (www.networkrail.co.uk)
^{^} multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan (www.networkrail.co.uk)
^{^} @networkrail (twitter.com)
^{^} http://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/ (www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk)